Hello RPGers!
I've done some thinking about my players, and I've noticed that all four of my players are playing as characters who are differing levels of social fluency than the players.
The two female players, who seem to have pretty good recall and a fairly good handle on the consequences of their actions, are playing as a half-demon dervish, and an idiote savante wild mage, respectively. This is tremendous fun for them and for the rest of us because in their case, playing against type is something they're in control of.
The two male players are... not socially fluent. Both have stammering or stuttering problems, and one of them has chosen to play as the group's "lore master" type character, who has photographic memory and knows everybody he's ever met. The player's memory, however is not so good - he'll routinely forget names of NPCs whom he's just been introduced to, and forget important plot issues and clues. I usually get around this by giving him reminders whenever he asks for them - but his memory is literally so corrupt that whenever the plot takes a turn for cerebral or historical facts and people, we slow to a crawl as he asks who every single person is.
The other male player is so socially oblivious, he actually spent much of the first half of the campaign undermining everybody else secretly, until I finally took him to one side and asked him (the player) why he was unravelling everything the party was doing. When he thought about it, he admitted he had no idea, despite the fact that the rest of the party was getting increasingly agitated with their mysterious continued failures. This player opted to play as a tough, no-nonsense, street-smart member of the secret police... so once again, the character is significantly more capable than the player is.
How do you deal with a mismatch where the character is better at keeping track of stuff, mentally or socially, than the players? How far do you let players experience RPGs as "a vacation away from their usual selves" when their own realworld personalities or strengths/weaknesses keep stumbling over their PCs?
I've done some thinking about my players, and I've noticed that all four of my players are playing as characters who are differing levels of social fluency than the players.
The two female players, who seem to have pretty good recall and a fairly good handle on the consequences of their actions, are playing as a half-demon dervish, and an idiote savante wild mage, respectively. This is tremendous fun for them and for the rest of us because in their case, playing against type is something they're in control of.
The two male players are... not socially fluent. Both have stammering or stuttering problems, and one of them has chosen to play as the group's "lore master" type character, who has photographic memory and knows everybody he's ever met. The player's memory, however is not so good - he'll routinely forget names of NPCs whom he's just been introduced to, and forget important plot issues and clues. I usually get around this by giving him reminders whenever he asks for them - but his memory is literally so corrupt that whenever the plot takes a turn for cerebral or historical facts and people, we slow to a crawl as he asks who every single person is.
The other male player is so socially oblivious, he actually spent much of the first half of the campaign undermining everybody else secretly, until I finally took him to one side and asked him (the player) why he was unravelling everything the party was doing. When he thought about it, he admitted he had no idea, despite the fact that the rest of the party was getting increasingly agitated with their mysterious continued failures. This player opted to play as a tough, no-nonsense, street-smart member of the secret police... so once again, the character is significantly more capable than the player is.
How do you deal with a mismatch where the character is better at keeping track of stuff, mentally or socially, than the players? How far do you let players experience RPGs as "a vacation away from their usual selves" when their own realworld personalities or strengths/weaknesses keep stumbling over their PCs?
How to deal with a player who's less "with it" than his character?
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