Think about your RPG games for a moment. Is any player character the ‘group leader’? Did they get that way by accident or design? Was it a struggle? Are they good at it? Did the game decide one PC need to be handed that role? Has it been fun for them?
I ask these questions largely because if there’s one thing I have seen more conflict, confusion and player discomfort about in RPG games, it’s about who is in charge of decision making.
It’s also not always obvious that this is going to be a problem right away. It can creep into a game slowly, like a leaking pipe, and before you know it, your game is drowning in a pressure cooker of politics you never wanted. And this is just my games, where most players I play with aren’t really very competitive. So, I thought I’d talk about why we need to think about how the leadership question arises in games, what can go wrong and how we can be aware of it.
How It Happens
To some extent, roleplaying games are about making decisions.
Sometimes, that is as individuals, but more often than not, it is as a group. So often a group dynamic needs to be found to make those decisions. In some games and groups, this falls into a natural democratic system of ‘we discuss options, make cases, find problems and eventually work out what to do.’, but in some groups, this natural step doesn’t happen because either someone is more forceful or charismatic than other people in the group. Sometimes, a natural leader is unconsciously selected, and sometimes, someone puts themselves in that space.
This is just humans doing the human thing, it can’t be helped. We have this thing where we all have a place we find the easiest to fit into a process. Often, conflict arises when two people feel like they are good at the same role.
Also, while some games (D&D, for example) are about a group with similar in-game relations to each other, who often let the person with the most active experience in a field take the lead at any given time, some games come with a hierarchical structure baked in. Any game with a military or agency set up will have this. Someone is the commanding officer or super-team leader. Even if it is not a PC, the commanding officer is going to want to know who made what decisions when things went south.
Games like Werewolf: The Apocalypse and any old Vampire games themed around the Sabbat have pack structures and social roles that need to be filled. In those games, the social dynamics are often part of the theme of the game. Suddenly who is in charge not only counts for something but comes with strings and mechanics attached. The question of ‘Who is in charge?’ also comes with ‘Does the person who in charge actually want to be?’ and ‘who wants to be, but isn’t?’. And here is where inter-player relations have to be handled carefully.
Power Struggles
When two people both see their characters as the leader of the group, this can really be a problem; often, this can lead to open conflict about ideas. But in some ways the open conflict can be easier to deal with: an open and obvious power conflict between players is easy to resolve. It involves taking those two players aside out of character, discussing the conflict with them, and seeing if they can find a way through. But often, the conflict comes out in a different way. When one player is put in charge and makes decisions, things can go wrong or badly. This is a roleplaying game, often consequences for any decision is going to be the most dramatic thing. It means while victories can be sweet, the price of a misstep is always going to feel like you messed up.
So often, a leadership position in an RPG can be a thankless task. It’s one of the reasons I like the depiction of Iron Man in the Marvel movies where he is suffering from the stress of leadership and the traumas he has faced – because I’ve seen players in superhero games struggle with that pressure. Living in a superhero universe in real life would be so stressful.
This factor worsens if someone in the group also disagrees with how the leader does things. Then, the leader starts feeling that the ‘bad stuff is their fault’ is reinforced. And this is difficult for a player to separate from themselves because while their character made the choices, so did the player. So, any accusation hits a player as much as a character. It can manifest not just in open conflict but sideswipes and commentary by rebellious or disaffected players who are innocently seeing only the drama and fun of the scene but are unaware of the leader player’s suffering.
Often, it can also manifest in the player who has the problem instead of almost forcing someone else to be in charge because somewhere, they subconsciously know the leadership position is hard, and while they don’t like the leader’s choices, they don’t think they are the person to lead either.
This feels more noble to a player but often drags another third player into a conflict, muddying the water further. Before you know it, you have a new leader who didn’t want it, a player who used to be in charge who now feels worthless and stupid, and the dissenter soon finds nothing has changed for the better. Your option here is difficult – what do you do?
Well, there are two options I often try. The first is to give a leader a scene or moment to themselves with a party they trust who can talk to them about the weight of command. This humanises the conflict and allows all players to see the person inside the character in charge. They aren’t perfect, but they are doing their best. This can sometimes be enough for dissenters to realise, ‘OH! This is the character, not just infuriating player choices’.
The second option is a bit more mean-spirited and requires flexibility. And that is to continually side with the leaders choice narratively for a while. Make it so the choices made by the leader turn out for the best despite any dissenting voices well made points. This sometimes requires you to re-jig entire story beats on the fly and should only be used when you know a leader is genuinely a good fit for the group. There’s nothing wrong with letting a stressed player get a few hits in the win column. We are here to have fun, after all.
I hope that this begins to outline how a power structure can be problematic in games. As this column has largely looked at conflict resolutions that assumed the best of the leader and keeps the status quo, in the next column, I’m going to flip the structure and look at what happens when someone rises to the top who you know isn’t a good fit for the group and what to do under that auspice. See you there!
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