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Who Plays the Muse?

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Mon, 2011-12-12 01:09
#1
scnd scnd's picture
Who Plays the Muse?
I'm reading through sections on muses and how muses work and i'm coming up with a table-mechanical problem -- Who plays the muses? I'd rather not have the player play their own muse as interacting with it is just talking to yourself, and i'd also rather not have to develop 4-6 additional npcs to interact with my players. The solution that I've come up with is to make players play as eachother's muses. Its not an extended part of the game, but it is sort of important, and I think if i were playing a fantasy genre and someone had a familiar, a horse or a pet or something, and that interaction had importance to it, that i'd do the same thing. Any Thoughts? What do you do?
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Mon, 2011-12-12 01:35
Tyrnis Tyrnis's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
It really depends on how big a part you want to make the muses. In the one tabletop game I ran, they really didn't play a huge role as far as RP went -- it was essentially an IC way of providing the players information on items and people of interest to the PCs. 'Your muse pulls up his autonomist network profile and tells you...' and things of that nature. If they'd named their muses, I don't think it came up in play. In Play by Post (and to a lesser degree, more realtime chat based formats), I've generally shared control of the muse with the players. Since it's a little easier to include internal monologues in writing than verbally, the muse gets a little more depth and personality. For the most part, I don't tend to emphasize muses as major sources of RP -- they're a means by which the player can express or emphasize the thoughts and feelings of the character, or by which the GM can provide the players with IC information.
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Mon, 2011-12-12 02:03
scnd scnd's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
I really want to dole out some of those 3d10s mental stress, so i think developing the muse as something the player cares about would be really neat. In particular I'd like to have a subversion of the muse, feed it bad information, then EMP it or deconstruct it, or even meld it into an AGI. It seems like a nice way to make people go crazy.
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Mon, 2011-12-12 11:09
Azathoth Azathoth's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
In our play by post game, both the GM and player share roleaying the Muse, depending on the situation. Sometimes the character will roleplay with her own Muse, especially if it's doing something simple with no major consequences, like fabbing something or messaging an NPC. Other times the GM will play the Muse, usually if the player asks the Muse to research something or act on it's own, the GM will dictate the results as the Muse. It takes some coordination and trust, a Muse is a highly personal bit of gear so the player may have a very specific personality in mind.. I know I got in trouble as GM for making a Muse a little too patronizing once. :P
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Mon, 2011-12-12 11:22
scnd scnd's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
Nice. I think i'd be too worried about that establishment of muse-character to play it myself or have it flip flop, so while I may not do that myself, its a good idea and i think a lot of players work it out as half and half like that.
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Mon, 2011-12-12 11:45
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
If it's important, the players play their own (so far). The idea of not doing that is interesting, but I agree that actually doing it seems infeasible. In the situations Azathoth mentions, I agree. In the same way, the GM occasionally has to play (in tiny ways) PCs themselves, so that's nothing new. :)
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Mon, 2011-12-12 18:25
Antirrhesis Antirrhesis's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
Part of me always wants another player to play the Muse, much like White-Wolf's older version of Wraith, but honestly, I think it's best left to the GM or the player. Ooooooh. Shadow Muse!
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Mon, 2011-12-12 19:30
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
I think it's best if the player controls the muse because the character controls the muse. A muse dosn't have it's own motivations it's 'personality' is just software that has been coded by the character's wants and demands so it's motivations are essentially the same as the character. It's skill set is also just an extension of the character's skill set and I leave it up to the player to use it. Also, I enjoy playing my own muse and other AI and 'bots. I name them and it makes them more compelling to me to develop them myself. I enjoy roleplaying the interactions between my AI and other characters/NPC's and I enjoy the fact that my muse, my security AI and my bots all have their own initiative and perception rolls to make. The internal dialogue between my muse and my character wouldn't be shared with other characters anyhow so I don't feel any need to share it at the table but having my muse put another PC on hold when they try to call me is PRICELESS! :D When I GM I appreciate it when characters develop and play their AI gear. It's 3-6 fewer NPC's I have to keep in my head and it gives me 3-6 more players to mess with.
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Mon, 2011-12-12 20:44
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
OneTrikPony wrote:
I think it's best if the player controls the muse because the character controls the muse. A muse dosn't have it's own motivations it's 'personality' is just software that has been coded by the character's wants and demands so it's motivations are essentially the same as the character. It's skill set is also just an extension of the character's skill set and I leave it up to the player to use it.
Sometimes. I actually recommend that GMs take control of the muses of first-time players. This gives him an in-character voice to help guide those players through the setting without having to take as many breaks from the game and speak out of character. Once they get the hang of it and know how the world works, it's fine to give them the reins and decide the muse's personality for themselves
OneTrikPony wrote:
The internal dialogue between my muse and my character wouldn't be shared with other characters anyhow so I don't feel any need to share it at the table but having my muse put another PC on hold when they try to call me is PRICELESS! :D When I GM I appreciate it when characters develop and play their AI gear. It's 3-6 fewer NPC's I have to keep in my head and it gives me 3-6 more players to mess with.
This, a thousand times this. Honestly, half the fun I had playing the game was because of the interesting role-playing possibilities that assistive AI offers. It gave me the ability to roleplay two or more characters at the table without having to bring two or more character sheets. Plus, since I was already playing an insane character, it gave me the possibility for fun character interaction as well. It was fun to see the looks on my players faces when they all came to the stark realization that my character was in a sexual relationship with his muse (he was one of the Lost, give him a break!).
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Thu, 2011-12-15 18:46
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
Antirrhesis wrote:
Part of me always wants another player to play the Muse, much like White-Wolf's older version of Wraith, but honestly, I think it's best left to the GM or the player. Ooooooh. Shadow Muse!
Funny you should say that because that was *exactly* what leapt to my mind. A muse and a shadow [i]are[/i] pretty similar when you think about it - hopefully excepting Catharsis, that is.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 14:03
Antirrhesis Antirrhesis's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
Cifer wrote:
Funny you should say that because that was *exactly* what leapt to my mind. A muse and a shadow [i]are[/i] pretty similar when you think about it - hopefully excepting Catharsis, that is.
Soooooo glad I'm not the only one that went to that.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 21:45
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: Who Plays the Muse?
in Kuro (french RPG set in future isolated japan, mixing cyberpunk and japanese horror), my character had a link to his domotic AI -which he recoded into networked computing pseudo-sentient- that was helping him on his adventure And that AI was played by the GM. The process was really fast and smooth. the Shadow Muse is also a doable possibility, if the players are used to work as a team
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