So there's this episode of Angel, see ... and Fred (Winnifred) Birkel has this wierd-ass mystic illness that's killing her, and Wesley is working to find a cure.  With me so far?  Well, anyway, there's this wonderful short scene where he's working in the office of their supernatural-evil-law-firm and a guy comes in and basically says "Hey, I need you to stop working on the Birkel thing and do this other thing about keeping the law office running," and the nameless NPC concludes with "We can't all be expected to be working on the Birkel problem."

Isn't that a wonderful way to ask a protagonist a question?  It's "How much of the law firm's resources are you committing to this problem?" all wrapped up in a pointed (but ultimately unimportant) conflict.

Wesley nods, says "Of course," reaches into his desk drawer, pulls out a gun and casually shoots the NPC in the leg.  Then, as the guy screams and whimpers, Wesley pushes his intercom button and tells his secretary "Margeret, make sure that anyone else who thinks they shouldn't be working on Miss Birkel's case comes to talk to me personally."

Which is, as you'd expect, an answer to the question:  "We are devoting all the resources of the firm, and we're not spending any time debating that, we're just brutalizing anyone who disagrees."

There's a wonderful technique, right there, waiting to be lifted by any GM for most any game.  I use the general idea all the time now:  If you want players to follow the old writer's maxim "Show, don't tell" then when you have a question you need to put it in the form of an in-game situation to which they can respond.  That way they can show you their answer.  If you ask them what they want, out of game, they can only ever tell.  They can't show.

And that's how I like to do it.  I do tend to go through a goodly number of disposable NPCs though.  People's answers are always so HEATED

Can you give some examples of how you've done this and the PCs responded?  

I think the scene you describe shows the power of the shooter, and the stupidity of obviously an associate or a partner with a lesser book of business ordering around the wrong person. It shows the power dynamic of the firm.  The answer is told if not in words.

In the end it is a rather contrived scene to show how evil the shooter/firm is.  Anyone who has such power to just shoot another member of the firm, especially an evil one, is going to be spoken to with deference, so it is unlikely that a person allowed to just eneter the office would be treated this way.  Now a general meeting where a lack of faith is presented is another thing.

I'd also include in this the stock showing how bad the bad guys are through killing henchmen for failure or a bad guy showing how much power he has over his followers by having one kill themselves for no reason other than his whim.

Quote from: XantherIn the end it is a rather contrived scene to show how evil the shooter/firm is.

Except that the shooter's a good guy.  Probably, in fact, the goodest good guy on the show.  He's just really, really serious about finding a cure.

Anyway ... examples of when I've used this in a game, and how people have reacted:

• A PC was supervising satellite repairs after an assault, getting ready for the next assault.  I wanted to know how hard he was driving his people, given that they were all shocked out from the first attack.  I had his character come upon an impromptu funeral, where several key maintenance staff were standing around not doing their job while they paid tribute to a fallen member of their unit.  The player decided that his character was not the type that would break up such a ceremony in order to get them back to work.
  
• Playing in a game where we were trying to herd refugees through a landscape rapidly approaching post-apocalyptic:  the GM wanted (I suspect) to know whether we were aiming to hurry the healthy people over a bridge and into a defensible position, or whether we were taking the time to help along the sick and the weak, at the risk of all being caught by pursuing forces.  So he had my character happen upon an old woman stuck on the bridge, holding up the whole procession.  My character being who she was, I decided she would toss the old lady into the river, and the healthy members of our ragtag group travelled all the faster.  Man, Yoshi was a nasty bitch when I started playing her
• High school game:  The question was "Are you avoiding Kyle?"  Rather than ask that straight out, I just said "You see Kyle coming down the hallway."  Turned out that the character wasn't going to avoid Kyle, she was just going to treat ignore him with icey indifference.  Had a fun scene finding that out, too!

So that's the kind of thing.  Not a complicated technique, but fun.  Does that help clarify?

I don't watch Angel (or Buffy, or Firefly) so I'm not sure who the characters are.  Is the guy who got shot a vampire or something?  Meaning: is shooting him not really that big a deal because he's undead and regenerates?  Or is this a regular human who could die and/or be permanently injured from being shot?

Tommy Lee Jones shoots the head off a regenerating alien in Men in Black -- but it's basically like giving him a slap across the face.

Quote from: TonyLBExcept that the shooter's a good guy.  Probably, in fact, the goodest good guy on the show.  He's just really, really serious about finding a cure.

Really? And he heads an evil firm?  OK.

Quote...

 Does that help clarify?

It does.  Are these situations made to answer the question "how far are you willing to go" thus to get the players to show an answer to that question?  Or do they arise naturally through world-oriented events?  The last example seem like it would just flow naturally from game events.

It seems like a player has a goal in these situations and then an obstacle is thrown in their way.  To the extent that goal is hard to realize or a focus of play (e.g., to create tension on repair) I can see this working but also a kind of thing that I suppose already naturally occurs in play.  

I'd be careful though, if these obstacles come out of the blue or they can just be ignored, then it's tedium if the players don't want to role play this out.

Quote from: XantherIt does.  Are these situations made to answer the question "how far are you willing to go" thus to get the players to show an answer to that question?  Or do they arise naturally through world-oriented events?  The last example seem like it would just flow naturally from game events.

The technique can be used to pose pretty much any question ... the "how far are you willing to go" variety is actually pretty common in roleplaying though (e.g. "Are you willing to break cover in order to get close enough to fire your sniper rifle?")

But really, it's just an issue of, instead of asking "You're planning to do X rather than Y, right?" you have an NPC advocate for Y and you make it clear that if the PC doesn't do something then Y is precisely what's going to happen.

I haven't found people getting bored by that, FWIW.  If the questions are worth asking at all then they're generally quite eager to roleplay out precisely how their character deals with the issue.  Conversely, if they're not interested in roleplaying it out ... I sometimes suspect that the question isn't all that important.

If someone's trying to enter the city in disguise, and they're bored by the prospect of cornering a guard who realizes who they are in a dark alley and tying and gagging him ... well then, maybe the question of "Are you willing to assault guards in order to maintain your disguise?" wasn't actually that interesting a question in the first place, no matter how it's asked.

I saw that episode of "Angel".

The character in question had also been hoplessly in love with Ms. Fred Birkel for years. He and the other "Good Guys" were trying to do good from within an evil law firm by trying to resist temptation while there.

Taken in context with what had gone on in the past of Wolfram & Hart (the evil, represents Demons in contract negotiations Law Firm...)  ...shooting someone to motivate them doesn't seem that strange really.
 After all they had vampires on staff in their secretarial pool.

- Ed C.

I stumbled across that technique in Paranoia (#include derailthread.now) when the the CL: RED troubleshooters stumbled into the INFERED sector and realized that they were effectively like ORANGES in a RED sector!
:verkill:

From there I took it into more normal genres, and yeah it's great as a GM to have a couple of NPC's there to ask those questions. Otherwise that technique is only seen when used by backstabbing players.

Player 1: (Casualy) Oh...I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when our friends arrive.
GM: Hmm?
Player 1: (Helpfuly showing flowchart to GM)
GM: Hmm!
Player 2: NOOOooo....!