Schrodinger’s Salt-Sucker

or: Tabletop roleplaying when real-world meets weird

There’s a very specific problem I am having with a very specific sort of tabletop roleplaying game. At least, I think it’s a problem; it may just be me. Let’s face it, of course it’s just me. But let us assume for the sake of argument that while it is just me, there may be at least one other just me out there who might benefit from the two of us considering the problem.

Here’s my problem: roleplaying characters that don’t believe in weird stuff in a game where weird stuff happens.

Or more specifically (I said it was a very specific sort of problem): playing ‘normal’ characters in their first encounter with weird stuff.

That is to say, playing a regular human being from the (ostensibly completely normal) real world, though not necessarily modern day (in fact, as we will see, much of the very specific problem seems to occur in the 1920s, for reasons some of you will already have anticipated) who in the course of the tabletop roleplaying session will encounter things that are out of the ordinary.

And by out of the ordinary, I am mainly thinking magic, ghosts, monsters and other weirdnesses, particularly stuff which in popular fiction is meant to unnerve or unsettle the characters. The sort of elements that you get in a horror story for example, or a wacky comedy-action film where a bunch of drop-out scientists go around busting ghosts, or where a smartass trucker encounters supernatural trouble in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Example of play – Wail of Wazuzu

Maybe it’s better if I describe a hypothetical gaming session, to illustrate my very specific problem.

A group of friends sits down to play a popular roleplaying game with a horror/investigation slant. Let’s call it Wail of Wazuzu, Wazuzu being an in effable entity of supreme cosmic madness. In Wail of Wazuzu, the friends play ordinary people (probably, but not exclusively, from the 1920s) who are drawn into a story of mystery, death and horror. This is the first session, so the characters that the players create, with the referee’s help, are all ‘ordinary folks’, albeit capable police officers, scientists, reporters and so forth. None of them are psychic wizards or paranormal investigators. In fact, this particular session of Wail of Wazuzu (I want to shorten it to WoW but now realise that that might introduce an element of confusion) is predicated on the fact that the player characters are ordinary folks with no inkling or prior knowledge of strangenesses like monsters, ghosts or cosmic entities, because much of the game’s allure is ‘ordinary meets the extraordinary’.

Thus in the first session of WoW (screw it, I’m going with it), the characters are almost certainly going to encounter something out of the ordinary. A body drained of salt perhaps, or footsteps made by no known animal, or someone claiming to be haunted by the ghost of a 12th century sorcerer. Whatever. The main thing is that the people from the real world are going to be presented, probably at first with hints, of weirdness afoot.

As the game progresses, they will be presented with increasing evidence of weirdness until at some point, they are going to be standing in front of a spectral hound or someone in a robe raising the dead or an invisible lamprey monster attempting to suck out their vital juices. At that point, presumably, the characters will be unable to deny the evidence of their eyes and will have to accept that, to quote an overused quote, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.

And presumably, most of the time, the characters accept that weirdness is now part of their new normal and respond accordingly by sensibly running away, desperately shooting at the weird things or rapidly consulting a dusty old tome in the arcana aisle of their local library for a spell of banishment.

SIDEBAR – Sanity Mechanics

Of course some games, perhaps even Wail of Wazuzu itself, have ways of describing those situations using rules that codify each character’s ability to deal with weird or horrifying encounters. Frequently they use some sort of ‘sanity’ rule in which players roll dice to see if their characters are able to function in the face of this new creature or concept. Sometimes they pass the test and can get on with running away, firing their gun or reading from their spell book. And sometimes they fail, and end up being told that their character has frozen in a catatonic state, started blubbering uncontrollably or has curled up into a ball and started humming to themselves.

Such mechanics are what they are, and serve a valid purpose within the roleplaying games. And I do not have a problem with them as such. My problem is in the roleplaying a character’s attitude to the weird right up to the point where a ‘sanity test’ is such exists in the game, is required. Outright denial, glib acceptance, or a tricky middle ground?

In Limbo

It’s the period between the start of the game and the ‘undeniable weird thing’ that I am struggling with. The period when your supposedly normal character from the normal world is presented with a situation which you the player absolutely knows has a weird supernatural origin – because hey, we’re playing Wail of Wazuzu y’all – but your character is not supposed to know about. Because they’re a real person and they have never heard, dreamt or thought of whatever weirdness is waiting in the wings. Sure, we the players know that we are playing Wail of Wazuzu, ‘the game of paranormal peculiarity’, but our characters in this instance are not seasoned psychic investigators with a few spook-busting cases under their belt.

So I, being a neurotic player who worries about stupid things like this, find myself in an odd position from a purely roleplaying standpoint. Which is, “I know that we are playing a game with spooky monsters in it, in fact I might even suspect which sort of spooky monster it is in this case, but my plucky marine biologist character has no idea that they are in Wail of Wazuzu. As far as they are concerned, that corpse drained of salt is a freak medical condition which they are sure science will be able to explain eventually.

So there is no earthly reason for my character to go off and start reading up on local folklore just in case they might turn up some useful tales of the legendary Salt-Sucker to be found. Furthermore, if any non-player character shows up and claims that this is the work of the Salt-Sucker, there is no good reason for my character to accept their word about such a preposterous notion. Therefore I am going to play this all just like a normal person would up to the point when a dirty great Salt-Sucker actually rears up in front of my character and proceeds to suck of the salt.”

In other words, I think there’s a risk of a strange limbo-like period in games where normal folks encounter the weird for the first time. The period of indeterminate paranormal belief between ‘this is the real normal world with no weird things’ and ‘there are weird things in the world that I accept exist’. Let’s call this period Schrodinger’s Salt-Sucker. Your character has no good reason to go haring off down avenues of investigation that point to weird things, and if you are a fan of Occam’s Razor, then your character would surely cleave to the most rational explanation for as long as is possible, even if this means balking at the referee’s secret wish that you just pick up some holy water and a wooden stake.

From real world to real world + weird

I have played in more than a few games like this, both tabletop and live action (again, frequently set in the 1920s). It is only a problem for your character ‘the first time’. But given the frequently lethal nature of some of these games mortality rates are high, and that turnover of characters means that there are many games of ‘first time investigators meeting the weird’, and many periods of the limbo between ‘real world’ and ‘real world+weird’.

Now, many people will not have encountered this problem in their games, because it is a phenomenon peculiar to the genre of ‘normal meets the weird’. You don’t get this problem in fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons, because the characters knowingly exist in a world of strangeness and magic. You don’t get a party of D&D players struggling to convey their characters’ belief in a werewolves. “A man, who is also a wolf? The very idea!”.

Nor do you get it in sci-fi space games or superhero games or in fact any game where it is generally accepted that the population of that world or setting knows of the weird and accepts that it is a part of their reality.

And even if you do play some sort of ‘investigation into the weird’ game like Wail of Wazuzu, you as players may simply choose to gloss over the limbo-like period of Schrodinger’s Salt-Sucker and get on with the plot. Perhaps it was established, prior to starting the game through discussion with the referee, that your characters already know that the world is bigger and stranger than most people believe. Or perhaps you are simply not neurotic players like me and can’t be arsed to fret over your characters’ internal belief systems and just want to get to the bit where you open up your tommy guns on a bunch of cultists. But for those of us, and again this may simply be me, who do fret over such things, the struggle is real.

SIDEBAR – roleplaying extremes

Of course, like I said this is a very specific problem that not every roleplayer will encounter, because it’s not how they play that sort of game. I’ve been in a few games where players use one or other of the following approaches, which skirt the problem but have their own potential drawbacks:

Total acceptance from the get-go

This player’s character is by default completely down with whatever weirdness the game throws at them and takes it in their stride. There are no moments of shock, disbelief or revelation with this one. They simply take whatever out of the ordinariness the game sends their way and plunge on regardless.

This has the effect of nerfing any potential roleplaying fun the players and referee might get out of playing with the moment, or moments, of ‘ordinary meets the extraordinary’, which might be one of the major attractions of putting the game on in the first place. “Yeah, it’s probably vampires. I’ll get my flamethrower. How do I know it’s vampires? Well, it’s gotta be, hasn’t it?”

Dogged disbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence

This player’s character is the arch-sceptic or rationalist. The Scully to the believer’s Mulder. They continue to find a mundane, grounded explanation for the weird goings-on, whether it’s freak weather phenomena, gas leaks or that old chestnut ‘mass hysteria’.

They can be fun to play at first, and make for fun moments when believer and disbeliever characters clash, but there comes a point when this style of play starts to derail the plot by refusing the call to adventure that the referee has laid before them. “Vampires? Bullshit. You are all clearly delusional so I’m calling the authorities to section the lot of you. And put that flamethrower down.”

Column A, Column B

A little bit of either approach in a game is fine, and can add some interesting roleplaying friction to the character group. But total acceptance denies the game’s sweet moments of disbelief followed by shocking revelation and finally acceptance, whereas dogged disbelief eventually becomes a lead weight around the plot’s neck, slowing it all down unless and until everyone gets on board.

The challenge that I am struggling to illustrate here is one of roleplaying a character that sits between these two extremes, and knowing how to satisfyingly pace their journey from disbelief to acceptance.

Getting Round The Problem

Now, I love a good investigation game, and I love ‘real people encounter the weird’, so how can we make it so that I do not have this problem in the future? Here’s a few thoughts, some for players, some for referees and some for both.

Player – play a character with experience of the weird

Games like Monster of the Week have this concept baked into their system, so that even if you are playing a one-shot session sending your team of ‘new’ characters to investigate disappearances from a charming Scottish town, the mounting evidence that a family of medusae are behind it all (actual example, copyright G. MacLachlan) should not be beyond the characters’ credibility, even within the confines of the game’s real-world setting.

You are playing experienced monster hunters. Monsters are real. You may not know exactly which monster this is, but you are able to conceive of the possibility that it is something out of the ordinary. Although see the sidebar on roleplaying extremes for possible drawbacks with this approach.

Player – play a character with an innate acceptance of the weird

They may not ever have encountered monsters before, but they are going to be just fine when they realise that strange things are afoot. Perhaps they are ‘a bit psychic’ or have a belief system that already encompasses people returning from the dead, having encounters with aliens or simply believe the Bigfoot footage.

For whatever reason, they are not going to blink much at the concept of strangeness, and thus they will be able to instantly circumvent the belief/disbelief limbo and get on with the adventure. Again though, see the sidebar on Roleplaying Extremes for possible drawbacks with this approach.

Referee – get through the limbo period of disbelief/belief as quickly as possible

One way is for the referee to confront the players with undeniable evidence early on, but this runs the risk of undermining any mounting mystery that you might want in an investigation game. In a sense, this is what the film Ghostbusters does with a great deal of success. They have an early encounter in a library with a ghost, which is followed by the three ‘player characters’ effectively saying to each other “OK then, as some of us suspected, ghosts are real. Now let’s get on with the adventure of busting them.”

There is still plenty to investigate (and terrifying challenges for their characters to encounter), but the basic premise of ‘ghosts are real’ is a hurdle that has been neatly negotiated very early on.

Referee and Players – give the characters drives to fast-track their ‘road to belief’

The characters all start off as real-world people with real world beliefs, but it is agreed by the referee and players that all the characters will have good personal reasons for moving steadily through the limbo of disbelief to belief, and in turn towards the plot, not away from it. It helps if your characters are built with core motivations which propel them toward both the adventure as a whole and the acceptance of weirdness specifically.

Games like Trail of Cthulhu have this concept baked in with their Drive characterisation, although some drives, like Bad Luck and Arrogance are a little weak in this regard. Drives like Curiosity, Thirst For Knowledge and In The Blood – essentially ‘weirdness investigation runs in the family’ – are all excellent for reminding players to drive their characters toward the weirdness, not to ignore it.

Referee – have a The World Is Stranger Than You Think scene

Movies have these all the time, as do the pilot episodes of supernatural TV shows. Effectively the main (player) characters are gathered round and given a little talk by an authority on the subject of the weird, who – and this is crucial – is someone the players have agreed that their characters respect and thus cannot dismiss out of hand. It might be Egg Shen telling Jack Burton about an immortal ghost sorcerer, or Nick Fury presenting a slide show of documented gods and monsters, or Rupert Giles flipping through a history book of slayers and vampires.

The players have agreed to respect the authority figure in this instance, which allows them (through the referee) to ease their characters collectively from belief to disbelief in a single, managed scene. This still allows for some great roleplaying of the “Wait, so you’re saying this shit is real?” variety, but then positions all the characters on more or less the same page and allows everyone to get on with the adventure in hand.

Referee and Players – play a ‘genreless’ game system

One of the very particular features of this very specific problem is that you the player know that you are playing Wail of Wazuzu, while your character does not. By using a genre-free game system, perhaps one cooked up by the referee, you avoid any expectations of weirdness, because the players do not know that they are going to be playing in a horror game, until the actual horror hops up and starts sucking out their salt.

I myself have run and played several one-off tabletop games like this, using a home-brewed variant of the old Marvel Super Heroes system. Each session had a bland title, if any at all, like ‘The Hawaiian Storm Game’ which did not give any indication if the players should expect to encounter horror, magic, time travel or robots (though in that particular instance there turned out to be all of them. Plus the Highlander). Thus their characters were free to react however their players wanted them to react, with no expectations that they should jolly well get on with accepting the weird and break out the flamethrowers, because in this sort of game, the meta-game of discovering the genre is as much fun as the in-game plot and their characters’ individual roads to belief in whatever brand of weirdness that particular game presented them with.

It is also total legit to use this genreless approach to run a perfectly mundane game with no weirdness elements, which can be fun for wrong-footing players who have fallen into the habit of ‘it’s always vampires’. Playing a Scooby Doo-like game where the monster really does turn out to be old man Higgins in a rubber Dracula mask can be just as fun, especially when the characters have taken refuge in a church and the supposed ‘vampire’ just waltzes right in.

In Conclusion

Have I managed to get my very specific problem across? Have I over-thought it? Does the problem actually exist outside of my head? Perhaps you have encountered this problem and have some ideas of your own. Let me know.

Module G4 - Mock-Tudor Coaching Inn of the Stone Giant Voivode

Many years ago, my cynical roleplaying friends and I came up with Roleplayer!, a character-generation system for people who wanted to roleplay roleplayers. If that makes sense. These days you would say we were being very 'meta'. Back then we were just snarky wise-asses who sneered at everyone who played games but us. I think the system may have made it onto the boards of Something Awful, but other, memorier people would have to confirm that. If it turns up, I'll repost it here.

Anyway, whilst digging around the deep and dusty recesses of the Pouch this morning (failing to find a long-lost John Buscema sketch of Mephisto, since you're asking), I came across the following, which is an outgrowth of our earlier efforts to lampoon our fellow gamers.

This then is the Younger Ocelot's sarky snapshot of tabletop roleplaying archetypes, circa 2003. Apologies for any offence caused, though my younger, snidier self would counter that offence was actually very much the intent. The scamp.

Ref Archetypes

I'm a Storyteller - I facilitate a shared storytelling experience that I like to call Consensual Fictioneering. I don't like dice or systems. My stories involve death, unrequited love and childhood trauma. Characters in my games are likely to be pale and wear a lot of black leather. Total immersion role-playing is encouraged, with a full-fledged screaming argument in-character representing the summit of my storytelling aspirations. I run these games at conventions to meet girls.

I'm an Old Time Dungeon Master - I only run classic D&D type games. Squared paper and multi-faceted polyhedra are my tools. On the wrong side of 30, I often casually namedrop playing Gary Gygax's original Chainmail game in 1974 at the age of 6. There are mouldering piles of ancient TSR, Avalon Hill and Flying Buffalo products lurking in the corners of my forbidding flat. Peckforton Castle, Bedbug Island and Ballastor's Barracks are Names of Great Power for me. I can remember Dave Langford's first book review column. Games run by me revolve around underground complexes randomly populated by 2d6 Orcs playing dice in sealed rooms with no food or water. My greatest thrill is rolling "20 - DM's choice" on the Wandering Monster table.

I’m a Keeper - I run games that no-one else plays anymore. I insist that they're really good, but have to admit that the others only play them because they can't be bothered to run anything themselves.

I'm the NPC King. I have an enormous repertoire of richly developed supporting characters for my players to encounter. Each has their very own voice and probably facial tics too. I enjoy showing off my favourites to the players, and making sure they realise how great I think my creations are. Plot and player actions are secondary to me exercising my vast array of cameo appearances. I like to base my characters on obscure walk-on parts from movies and TV shows that nobody likes or remembers.

I'm the Background King. Similar to the NPC King, I have developed a fully fleshed out campaign setting. Every house and shop in town is mapped and described in painstaking details, from the number of sacks of grain in the feed store to the inscriptions on each cemetery headstone. I like the players to wander around the setting I have created, hoping they will stumble across a thinly thought-out adventure hook, or more likely, get bored and make one up themselves (this often involves a bar-room brawl and a fascinating tour of the local incarceration facilities).

I'm the Plot King. I've designed a fantastically convoluted storyline for the players to utterly ruin when they kill the vital contact or call in the police instead of investigating it themselves. I will break down mid-session and sulkily declare that it's all ruined. One of the players will attempt to mollify me by pointing out it's a great story, just not a great game.

I'm a Railroader. Related to the Plot King, I too have a great story to tell, but unlike my weaker cousin, I have the strength to bend the players to my will. Through a series of scene shifts, deadly curses, in-game coercions and other deus ex machinae, I will subtly and not-so subtly ensure that the pitiful pawns who play my game end up exactly where I want them. Too late, they will realise they have boarded the Plot Express, bound for a pre-determined outcome, with no stops en route.

Player Archetypes

I'm a Pet-Lover. I insisted during character creation that I would be accompanied by a faithful wardog, talking parrot or smartest-horse-in-the-movies. Whilst this will initially work within the first adventure, both the ref and the other players will eventually become annoyed by my abuse of this animal sidekick as a telepathic human-smart extra pair of hands to gain unfair advantages. The pet will be unceremoniously eaten by a troll soon after, leaving my character strangely ineffectual.

I'm a Driver. Like the Pet-Lover, I insisted on a sleek and unique vehicle during character creation, such as Nightboat the crime-solving boat or KIMM the sexy superbike. This soon proves to be a mistake as the campaign moves the players away from the original coastal/riverside/fjord environment to a desert. The hapless wonder-machine is either mothballed indefinitely or suffers a modern fate not unlike the troll/pet incident.

I'm an Adult Newbie. A frustrated real-life hooligan, I have accidentally fallen in with a crowd of role players who are subtly attempting to reform me. Their efforts fall at the first hurdle when I inevitably create a warrior character with a Really Big Gun/Sword. I further exhibit my caveman roots by instantly falling upon the first female NPC we encounter and engaging in graphic grown-up naughtiness quite at odds with the game atmosphere. The other roleplayers laugh nervously at this but do nothing to curb my manly ways, as they are a bit scared of me.

I'm a Rules-Boy. I know the system forwards and backwards. I've read all the supplements and expansions available and pride myself on calculating other players' To Hit numbers without leaning over to look at the sheets. My crowning achievement is pointing out a loop or logic flaw in one of the Ref's own house-rules and hoisting them on their own petard (which hits for 4d10 explosive damage, no armour save). I will eventually be brought low by over-reaching myself during an extended bout of rule-lawyering and find myself roundly humiliated by a ref who has actually read the rules.

I'm a Distraction. My task is to ensure that no period of pure role-playing lasts longer than 5 minutes before I drag it off course with an off-topic remark. Last night's TV, reality shows in general and past games are popular subjects of mine. My weapons are double-entendres, catchphrases from Vic and Bob and Blackadder quotations*. The ref will good-naturedly endure my constant interruptions as the price they pay for having me on board. Besides, it is likely that I will have mesmerised the ref along with everyone else at this point, with my banal flow of Fast Show** impressions, mid-dungeon. The only cure for me is an enforced sentence as a ref myself, wherein I will be faced with an entire group of distractions of my own to deal with.

* I am obviously fairly old.
** See above.

I'm a Symbiote. I lack the self-confidence to roleplay independently, so I habitually attach my character to someone else's. I regularly play partners, brothers, deputies or co-pilots of existing, stronger personalities. I am characterised by a lack of originality, often pinching character names from comics, TV or movies.  At some point, my roleplaying 'host' will fail to turn up for a gaming session and I will be left stranded without a guiding intellect. I will eventually bond to a new host in the party, regardless of any in-game incompatibilities (such as a vampire/paladin partnership), and will continue to ride them like the bone-idle wretch I am.

I'm a Swashbuckler. Like many other players, I live for the combat. But where many of them are interested in Causing Massive Damage with Really Big Guns, I enjoy the cut-and thrust of the fight itself. A simple To Hit roll will not satisfy me until I have graphically explained my complex series of actions - each round of my character's combat will be described in fine detail; whirling, leaping, parrying and slashing. I am a fan of Errol Flynn, Oliver Reed as D'Artagnan and Jackie Chan. I'm probably a member of the Sealed Knot, and may well harp on about my 10-week fencing course back at sixth-form college.

I'm a Girl. I've been roped into playing tabletop games by my boyfriend, in the hope of seeing him more often. I was hoping to play Storyteller games that didn't involve vast amounts of number-crunching and critical hit tables, but so far this has proven fruitless. I tend to get shouted down by the boys, who at least have the good grace to get embarrassed by their interactions with female NPCs, now that I'm around. I don't play superhero games.

I'm a Closet Gamer. My artfully compartmentalised life has been arranged so that my beer and footie mates never meet my games and comics mates. The potential shame and social stigma of being outed is not quite great enough to force me to kick my dirty little habit. I am however sufficiently self-conscious during games sessions to never actually roleplay, contenting myself to describe my character's actions perpetually in the third person, and never engaging in in-character dialogue. I never play verbally oriented characters and would probably spontaneously combust if forced to roleplay some form of social interaction with an NPC.

I'm a Glove Puppet. I kid myself that I'm something of a problem solver or detective, suiting me amply to investigative games. In the past I have stumbled onto the ref's plot quite by accident and amazed my fellow role-players. By now I am hopelessly convinced on the rightness of my instincts, and regularly claim to have 'got it sussed' at some point during a game's first session. The ref has by now figured out my pet 'theories', often based on my favourite X-Files episodes (regardless of game genre), and is now cunningly working me like a sock toy. Blithely unaware of this sly manipulation, I am leading the rest of the group down a plot route of the ref's choosing. I am the secret weapon of the Railroading Ref.

I'm a MinMaxer. I studied the character generation rules at length, in order to squeeze the maximum benefit and minimum penalty from the system. I have located one or two rule loops that give me a game-destroyingly massive advantage in a crucial element, like combat or spell-casting, making me the Best Sniper/Ninja/Hacker In The World. The ref will gnash and grind his teeth at my impudence, but will be held at bay by my mantra of "It's all in the rules". Attempts to impose house-rules to curb my excesses will result in high-pitched whines and angry glares across the gaming table. My character will almost certainly be killed in a specially designed scenario to rid the gaming world of my disruptive presence.

I'm a Jack-Of-All-Trades. I managed to spread my starting character skills thinner than butter on hot toast, resulting in more skills than there are slots on the character sheet. I have the bare minimum rank in each, but this is still enough to make me the busiest character in the game. My character is thus defined not by what they can do (as they can do everything), but how they do it. The other players secretly hate and resent me, spending most of the level advances in getting skills better than mine. They have foolishly failed to realise that the game system makes in-game skills purchased much more expensive than starting skills, and thus they will never match me. They will eventually bludgeon me to death with mini-doughnuts and other role-playing comestibles.

I'm a Frustrated Actor. Handicapped by a grotesque physical appearance or dubious personal habits, my thespian leanings have been instead channelled into tabletop gaming. I insist on role-playing every encounter in-character, replete with appropriate accents, speech patterns and oaths. Less-confident refs can be intimidated by my Lee Strasberg approach to roleplaying, and start to stumble over their own NPC dialogue. I will often win tournament games at conventions, if an attractive female gamer is not around to win.

I'm a Collector. I have countless sets of out-of-date games systems displayed proudly on shelves in my bedroom. I have ferreted around the wild and lawless fringes of eBay, seeking to complete my Dragon Warriors book set. I have the rare AD&D module G4 - Mock-Tudor Coaching Inn of the Stone Giant Voivode, and several leather bound volumes of White Dwarf - the Glory Years. The rest of my time is spent purchasing collectable card game booster packs, in my quest to Own Every Card Ever. I am quite poor.