PC Logs

[Greg Davis]

Here's something interesting that my group had never really tried until recently, and I thought I'd mention it to the rest of you all.

In my group, which consists of my character (the Chief Engineer), another PC (the Executive Officer) and the final PC (the Chief Medical Officer), we've started presenting the option of writing log entries, ala the various Trek series, to try and add more flavor to our campaign. For each sessions log entry (or entries, if necessary), we award anywhere from 1 to 3 experience points, based on the way the log is written, whether or not the player has attempted to use meta-game knowledge in the log, how well the player has remembered the events of the gaming session, how well the log is written "in character", and so on. For instance, here is a log entry from tonight's session. For sake of background, the campaign is set is 2379, and the Federation is at war with the Romulans. Additionally, the Romulans are at war with the Klingons, and the Klingons have been invaded by the Borg, via a wormhole in the Klingon Empire, which our crew is going to investigate.

Our ship, the newly commissioned USS Sentinel, is a new class of ship (the Sentinel class). Our Captain is Chakotay, from Voyager, and our Ops Manager and 2nd Officer is Annika Hansen (the former Seven of Nine), who has the rank of Commander. The XO, who is a PC (as mentioned above), is Commander Gabriel "Gabe" Archer, who happens to be my characters best friend. My character, by the way, is Commander Thomas J. Jackson.

Be warned, though, that there are elements of the log which may seem controversial (such as the Borg ship), but it's part of our campaign, and we're having fun, so please, no flames!

Here's an excerpt from my characters log entry for the session:

__________________________________________________

Chief Engineers log, Stardate 56346.35 – We’ve been patrolling the former RNZ for about six weeks now, and haven’t really seen any action, which I’m not complaining about. I have just returned from a senior staff meeting, where Captain Chakotay told us that we were headed to Klingon space, to render whatever assistance we can. Apparently, things have gotten far worse for them, and judging by the sensor footage that Gabe showed me today, I can’t help but think that it’s going to get far, far worse. The video of the Borg colony ship was some of the most terrifying video footage that I’ve ever seen. I can’t really imagine even facing a Borg ship that’s over 7 miles in length. Hell, it’s so large, it makes standard Borg cubes seem insignificant. I’ve shown the footage to my staff, and I’ve got them brainstorming about it. I know that some of them have prior experience with the Borg, either through study or through practical experience. No one that I know of, though, including Commander Hansen, has ever seen or heard about a Borg ship this large. I’m expected to coordinate with Gabe, and the chief science officer, to see if we can come up with some sort of strategy for dealing with such a threat, but at this point, I have to admit to feeling a little overwhelmed. I don’t know much about the Borg, other than the basics that they teach you at the Academy and the little bits and pieces that I’ve picked up along the way, but I’m going to see if Commander Hansen would be willing to further my, and my teams, knowledge about both Borg ships and Borg technology.

Honestly, I’d really hoped to go my entire career without ever really dealing with the Borg. The Dominion was bad enough, and the Romulans have essentially been a constant thorn in the side of the Federation, but at least those two governments could be negotiated with. There is, however, no negotiation with the Borg. To survive them, we’ll have to destroy them, and that’s a prospect that I’m not overly looking forward to. Oh well, though…as Gabe often reminds me, “When we put on the uniform, we have to be willing to take risks.” It seems, though, that stopping the Borg, once and for all, may be the greatest risk that Starfleet, and the Federation, may ever take.

_________________________________________________

There it is...and I hope you all enjoyed it!

My point to this thread, though, is to ask: does anyone else do this with their groups? Do you award experience for log entries?

In my group, we don't expect log entries for every day of the characters life, but rather a "highlight" log entry for each session, or in the case of tonights session, which lasted for 12 hours (hey, what can I say, we're EXTREME gamers! ), I made several log entries. We, as a group, do this for a few reasons, none of which have to do with experience.

Firstly, it makes an excellent roleplaying aid. Imagine if a character is placed on trial, as Kirk was in Star Trek VI, and his or her personal log is used against him. Also, what if a player forgets an important bit of information from a previous adventure? Well, fortunately he has his log handy, and can look at it...but did he remember to mention that crucial bit of info? It can eventually become something pretty useful to both players and Narrators, alike.

Secondly, it allows the players to further "get into character". I find that, when I write my log, I begin to really think like my character. I don't always agree with the decisions that I make for him, but I make those decisions because it's what I think he would do.

Finally, it really enhances the entire Trek experience. For instance, I was watching the episode "Data's Day" today, and noted the instances in the episode where he would mentally composes parts of a message that he was going to send to someone. In a lot of ways, it seemed like a personal log entry, and it really made me think that, if you didn't know a lot about Data, watching that one episode might help you to understand him more.

I'm starting to ramble on here, but, again, I'm interested to know what the rest of you think about the idea of PC logs.



Greg

[The Highlander]

Damn, that is a great idea!

That should get players a little more involved in the makeup and background flavor of the game. . .

A tip of the hat t'you. . . you won't be too offended if I steal this idea and use it on my group, would you?

[Greg Davis]

Me, offended?

How could I, a frequent poster on these boards, ever feel offended?

Seriously, though, I posted this clip of a log entry and mentioned it because I think it is a good idea, and I thought that it would be a good contribution to make, for everyone to use, if they see fit.

Frankly, the fact that someone likes it, and is going to "steal" it makes me glad that I took the time to type it all up.

Steal away, and have fun with it!

Oh, by the way, if you require more inspiration, I can always post more log entries...I've got several pages of them handy. Heck, if nothing else, it'll fill you in on the plot of our campaign (at least what's happened after we left the Academy.)


Greg

[Michael Barratt]

*nod* I've done this with groups, though most often out loud rather than written down. A Captain's Log is usually how we start a new adventure or story arc.

The Doc

[Marcus Kavart]

In the group i am in we have been using the idea of personal logs for 6 months and we have fun doing them. We don't get experience for it but someone who writes logs for every session will be about 2 or 3 ranks ahead of someone who doesn't at the end of the 7 seasons. If you want to know more ask Polanski. He is the GM of our group and has some real doozy logs. Particually from the Bajoran!

[Greg Davis]

Well, I'm glad to see that I've finally started a thread that's getting some attention. It's nice to see that there are other people out there that try to "get into character" as much as possible.

Originally posted by Michael Barratt
*nod* I've done this with groups, though most often out loud rather than written down. A Captain's Log is usually how we start a new adventure or story arc.

Well Michael, we read them out loud, too. Those are the interesting times, especially when it's a more personal log, rather than a duty log. For sake of convienence, though, we've just combined the logs into duty logs, unless we specifically want to make a personal log, in which case we do so.

Like your group, though, ours starts every episode with a Captain's log, and, as we pass into various stages of the story, we each make updates, or the Narrator will make an update of the Captain's log (since the Captain is an NPC).

If, however, we are focusing an adventure on a certain character (for instance, my character in the last episode we played through), then I, as a player, am encouraged to make log entries and updates and such, which I work on when I'm involved with the story, or when we take a pause in the game.

Originally posted by Marcus Kavart
In the group i am in we have been using the idea of personal logs for 6 months and we have fun doing them. We don't get experience for it but someone who writes logs for every session will be about 2 or 3 ranks ahead of someone who doesn't at the end of the 7 seasons.

Oh, if our campaigns could only last that long, Marcus!

Actually, though, as I mentioned previously, we write and present the logs as a way to get more in touch with our characters (which is the same reason we played though our time at the Academy). For us, the experience matters little, but the Narrator, bless him, feels that we should get some sort of reward for the extra work, hence the couple of Experience Points. At this point, though, I can certainly use them, so I’m not complaining!



Greg

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Fantastic Idea!!!

I've never thought of doing such a thing. My players are always nagging me about the command decisions of the PC commanding officers and this would give me good in-game explanations for their reasoning.

One question, is the xp given as extra or part of the 1-2 for good roleplaying?

[Ineti]

I've always encouraged (and rewarded) personal logs and other writings from my players. Sometimes I open an episode with an officer's log other than the captain. Either I'll write it and have the player tweak it to fit his/her character, or I'll ask a player to come up with a log off the top of their head.

My players generally pick up the ball and run with it, going on to writing short stories about parts of their character's life, or psych profiles, or any number of little writing "moments" that help define their character.

[Greg Davis]

Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
One question, is the xp given as extra or part of the 1-2 for good roleplaying?

Well, firstly, I appreciate your enthusiasm for this idea. Thanks!

In my group, the experience awarded is separate from "good roleplaying" experience, which we typically don't overly worry about. In my group, you're expected to roleplay good. If we're not all "in the groove", so to speak, then we simply stop the game until we're "back in the groove".

As an example, a standard adventure for our group lasts about 6 to 8 hours, and can occasionally go longer. We try to break experience awards down by the "average" session (the 6 to 8 hour length). These awards usually run anywhere from 6 to 8 experience points, depending on a variety of factors, such as the difficulty of the adventure (though we never have simple, easy adventures!), how "into" the story everyone was, how well we accomplished our objectives, and so on.

We generally don't use the LUG rules for experience, but instead just sort of "guess-timate" based on previous experience awarding scenarios, how much we need the PC's to advance, and so on.

As I've said before, though, we roleplay to roleplay, and not "rollplay", not that there's anything wrong with that style. Heck, we sometimes go entire game sessions without picking up the dice, except to maybe make a notice roll, or something along those lines.

Based on the ICON system, though, I would encourage the experience from the logs to be separate. For instance, you can roleplay your character very well, but not make a log. Given the Core rules suggestion of "1 - 2 points of experience for good roleplaying", a player who only roleplayed adequately, but made a log, would get equal "good roleplaying" experience, which doesn't seem overly fair, IMHO. Take, though, a player who both plays his or her character well, plus rounds things out with some log entries, and that character will more than likely have developed, in terms of character and personality, more than any other character during the course of the episode.

And that, to me, is what roleplaying is all about...




Greg

[Greg Davis]

Originally posted by Ineti
I've always encouraged (and rewarded) personal logs and other writings from my players. Sometimes I open an episode with an officer's log other than the captain. Either I'll write it and have the player tweak it to fit his/her character, or I'll ask a player to come up with a log off the top of their head.

My players generally pick up the ball and run with it, going on to writing short stories about parts of their character's life, or psych profiles, or any number of little writing "moments" that help define their character.

It sounds like your group and mine would get along rather well!

The only element that seems overly different is the idea of the Narrator writing a log for a player. To me, it is the role of the Narrator to do this for NPC's, and semi-NPC's, when necessary and appropriate, but not necessarily for the PC's.

In instances where I would want to steer the log in a certain direction, I would probably briefly explain to the player a set of circumstances, events, happens, etc, that would have occured to the character in question to guide him to constructing a log entry that would include that information.

For instance, imagine you want to run an adventure set on Risa, and you want to use one of the players as the "hook character" for the group, but he has no reason to mention Risa in his log. You might start the game mentioning that a certain, attractive young officer has been acting somewhat flirty with the character, and maybe the character might be interested in the NPC. You could then inform the group that the ship will be stopping off at Risa to pick up the Risan Ambassador to the Federation, and shore leave, for a couple of days, is possible, given the groups outstanding recent performance.

Given that information, the player could then construct a log entry, in his or her own style, and be able to mention the pertinent information, without feeling overly railroaded, or controlled by the Narrator.

Just my thoughts....



Greg

[Ineti]

Originally posted by Greg Davis


It sounds like your group and mine would get along rather well!

The only element that seems overly different is the idea of the Narrator writing a log for a player. To me, it is the role of the Narrator to do this for NPC's, and semi-NPC's, when necessary and appropriate, but not necessarily for the PC's.

It does sound like they would get along!

The elements aren't really all that different. The campaign I was in ran for over three years (real-time) and in that space of time, I got to know the PCs as well as the players. The first few logs I wrote for them I encouraged them to tweak to better fit their characters. As we all got experience, I learned their characters' speaking patterns and cadences, to the point where I'd hand them a first draft log and they'd say "This is exactly what my character would say." Otherwise they'd tweak it.

At any rate, the players wrote their own logs far more often than I handed them pre-written ones.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

A standard session of 6-8 hours?!

I'm lucky if a game lasts a little over 3 hours. The log idea is great and I've started to bring it up with a few players.

[Ineti]

6-8 hours average? Wow. Of the 60-odd episodes I've run, the vast majority fall into the 4-6 hour range, give or take. A handful have run over 6 hours, and a couple clocked in under three (wherein the players were on top of things and just plowed through the episode).

I haven't run a game in a while though - it's hard to find players willing to commit to a long-term game and invest some time in really developing their character.

[Greg Davis]

Well, I'm certainly aware that not all games run the way they do in my group, especially in the area of length. For instance, we've had gaming sessions that have lasted upwards of 12 hours.

However, I still think that the idea of awarding separate experience for log entries is a good one, as I explained above. I'd suggest, though, that if you want to incorporate logs into your game (and reward the players for constructing them), an extra experience point or two wouldn't hurt, and I think that the players would appreciate a little something for the extra work.

Just my opinion...once again expressed!



Greg

[LizardQueen]

I think it's a great idea! I should mention it to my own GM. (Actually, I probably just did, as he's the one who introduced me to this board! )