The Culture: Learn This One Trick To Better Wield Agency In Your Game

Okay gang, time to start talking some advanced technique. You want to be #EliteLevel gamers, right?

First, some context. Go back over the recent #RiftsBros threads on Twitter. Pretty gonzo stuff right? While I am not privvy to details, I can say that all of what went down can be played out with a couple of players at the table and some downtime actions between sessions.

That example, by the way, is also how we'll get around Cargo Cult/Theater Kid anklebiting Whataboutism like "What about (insert popular property here) and its trope-heavy stuff?"

Read/Watch Getter Robo. That shit is awesome.

The #EliteLevel way to handle this? I already alluded to it, but this time I'll get more into it.

You Are Not Married Your Character Sheet

You, the player, are not bound to just one character at a time in a campaign. Basic level play already forces this due to the constraints of 1:1 Timekeeping, but now we're going from working around a constraint to exploiting it as a strength.

Provided that plausible acceptability is in place you can have your characters coordinate among themselves (or with those of other players) to achieve bigger effects- you can be Bond, Q, and M.

As Dr. Kabuto, you run the Photon Science Laboratory and continually refine both new technologies (widgets) as well as new capacities (abilities) when not engaged in leadership work. As this character, you do Faction Play and most of your campaign play is downtime actions for Research & Development as well as Intelligence.

As Koji Kabuto, you are the pilot of Mazinger Z and go into action against Dr. Hell and his Henchmen/minions. Your father directs you on what to do, gears you on how to do it, sees that your better-able comrades assist you (mostly your girlfriend), but getting it done is all on you- that's the level of agency you're dealing with.

As Shiro Kabuto, you are a bratty little punk who exists mostly to get into trouble; in play you're a little boy who tends to be overlooked and underestimated so you can go find things and learn stuff that the others will find useful "because then they'll have to take me seriously!", and in that bratty little brother way you try to emulate the heroic brother you have, which translate to you being a sneaky git trying to show up the adults (and mostly failing, needing to be bailed out) but you find all the good stuff (Intelligence) so they have to save you. Your agency is very limited, but because you're easily overlooked and underestimated you punch well above your weight.

That's three different levels of play for one player, whose characters are all plausibly connected, so he doesn't have to sit there being bored when he's at the table. Oh, and should he screw up somehow--say, by getting his pilot man wrecked so hard he's in a coma for All The Days--he can just swap in a new one ("This is Dr. Kabuto's little brother, Tesuya, ready to take over for Great Mazinger, and his girlfriend Jun.") with aplomb.

Having your man be the CO for a military unit, and then controlling key subordinates, is another option. ("Yeah, I play Julius Caesar and Titus Pulio.")

You're getting the idea. You, the player, are not tied to a single playing piece; you can move between them, and you should because sooner or later you must, so since Faction Play is a thing why not build your Faction up organically by rolling up not just one end but all of them?

Hell, given how some products seem to have entire character types who (otherwise) seem impractical to play without this approach, this solves a lot of issues right here; that Rifts Study Control Group guy may be a Downtime Darling, but what he gets done ends up being applied in the field where it filters to a Coalition Kill Team who uses it to put down yet another threat to our beleagured Mankind.

Recitifying Problem Properties

This approach fixes so many problem properties. BattleTech now becomes playable; you play different characters to handle different stages of a military campaign, with the high-end CO as the anchor connecting them.

Likewise with Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, as you easily swap between characters to execute different elements of military or intelligence operations, with top-level command connecting them.

Anything that Cultists usually insist be done using Narrative bullshit is solved under normal wargame play by thinking of yourself as playing your Faction first and its agents (including its leadership) second.

"Wait, what about-"

Yes, including religions. Going up and down the scale ladder like you own it and dance across it like Fred Astair is how you--the player--stay in the game when a specific character would not be able to address that development while retaining (more or less; circumstances will vary on applicability) access to relevant information to act upon.

And in games like RIFTS, where you have Cosmic Horrors who can and do this sort of thing explicitly (Vampire Intelligences), this is not theorhetical- you can and will make practical use of this for your benefit.

And the best part? You don't have to worry about who goes where. That too can, and will, emerge organically- it can even give other players prompts to roll up a man to fill that slot and thus players can organically and emergently create entire organizations out of nothing- memed into existence, like Macho Mandalf and Machodor.

And that? That is beautiful.