On Being a (RW) Player

This week I wanted to take a break from my usual series to talk about my experience so far on being a player in another rift master’s (RM) Rift Walker game. In continuing the play test for Rift Walker (RW) I am so privileged to have a group where others want to become the game master and I'm playing in a game at the moment where three of us are playing in their game. I wanted to start with by saying that it's been ages since I've played in a game where it wasn't solo or a GM-less experience. So, a lot of this won’t be new to current ongoing players. But for me it was a good reminder and learning experience. It is great as a play test also! I wanted to talk about my experience below, on a number of topics.

Character Building & Character Play

I have come to enjoy the process of building a character. It was fun to work with the RM to create a fun character that was built into one of their worlds. It encourages creativity as there are prompt questions to help you pick the items for your pool slots. I look forward to finishing my spark tables for different genres as I think this will help other new players because I can tell that it could be quite difficult for people to really dig that deep and come up with creative ideas. I found there is a lot of nuances in a continuing character rather than playing the caricature of an NPC. My character has to grow and develop while also maintaining a semblance of continuity. It is difficult to have flaws that aren't annoying for other characters. Including flaws and forms for the powers of my character that would realistically come up for the RM, but not all the time. It is fun to roleplay the stats of not only my character, but facilitating the stats of other players. We have made a little character journal to keep all their info. This was fun as I got to redesign the character sheet to a number of a5 pages, rather than all on a a4 page. One engages with the game differently. I normally don’t want every scene to be roleplayed out entirely, as I wanted to maintain pacing. I have learned to balance that more, as that is the core way that player interact.

My character is an anthropologist robot named Q69-A4826-E12. His goals how to track his 69 questions that will change the way he thinks about humanity and to one day learn how to be more of a person. He has 4826 different species tracked, and can replicate 12 emotions. As the game is gone on, I've learned and gained new goals. I envisioned him is not really acting in combat in a violent way as he's an anthropologist and focused on protecting life. However, I have sometimes engaged in combat from more of a mechanical standpoint when knowing that the team needed my support. Previous to this he would do the alternative goals for an encounter such as collecting items or capturing photos. However, it does occur to me that rift Walker is built around the idea of having nonviolent combat. This can be achieved through attacking with willpower pools rather than endurance pools. This has led to being more balanced as a character and supporting the other two.

Playstyle

I try to be as engaged as possible, as this is something I always wanted when I was a GM. When leading a game, I find it easier to be more engaged, as I've spent a lot of time and effort in preparing for sessions. I find that playing in a game it can be harder to remain engaged. It is made me think about how I would run games in the future to enable more engagement from players and not have as many lore dumps as maybe I would have had before. None of this is to say that my GM isn't engaging, they are very good at what they do, it's just that as a player you are less a part of the world then as the game master. I have found myself trying to support the story of the RM. Playing out and looking for cues in what they are saying, and how they say it. I used to be confused at how people could be so jokey in a serious moment, but have found myself slipping into that style. I think it is natural to be jovial during the silliness of dramatic tension.

I have also been assisting with rules. At first, I thought I shouldn't assist with rules as I wanted the game to be run in the style of the RM. But as I kept playing, I realised that wasn't entirely useful and it more came down to how I had written my rules that was causing questions. I've since acted as the rules master if asked on by the RM.

As this is not my campaign I will not go into the details of all the sessions that I have played. As it is somebody else’s game I won't go through a campaign recap as I have been prior I'm happy to sit back and be a player. We've played 2 different legends across 5 sessions. Our RM has a different style to me. This is to be expected and encouraged. They take a more exploratory approach to the worlds and allow us to travel to different places within the world's across multiple sessions rather than one world per session at a time. I've really enjoyed playing in this game and seeing the different unique encounter types that they have managed. That creativity and pop culture references are amazing and very inspiring. Even if they haven't been a GM for as long as I have I still feel like it is a way to learn and grow as a GM for any system. Well I've noticed a few minor quibbles between my running style and their running style this is more of a learning moment for myself rather than anything that requires feedback for the GM. On that note they've already asked for feedback on how they should proceed from all of us players. It is a reminder that this is so important to be running the sort of game that everybody likes. I've always thought about that from more of a rules perspective rather than from a story perspective. But clearly I have a lot to learn from them.

Rules and Procedures

I find it interesting to see how I have engaged with the rules differently as an RW as I did as an RM. The focus of the player abilities or what Rift Walker calls role abilities, was built around the idea of having something unique that each player can do to sort of break the rules and present an interesting choice. These abilities would then have a way of continuing to do that outside of the first or second time, at the expense of something else. After playing with this, I've found that sometimes they aren't as interesting as I thought they would be more engaging. It's made me think about how I would actually want the abilities to be in the future. I never wanted them to be paper buttons, as in something that could be pressed to enact. But I've found that a lot of these abilities I just not that interesting a choice to make at the table, or they're the only choice to make it the table as they are more powerful than not using them. Some of them are more niche than I thought they would be, and other times where I was more focused on balance, I forgot about the fun factor so some of them are kind of underwhelming. Seeing the game rules be asked of me as my text editing in my drafts need a lot of work. Our new RM has had to have a lot of questions asked. I am think about how to make the game be more engaging and more interactive. It also makes me think about the phases of the game and the preparation structures. I realise now they re entirely optional. I wanted them to be embedded into the experience, but this RM has shown me I do not need them to be enforced in any way. I want to focus on player choice, and giving interesting options of approach. I thought thinking about the game in phases will be a structure that is required, but our current RM runs things very differently. I would say more like a typical traditional RPG format, rather than a procedural structure.

I will write more as more comes to light, but so far this has been so interesting to uncover these realisations in myself and the game. Thanks as always for reading.