Rogues

Over on Part Four, I noted that George R.R. Martin's introduction to the anthology "Rogues" had changed some of my DMing philosophy.

In that introduction, GRRM noted that stories tended to be more satisfying if they starred a character who was in some sense an outsider: the Private Investigator rather than the cop, the "Dirty Harry" type rather than the straight arrow, Wolverine rather than Cyclops (and Batman rather than Superman), a woman in a man's job (or, in the case of Shaft, a black man rubbing up against a white establishment - it's essentially the same conflict). Likewise, one of the strengths of "Star Trek" is that although the Enterprise is one ship in a mighty fleet, they spend the majority of their time right on the frontier and thus unable to call for help quickly - and also empowered to solve issues as they see fit. Bernard Cornwell plays with this same thing again and again - Sharpe is a commoner raised to rank amongst nobles; Uhtred is a pagan amongst Christians; and it's Prince Arthur rather than king - in his telling, Mordred is the rightful heir.

I think there are two big factors to this. Firstly, the protagonists invariably have key skills that make them indispensible to the powers-that-be (or, at the very least, mean they can't be disregarded entirely), and secondly those powers-that-be don't really approve of the protagonists. And so, Dirty Harry keeps getting chewed out by his captain, keeps hitting up against intenal investigations, and so on... but at the same time, he's also the one guy who is able to make actual progress, so he's not simply sacked and replaced.

The application of this to role-playing is nice and simple - the PCs obviously have specialised skills that mean they will remain useful to the powers-that-be, which means it's just a matter of putting foils in their way.

Of course, the key thing here is not to be too agressive in applying those foils. If the PCs are constantly finding they can't make headway, or they're constantly being thwarted, the players are likely to become frustrated. And, in particular, although the foils may frustrate the PCs socially, it's probably very important that they be given free rein to solve problems in their own way - Dirty Harry may have issues with his superiors, but when it comes to "Do I feel lucky?" he's alone with the gun, and can pull the trigger or not.

(Indeed, I suspect this is why Paladins are so often such a problem - they're the guy who does stand there telling their friends "you can't do that!"... and they're in the guise of a PC and so cannot just be ditched by the rest.)

And so, when establishing a campaign, I think I'm going to ask, and address, two key questions:

1. What is it that the PCs can do for their patrons? Why can't those patrons deal with it themselves? Why are they going to be indispensible?
2. What is it that makes those PCs outsiders, rather than the establishment? Who are they at odds with? Who are the foils?

(Obviously, that's more than two questions! But the two groups each address one side of my concern above, so I'm calling it two.)