ADVOCACY NARRATIVISM

PART TWO: INTERESTS

ZOOMING IN

So interests is the catch all term for the goals/motivations/habits of a character. These can include specific things (look after the well being of my family), more vague things (burning with anger), things that may be negative from the players perspective but not the characters (doesn’t care about human life) (alcoholic). Rather than try and create a taxonomy, I’m leaving what constitutes interests as a little fuzzy. In general though, they are things that leads to action. When a CHARACTER is in a SITUATION they pursue their INTERESTS.

Explicit interests: We call an interest Explicit if it’s written as such on a character sheet. Examples are the ‘beliefs’ in Burning Wheel. ‘Best interests’ in IAWA. This also covers, Traits, flaws, personality types and so on in any number of games. If it’s written down, it’s explicit.

Implicit interests: Are all the expected interests that come with being a character in a certain type of fictional situation. If you’re human you probably want, at minimum, to sleep, eat, defecate, be out of the cold and away from harm. There’s lots of things we assume that a type of character must want by virtue of being that type of character. These set of assumptions constitute the implicit interests.

Conflicting interests: The characters interests probably follow some sort of hierarchy. You might care about keeping clean, less so when a bear is chasing you and you need to run through a sewer. Often the SITUATION will put various interests of a character into conflict. As always, the player must then choose based on ACT which decision they will make. Various interests will move up or down the hierarchy dependent upon the SITUATION and ACT.

If we put conflicting interests into the circle we get.

Betrand, the Knight, has just been ordered to burn down a village.

There’s something off about this though.

VALUES, MOTIVATIONS, FEELINGS, AND CONSEQUENCE

Interests, devoid of context, aren’t very interesting. (I’m still very clever).

The player playing Bertrand is faced with this choice and, so what? Where’s the drama?

Interests need to represent the values of a character and within the play sequence, consequence must be attached to feelings.

Values, or how valuable a thing is, lie behind the concrete expression of an interest.

Compare the following;

Betrand (follow the Kings orders – value > Honour, a knight always obeys his lord), (protect the innocent – value > Empathy, humans just shouldn’t slaughter undeserving humans)

Betrand (follow the Kings orders – value > Expediency, Betrand agrees with the King that slaughtering the innocents will terrify their foes) (protect the innocent – value > A knight has vows to uphold, once has has sworn a vow, he should never break it)

Motivations are the nested reasons behind certain interests.

Sue wants the idol, the idol will allow her to perform a ritual, that will make her a death god. When she’s A death god, no one will laugh at her again.

So the interest of, not wanting to be laughed at, finds expression in the concrete goal of becoming a death god. (will it work, we don’t know, we play to find out).

Feelings occur alongside, in conflict with, and as a result of interests. During a situation, you choose what your character is feeling using ACT. During a consequence phase you choose what your character is feeling using ACT.

Example:

Bob is in the office at night, working a murder case. The crime scene pictures get to him and he responds by having a drink, or two. He drinks himself stupid and falls unconscious. Upon awakening he is plagued by self-recrimination. Time for a drink.

Bob (CHARACTER) looking at crime scene pictures (SITUATION) finds it too much (ACT) Decides to drink (ACT) drinks (ACTION) falls unconscious (CONSEQUENCE). Bob (CHARACTER) wakes up having failed to work on the crime (SITUATION) feels guilty (ACT) decides to drink (ACT)…

Note how the first ACT (deciding what to feel) changes the situation that the second ACT occurs in. Bob finding it too much or Bob feeling guilty.

ZOOMING OUT

I doubt anyone actually lists all the interests in play within a character. In fact you can have no explicit interests written down and still have an idea of who your character is and what their interests are. Although this brings up a certain issue. How does any other player (including the GM) have any idea what your interests are?

The two most common ways of revealing interest are a combination of explicit written interests and interests revealed early in play.

As play starts we begin to see all the implicit and explicit interests of a character come alive through actions taken (and potentially players describing mind states and the motivations behind character actions).

This feeds into making us curious about the character (we have questions), and making the character real (someone who we can advocate for).

And to reiterate one last time. It isn’t necessary to have any of the questions of play, or the characters interests, actually be explicit. We can infer a lot through action without ever making statements like ‘my character values his family.’