The Secret Ingredient

Over on Shining Dodecahedron, Jay Loomis [[http://bigd12.blogspot.com/2005/08/poll-time-your-best-games.html|asks us]] to find the "secret ingredient" to our best games.

Jay's secret ingredient is engagement... everybody's focused and involved, with little non-game chatter.

I'm tempted to say that this isn't a secret ingredient, but evidence that the secret ingredient is present. Engagement isn't a cause, it's an effect... the players will be engaged when the right elements are present in the game to hold their interests. But what secret ingredient creates that kind of engagement?

Looking back on my favorite game sessions and campaigns, from both sides of the GM's screen, I'd say my secret ingredient is great characters.

As a player, my absolute favorite campaign was CHROME, "comic book" world in which all the superpowers were cybernetic. I played the MarkS-MAN (Mark S Mechanically-Aided Normal), a walking weapons platform with a computer replacing half of his brain. While he could kick butt in combat, it wasn't the combat that defined the game for me.

It was MarkS-MAN's relationships, self-doubt, and doubt in his "creators" that really drove my enjoyment of the campaign. He was afraid that his creator/employer had planted hidden programming and maybe even false memories in his head. He was afraid that his wife wasn't really his wife, but an agent planted to keep him under control, all of his "memories" of her supplied by the computer in his head.

His best friend, one of the field support agents, nearly died while saving his life. Then that friend was suspected of being something other than he led people to believe. Later, that friend, in an apparent betrayal, shot MarkS-MAN in the head with an armor-piercing round. It turned out he did it to protect him and his own cover as a double-agent, knowing that MarkS-MAN would survive having the computer half of his brain destroyed.

To me, MarkS-MAN and his complicated relationships were what defined the campaign. It defines a lot of my attitudes toward PC death... I'm not sure I could have played in CHROME with any other character. It would be like killing off Buffy and replacing her with a stranger. Yeah, you could do it, but it wouldn't be the same.

That's the kind of thing that really drives me as a player, but I find it's hard to give players that kind of experience. They have to create a great character, I can't force it upon them. Sometimes I think some of my players get annoyed at my probing into their characters backgrounds, private lives, thoughts and values... but to me, those are the things I, as GM, feel I need to know in order to create situations and NPCs to interact with them that will bring out the "greatness" in their characters.