Character Concepts

It happens in every game -- a player get their hands on the basebook, or some expansion book, and fixates on some device or ability at the mechanical margins of the system. They begin to create an entire character based upon this one item or capability, and by the time they get to running it past you, they are very invested in this idea that simply doesn't fit in your campaign.

This is a problem I've had as long as I've been a GM, and I see it as one of the major challenges I keep encountering. In the business world, we have a concept called "expectation management", i.e., making sure that everybody is expecting roughly the same thing to happen. When I fail to properly manage the expectations of my players, I end up with somebody coming to me with, to paraphrase the excellent Classic BattleTech Companion, an ER Pulse Ultra Rotary Heavy Naval Gauss Cannon.

Now, as a GM, I hate saying "No" to my players. I feel like if I'm in a situation where I'm flat-out saying "No, you can't do that," I've done something wrong as a GM. Even if I'm right, either I didn't adequately explain my vision of the rules, or the setting, or some other criteria that makes it obvious to me this won't work, but didn't make it obvious to my player. So let's talk about what happened here.

Let's start with Bert. Bert has some knowledge of the history of interactions between ComStar and the Word of Blake since Operation Odysseus (the Word of Blake capture of Terra in 3058) and Case White. His first question, knowing he was going to be playing ComStar, was "Can I be a Manei Domini?" My first reaction was an unqualified No, for several different reasons of plot, timeline, and sanity. On further reflection, my answer was still no. Close the book.

Next, Cameron, who was bouncing some ideas around, came to me. His character concept as a resistance fighter was to be a veterinarian who would serve as the team's doctor once they got ground-side. I thought this was a great idea. After a bit of flipping through the book, and doing some life path, he discovered the branth. He immediately asked for one as a pet. I vaguely recalled the name, so I flipped to the appropriate page.

The first sentence of the entry on the branth (AToW, p.243) reads:

Resembling the mythical flying dragon of human lore, the branth has appealed to the imagination since its discovery on the Marik world of Lopez.

Now, Cameron is new to the system and I don't want to discourage him, but giving him a pet dragon the size of a horse that breaths not only poison, but poison acid, was not something I was interested in starting the party out with. I pointed out a few issues in the rules text, such as their immune issues off their native world, and suggested that this was something he studied and had expertise in, but wasn't viable for him to personally own. This seemed to satisfy him, and we agreed that his character did his post-grad work on branths, but doesn't have ready access to one on Terra.

About this time, Bert came back to me and flipped A Time of War to page 317, where he excitedly showed me the Elective Myomer Implant (Full Body), a Capellan-only option that boosted his attributes by a net of about 500XP (+2 STR, +1 RFL,-1 CHA, Toughness (3 TP).) I had already handed him a flat-out "No" earlier, so I wanted to find a way to make this work without giving another straight No. The implant was Capellan-only, and he was a Terran Belter, so I had grounds to just say no, but I wanted to try to meet him halfway so that he'd know I wasn't just shooting him down because he wasn't conforming to some vision I had. I offered him the upgrade for the XP cost, less the Trait Gremlins, which he would also take. The particular way in which Gremlins interacts with Myomer Implants introduces the possibility of his character simply locking up during a mission and suddenly becoming a major liability and raising a serious conversation among the PC's over whether the affected character should be left behind to be captured or killed rather than risking the whole team to extract them. Bert realized that was a very poor situation to put himself or the team in, and didn't want to eat the 500XP on an already XP-strapped character, so he elected to forego the implants.

Finally, Morgan came to me with his Custom Vehicle Battle Armor Suit. The suit itself wasn't that impressive -- Mimetic armor based off pre-FCCW ComStar tech, but it was enough that if it survived the Case White landings, it would be fieldable and unstoppable to anything other than more battle armor at the RPG level, which would mean I would need to be sure to destroy it during the Case White landing. The problem with Battle Armor is that its pilot survivability is very low -- if I destroyed the suit in the tactical game, Morgan's character's chance of survival would be very low, indeed. Morgan is a veteran player, so I explained this concern to him fairly directly, and that if he ran with this idea, he'd have to be prepared to be rolling up a new character for Session 4. I had no doubt that he might do such a thing, because he historically has run crazy character concepts and shrugged it off if catastrophic things happen to them, but in this case he decided the drop the battle armor in favor of a more traditional and protective JR7-K Jenner.

So these were three very different examples of how I worked with my players during character creation to set their expectations to a certain level, minimize the number of things they brought to the table that would serious interfere with my general plan for the campaign, and got them the plot hooks they want. As a GM I now have a new plot challenge, too: How am I going to give Cameron an opportunity to use his backstory branth skills? Should be an exciting (and potentially hilarious) session.