what would elmcat do
We doing player advice blogwagon time. But I figure I just tell you how I play, or how I try to play if the system/table lets me. How I play also informs my favorite type of game to run, which is a longterm player driven sandbox campaign. This post is just me trying to crystallize a few things that drive me as a player, and if I don't have them in some form I'll likely be bored after a few sessions. It all starts with me taking "play to find out" literally and seriously.
Ok, so actually let's start with longterm, or rather the opposite. Shortterm games often lose me if they aren't designed for this. If we play a one shot there is no reason for me to get invested in anything. I'm not here to act or improv and roleplay a character. I will play this character like a stolen car and just drive forward recklessly. Time is precious and I'm here to find out as much as I can.
In a longterm campaign the cat calms down, somewhat. The longer I play in a world, the more I usually have going on that I don't want to throw away for nothing, so I'm going to be deliberate about where I take risks and get into danger because that's still where play is most rewarding to me. I'm seeking opportunity.
I played a level 1 MU with 1 hp. We were in a village ruled by some wizard mayor type who lived in a tower in the center of it. The villagers gathered because of some ruckus and the mayor came outside to investigate. I was thinking this is the prime opportunity to find some shit out about him, so I snuck inside the tower, even though I'm neither thief nor rogue, mind you!
I made my way to his office, which was guarded by his manic pet goat. Luckily one of my random items from character creation was a severed gelee hand, like gummy bears, so I distracted it with that. In the office I found his spellbook, a big tome, and knew it would be very hard to just walk out of there carrying it. So I looked out the window and there happened to be a not too bright farmer boy outside. I threw the book down and bribed him with the last bit of coin I had to discreetly deliver it to my apprentice at the tavern.
Just in time because about two minutes later I got caught. I talked my way out of it by lying that I had come here to warn the mayor about an impending attack by a rival faction of forest wizards. And when I got to the office, apparently, I had seen one of them taking a book, jumping out of the window and heading for the woods. Shit continues from there but the point is I saw an opportunity and seized it.
What followed was probably the most engaged the table had been. We got involved in this conflict with the forest wizards as a third party, the mayor eventually died by my hand (hehehe), they attacked the village and destroyed the tower, and the villagers effectively had to resettle. All of this grew out of something nobody had planned for.
Another thing this situation highlights is that I absolutely don't care about advancement for my character, as in experience points, levels and abilities. These are so often just combat coded anyway. There wasn't any gold involved in the whole scenario. I had the spellbook yea, and I do like items, but mostly for their utility, not because they give me special abilities. The spellbook was interesting because now I had something that mattered to somebody else.
The advancement I care about is my leverage in the world. I want to know more about it. I want to know and exploit relationships. I want access to places I didn't have before, people who owe me something, things other people want, information that changes what I can do. I want to forge my own path through the world. Give me warring factions and petty lovers. Exploration is so much more than what's behind the door or what's in this hex. It can be relationships and power structures, infrastructure, sometimes even history. All of that gives me something to act on.
In another game we started out as suspects in a brutal murder that would eventually lead us toward basically the mafia in the setting. My character used every opportunity to blame any chaos we caused and any accusations thrown at us on a local politician, who we suspected of being involved anyway. I would just relentlessly bring it up in conversations with NPCs.
My thought process, and what I communicated to the group, was that this is how rumours start. I wanted to spread this rumour. I didn't want to try it once and have it succeed with or without a roll. I wanted to work for it. If I did it often enough with different people, with different variations and enough vagueness, maybe it would start manifesting in people's consciousness and they would start repeating it themselves. At some point I wanted people to start believing it. It's kinda like the start of a tabloid magazine, which also means give me access to a printing press and I will wreak havoc.
This was all happening alongside regular adventure/investigation play. I was just making sure I'd be consistent whenever I got the chance. I wasn't splitting off to play my own special rumour minigame. I had an intention and kept acting on it. Sometimes the opportunity is "the wizard left his tower unattended" and you act immediately. Sometimes it's something you keep working on for sessions to see if you can make it real.
So I often hear that I'm a chaos agent when I talk about games where I'm a player. I reject this accusation. What I'm doing is more about finding and seizing opportunities, not causing chaos for no reason. I'm not the Joker. I'm paying attention to what's actually going on, who wants what, what people have access to and what they don't. My actions make sense according to what's happening in the fiction. If anything I take YOUR fictional world seriously and expect others to do the same.
Rival factions mean something I can try to exploit and play against each other. An NPC leaving town means their home is likely unattended now. Finding treasure opens up a lot of opportunities because naturally most people are interested in money, and that means my playing field for fucking around expands. I'm not interested in winning or accumulating power. I'm seeking leverage because it gives me more ways to mess with things and see how they react.
And this is important because I don't demand protection from the fallout and I don't demand success. God, if I notice that a GM is playing favorites with me, throwing me bones because they just like what I'm doing or are afraid to follow through with negative consequences, I start losing trust in the game pretty quickly. The world has integrity. Break that because you want something more dramatic to happen, or because you thought of something cool, and you can only get away with it so often before the whole thing starts becoming meaningless for me. Trust me to create drama on my own by taking it seriously.
If I spend time fucking with some faction I want that faction to eventually do something about it. Otherwise what's the point. If I start exploiting makeshift oil molotov cocktails, I expect the enemies to notice and either start doing the same or try to cut me off from the supply. Maybe now there's more demand than supply and suddenly oil gets expensive. Respect the causal chains and let them go where they go. That's where a lot of the emergent play comes from.
For this to work the world also has to be usable. I'm not looking primarily for character sheet options. If something exists in the world, I want to be able to treat it as something I can act on.
If there is a dungeon full of treasure and things to fight next to a river, I believe a valid strategy for players should be to invest time and resources trying to divert the river into the dungeon and drown everything inside. I don't mean it has to work just because it's clever. But the river is there and the dungeon is there and I should be able to take those two facts seriously and see what happens if I bring them together.
And yea, this also means I'm probably going to wreck whatever shape you had in mind for the session. I don't mind prep, but it needs to survive me caring about the wrong thing. If everything falls apart because we don't approach the problem in roughly the expected way, I'm probably going to bounce off it pretty quickly.
If I think back on games I've played in or run, I don't remember flashy setpiece fights or the time someone roleplayed very well in a tavern. The best and most memorable parts are the emergent actions and problems that arose when nobody knew where the game was heading in the moment.
And I don't want to give the impression that player driven play means everybody independently doing their own shit. Most of my schemes happen alongside whatever we're already doing, or I'm trying to get the group to push in a direction I find interesting. And if the thing I'm fucking with turns into a problem or new situation for everyone, even better.
So I guess that's my player advice. Pay attention to the fiction, have intentions about it, and don't wait around for permission or certainty before you act. Then deal with whatever comes back at you and figure out what you want to do with that.
That's what I mean when I say I want to play to find out. I want to find out what happens when we start fucking with the world.