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"The Logical Song" - Supertramp

Your Job is to Chase Characters Up Trees
So, years ago Ron Edwards (I think) introduced the idea of kickers and bangs in Sorcerer. I own Sorcerer, read it, and thought I understood them. Here are the relevant definitions, lifted from John Kim's theory glossary:

Bangs
A term from the game Sorcerer, originally "those moments when the characters realize they have a problem right now and have to get moving to deal with it." In Forge discussion, this has become "introducing events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player."

And here's a good example, lifted from this thread, from a post by Ralph Mazza:

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You have a character who's a priest of an altruistic diety. You have a relationship map that highlights various enemies of the priests family.

Bang: A house is burning and one of the most villainous members of the rival family is trapped inside...what do you do?

The priest chooses to: go and get help, run inside to effect a rescue, pray for a miracle, or walk up and make sure the door is barricaded extra well...even simply walking away says something about the character and most importantly each choice opens a wealth of potential following issues.

There simply is no way for the character to avoid being touched by consequences. The player's only option is to chose which consequences to take. That's a Bang.

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And here's the glossary's definition of a kicker:

Kicker
A term from the game Sorcerer: "The Kicker is an event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins. It catalyzes him or her into action of some sort."

There's also a good thread that goes into some detail on the difference between a kicker and a classic character hook.

EDIT: Here's another link with more good commentary on kicker's. In particular, read Ron's first post in the thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1321.0

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OK, so a lot of this stuff is basic RPG theory and covers some now fundamental methods to put characters into motion. The big reveal for me is that, for the past few campaigns, I've been unhappy with how the story has progressed. My last Eberron campaign in Boston was a lot of fun, but since then the games have felt a little flat.

So, yesterday, to kick off my Greyhawk Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I trotted out a set of Traveller-style rules I built with an eye toward kickers and bangs. The rules lack significant mechanical impact on a PC. Instead, they build kickers right into the character's background. We ended up with some really interesting characters with lots of reasons to push the story ahead. The kickers it produced also suggest a number of bangs that can come up in play.

The really nice part is that I designed the tables to speak directly to the setting. The characters were from a place on the map, and the events that led to their kickers were derived both from player choice ("Here's what I think about my character...") and background information ("You're from Highfolk, and during the first year of your arcane apprenticeship you were pressed into military service to repel a major raid by orcs from the Empire of Iuz. Here's what happened...")

The thing I realized is that, to mangle a quote from someone (a director?) a lot smarter than I, my job as a GM is to chase the characters up a tree and let them figure out a way to get down. The thing is, there's a snake climbing the tree, the tree's on fire, there's a mob of zombies around the tree, and the rescue chopper floating overhead is piloted by a drunk 5 year old. You've got choices, but none of them are "I sit in the tree and while away a pleasant afternoon with happy thoughts." There's peril in every direction. As Ralph said in the quoted bits above, not choosing is still a choice with interesting consequences.

Now, the tree example isn't perfect, because ideally all of those decisions are tied to the characters, but the gist of it is there.

Much of this is basic stuff for people versed in RPG theory and indie games. I find it interesting because, while I knew about all this stuff and had used it in the past, it was a good exercise to poke around and review what I already thought I knew. Sometimes we know things, but we forget to use them.

I have to check to see if the tables are something I can post (they refer to some 4e-specific rules), but there's another interesting lesson I learned from them. Players, especially D&D players, are risk averse. They don't want their characters to die. They'd rather find the safest way to get treasure and beat a villain. I think that if I used my "power" as DM to force interesting backgrounds on the players, they'd rebel. Most D&D players want a background that looks like this:

1. My character has no notable friends and family.
2. My character didn't have any major villains or real issues with anyone.
3. My character wants to... get some treasure?

These are all really safe, easy statements. There's nothing there that can pose a threat. It's exactly what the smart, no-risk gamer wants.

As DM, I don't want that. I want to chase the characters up burning trees. However, if I just toss them into a tree, I'll get resistance. That's railroading. It's not really interesting, because a GM can always just arbitrarily throw stuff at characters. Arbitrary is stupid and bad in games, because the fundamental promise of games (interaction! choices!) runs directly counter to it.

The tables, OTOH, are neutral arbiters. Nobody argues with a table. Nobody resents that the table is loading juicy, interesting, dangerous bits of background into their characters' lives (Your cleric PC... will be burned at the stake if the high priests knew what books you were reading! Your gnome wizard... was the target of an attempted assassination, and you have no idea why, but you think these guys might be from the very government you serve as a diplomat!) The table is arbitrary, but it's also random. It's an impersonal safety-killing machine.

So, that was my experience with a Trav-style system aimed purely at story rather than mechanics. It was fun, and I hope to post a human readable and usable version of it soon.