Dave's Player Pavilion: How to be a good Player

Hey folks, I'm Dave (Watcher on the forums), Johnny/Eoin's player. I've not used the blog a ton, due to not being an amazing ST like Telgar, or ungodly knowledgeable about one of the Pantheons like Griff is. But, I'm bored, so I'm writing this. Maybe I'll do more of these about other player based stuff.

Something that gets a lot of airtime on the net is how to be a good Storyteller, but something that I have seen far more often than I have seen bad Storytellers, Dungeon Masters, and so on, is bad players. So, what I am going to try to do here is explain how to be a good player. Or, at least, not a bad one.

The one thing that a good player does is this: they put in the effort. Put in as much effort to your character as the ST is putting into the game. If you are not doing this, you have to ask yourself why the ST should bother making the game fun for you if you are doing nothing to make it fun for them.

How can you do this? Well, there are many ways.

Firstly, if your character has a high ranking in one of the knowledge Abilities, such as Academics, Occult, and Science, you need to try to at least learn enough about it to fake the same level of knowledge as your character. How do you do this? You use whatever resources you have on hand. For everyone reading this, the obvious source should be Wikipedia. Although, if you have access to a library, or some books on your subject, I will say that those are better.

Secondly, speak to the other players. Talk to them about the game, and their character. Ask them about some of your character's ideas and plans, and give them OOC heads up to some different things you are planning to do.

Thirdly, if you are a character with high Epic Manipulation, or Epic Wits, or Epic Intelligence, you are going to have to put in some effort because of that.

• Epic Manipulation characters need to show their skills. To do this, work with your ST in private, through Private Messages on a chat program during play to use your Epic. And you should also work with your Storyteller to have large plans or tricks come into play as well.
• Epic Wits characters need to be able to think on their feet faster than any human possibly could. How do you do this? You have two options. One, ask for breaks in game to sit and think. Two, when sessions end, start thinking of what could happen, and how to react to that. When the Storyteller starts a Side Scene and you have an idea of what it is, start thinking during setup and all through the scene.
• Epic Intelligence characters are like ones with high knowledge Abilities. You need to have a browser window open and fire every piece of information that comes up into that and read information on it as quickly as you can.

Fourth, put in some extra work on your character sheet. Keep that shit orderly and nice looking. Get pictures for your Birthrights, get pictures for your Character, give some misc notes on them, explain how they express each of their Virtues, and make a list of NPCs and PCs and what your character thinks of them.

Asides from putting more effort in, there are also some general rules of etiquette that players should follow. 

First rule of game etiquette: don't complain when other people can do things better than you can. Are you playing a subtle Manipulation character? Don't get mad when it is brought up that theoretically the brutal monster of a Physical character could smoke him in a second. And especially don't start complaining that they are overpowered just because they can kill you. Even more, don't start tying to do what they can do just to be better than it then they are.

Second rule of game etiquette: work with Epic Socials. Epic Socials are a very different beast than the Epic Physicals, and the Epic Mentals. Epic Socials rely on other people playing along OOC to make your experience investment worth it. Ignoring someone's Epic Socials are equivalent to refusing to be hurt by the Physical Character, refusing to tell the Epic Perception character things yours is hiding, or not telling the Epic Intelligence Player a piece of information they should know, but don't off the top of their head because they are just human and can't know as much as their character should be able to.

I know this can suck. But, you need to go along with it. Is Kernunnos being a dick and not telling you things? Is it rather evident he is just keeping you around to use you? Too bad, he's Kernunnos and is clearly doing everything for the right reasons. Is Baldur accidentally being creepy? Too bad, it's Baldur, you love him. Did Aphrodite just walk past? You best be staring. Does the ST tell you OOC that you have to do this because Coyote has decided to start fucking with you? If you don't, you are cheating, that's the long and short of it.

Now, the obvious thing I can understand is the problem of Epic Appearance. Positive Epic Appearance at least. I can understand being uncomfortable having to play along with someone who has Positive Epic Appearance. Now, if you have a problem with this, which all Epic Appearance players should understand (if not, they need to shut up and have their Epic App rights taken away), go to them and let them know your problem, and they should just nod and agree to avoid bringing it up. But please don't not talk to the Epic Appearance Player and just ignore the fact that on a 1-10 scale, your Bandmate is a 136. (This handy calculation can be done by taking your Appearance Dots, and adding two times the number of Auto Successes you have).

For the other two Epic Socials, Epic Manipulation and Epic Charisma, work with the other Player to figure out how their high levels of Epics should be effecting your character.

That's about it for being a good player. I realize I need to make one of these for making good characters now. I guess that will be up tomorrow.