Posts Tagged ‘play styles’

Joe does it again with an excellent OP over at Buried Without Ceremony, this time exploring a couple of my front-burner play-preference issues like a flaming vorpal sword of awesome that slices right into my chest and tugs at my soul.

Plugging in Scenes and System via Buried Without Ceremony.

I love the concept of looking at play preferences in terms of sockets, which I first encountered by reading Mo Turkington’s blog and later scratched the surface of discussing with Rich and Chris on Canon Puncture #52. And scene framing is also a big subject of exploration for me, so Joe’s thoughts on how systems help us engage scenes through sockets is very useful to my musings on how to get more out of play and help my co-players get more out of play, too.

This is my favorite paragraph, because it clarifies so many things for me about how scene framing relates to “pushing conflict”:

It’s a common misconception that the way you do aggressive scene framing well is to frame to the moment of pregnant conflict, that you open with an opposed situation that must be diffused. I’m going to take a step back from this idea and offer a suggestion: scene framing should work to engage our sockets in a meaningful way, skipping that which doesn’t satisfy our engagement and energy. In other words, if we all have Conflict/Plot/Choice sockets, then and only then is it appropriate to frame to moments of intense conflict. If we all have Setting/Aesthetic sockets, then we should be framing with interesting and evocative images, and use scene framing to move us to those images. – Joe McDonald

I encourage you to go over to BWC and share your thoughts and ideas in the thread, and hopefully we can have a fruitful discussion that takes this topic to even more interesting levels.

I’m not going to follow this quote/link up with a big blog post because I JUST read it myself and I am so totally still thinking about it, and I need time to ponder Jesse’s many interesting points. But this is important to me because I think I might be, at least to some degree, the type of player that is under the microscope here. However, I very much agree with what Jesse says here:

So much dialogue is spent discussing GM-driven railroading that I think player-driven railroading is under-discussed and under-identified. Once upon a time on The Forge we spoke of the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. That is, it is impossible for the GM to control the story while the players control the protagonists. I would now like posit the OTHER Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. That is, it is impossible for the players to control the story while the GM controls the antagonists. You simply can not have legitimate adversity without legitimate risk.

via The Culture of Outcome « Play Passionately.

There’s not much more I can say about this right now. How about you?

Rob Donoghue is one of my favorite rpg gurus, and I’m just now figuring out that the reason I resonate with him so much is that he often provides a counterpoint to my emo gut-punch tendencies. Never has this been more clearly illustrated than in a recent post on his LiveJournal called “Why I Try Not to Go to 11″. Here’s the gist of Rob’s post, after which I’ll share my own thoughts on it:

note: I’m blockquoting a good portion of Rob’s post here but I really encourage you to go read the whole post, along with the comments, because there’s a lot more there than I’m focusing on here.

Shingu, Secret of the Stellar Wars is an anime I enjoy a lot … I had a repeat on in the background tonight, and there was an exchange I enjoyed. Two characters have a pretty close bond, but one of them has been keeping a secret. The other one has suspected this is the case, and the issue of this secret comes out in the conversation.

Now, in a more melodramatic story (by which I mean most other anime and the ideal put forward by many indie games) this would have been a point of tension and conflict, something that would have pushed issues and driven the interactions between those and other characters because conflict, meaningful emotional conflict, is the gold standard.

In Shingu, the other character basically said, “Yes, I knew you had secrets, but it’s ok, I trust you.”

I love stuff like this, and I love it in my games. On paper, and by any number of rules, that’s weak sauce. The numerous story opportunities were wasted, and whatever potential there was for conflict was promptly resolved. But to me, that was all about strengthening and redefining bonds. That expressed a level of trust that had not previously been laid out between the characters – it’s a small, subtle thing, but important.

I’m not a gut wrenching emo porn kind of guy. Sure, I like it from time to time, because it provides a potent contrast, but I prefer a baseline of building, strengthening and exploring relationships much more than pushing them to the breaking point. Without that baseline, I tend to feel like the higher octane emotional stakes are forced and false. But with it, those moments gain real teeth.

via Robert Donoghue – Why I Try Not To Go To 11.

This really drives home a good point. Because although I DO occasionally enjoy going to 11, I could not stand it if I had to play with the dial cranked up like that all the time. Furthermore, without those more subtle low-key moments, the emo stuff not only gets old really quickly, but it loses a lot of its oomph, too.

So yeah, although I think it’s fair to say that I probably jack things up toward 11 more often than a lot of players do, and I tend to make soap opera out of things whenever I’m not reined in, I hope I don’t go there too often. I have worried sometimes that I pushed the dial up on a few occasions when others at the table seemed, in retrospect, a bit off-put by it. I don’t recall anyone ever outright telling me to amp it down, but I can think now of several cases during my year with the Rolemonkeys when Chris Heim would undercut my amped-up drama-pushing ways with some sort of goofy or silly response, and I used to get kinda miffed about that but now I think he was just trying to get me to cool the hell down and take myself less seriously. I think maybe Chris Perrin was working a similar angle when we played together for the first time.

Then again, I think Judd Karlman makes a really good point in the comments to Rob’s OP when he points out that a lot of the amped-up emo porn that we hear about when people write/talk about their play experiences is due to people focusing their memorable (and thus most sharable) actual play tales on the big emotional stuff. Certainly I do that. Most of the roleplaying stories I’ve shared are the big emotional ones. But that doesn’t mean they happen all the time, even when I’m in emo DramaMonkey mode, and it doesn’t mean that I want them to happen all the time, because I don’t. It’s just easier for people like me to communicate those emo moments than the more subdued ones. Guys like Rob who write well enough to make “Yes, I knew you had secrets, but it’s ok, I trust you” still sound compelling, they’re pretty rare.

I’ve appreciated the writings of Martin Ralya for several years, from his excellent Treasure Tables site (no longer updated but still an excellent archive of yummy rpg-fodder) and now via his regular participation on Gnome Stew. This morning I encountered his latest Stew entry and decided to jump it right to the front of the line of this week’s planned Waypoints posts. Here it a favorite excerpt, follwed by a link to the entire article:

“Ever since I began thinking explicitly about RPGs from this angle — as being engines for making interesting decisions — my perspective on gaming has shifted. I find myself drawn more and more often to game systems that do that well not just in combat, but in other areas, too.”

- Martin Ralya

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, I caught a post from John (jenskot) on Story Games that I found cute and clever.

Story Games – Sometimes RPGs are like food.

Cute and clever, yes, but I would never have thought to make something out of it. Earlier today, though, I was editing and fleshing out some of the posts I hope to publish on the Monkey this week, and it struck me as interesting that taken at face value, many of the things I post seem to be all over the map. Sometimes I imagine it seems like I’m even contradicting myself. And when I explore ideas from other folks I enjoy following, you’re sure to catch me saying that I agree with two or more opinions that seem incompatible. When it comes to espousing a particular ideology, you could easily accuse me of coming off like a waffler.

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“Sometimes you just wanna go kill monsters and take their stuff.”

I hear that a lot, or a variation of the same idea. “Sometimes you just feel like a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl.” “Sometimes a little tabletop hack-and slash is just the thing after a long stressful day of real life.”

I hear it from people I consider close friends and rpg kindred-spirits. I think most of the rpg folk I know have expressed this sentiment at one point or another – including some of the most hippie-narrativist players I’ve met. People who deftly throw down with hot emo story-driven emotionally complex drama 80% of the time will nevertheless occasionally express a desire to scratch the dungeoncrawl itch and kick it old-school with a night full of smash-and-grab.

And there is totally nothing wrong with that. There’s no implication of judgment from me toward that notion, and I can even go so far as to say that I think I understand it. I get it.

But I can’t ever recall actually feeling it myself. I can’t think of any time when I’ve showed up to a table for a session hoping that it would be about smashing and grabbing so that I could just kick back, blow off some steam by bashing orcs and kobolds, and be rewarded with treasure and cool magical items.

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This morning I discovered a new post from the always-insightful Ben Robbins that touches upon one of my favorite hot-button issues in the arena of roleplaying styles – the distribution of power and control between the person designated “GM” and the rest of the play group. Those of you who have followed my rants and other exploits will find it unsurprising that I’m in total agreement with Ben’s sentiments here:

Ben Robbins: ars ludi – The Benefits of Tyranny.

Ben’s whole post is incisive, but the first bit that really grabbed my attention was this:

“But never mind for a second why a GM would want to be overlord and god: instead ask why a player would put up with it.” – via ars ludi.

This is the question for which I’ve been demanding answers for a couple of years now. Not having been as active in the in-depth theory wonkery that goes on at rpg.net, Story Games, The Forge, and similar communities, I haven’t built up the vocabulary or the rep to talk about topics like this with clarity and credibility – but that hasn’t stopped me from talking about it anyway.  My time with The Game Master Show and some of the meta-talks we had on The Rolemonkeys are rife with examples of me harping on the subject of everyone at the table sharing responsibility for the fun and investment of everyone else at the table. I’ve developed a reputation for being anti-GM power and pro-player power. I think my actual beliefs are more nuanced than that, but I still get why that reputation prevails. Taken in my often convoluted sound bites, that’s a fairly accurate oversimplification. But it’s still an oversimplification. What I appreciate most about Ben’s post is that he puts his points across clearly and unapologetically. He expresses himself simply but not over-simply.

Obviously I want you to go read his whole post on ars ludi and comment there if you have anything to say, but I’d like to pull out one more section of his post here:

“Let’s say there are two kinds of responsibility a player has at the table: creative responsibility and social responsibility. On the creative side you are trying to make a good story, to do something interesting and add to the fiction. On the social side you are trying to make sure everyone else is having fun, and that their idea of what is good and interesting is also being respected.”

“All that can be a lot of work. But with the tyrannical GM, you have one person who steps up and says “this is my game, it is my creation, I’m in absolute control and make everything happen. I resolve all disputes and I make sure all players are entertained.” Which means you, the player, are completely off the hook. You can be as selfish as you want, or as rude as you want, or as lazy as you want, because the GM has taken responsibility for making the game work and taking care of everyone at the table.” – via ars ludi.

Generally, people don’t like their behavior to be labeled as selfish and/or lazy. But in my opinion if you set aside the baggage that goes with the labeling and focus on the actual definitions of the words, and compare those definitions to the behaviors – and motivations – being identified as selfish and lazy, then I think overall, there’s accuracy in the labeling.  If you think it’s good that one person carries the brunt of the social and creative responsibility so that the rest of the group can kick back, have it easy, and be entertained, well, it is what it is.

Are GM tyrrany and the attendant player abdication of responsibility wrong? Are they bad? Well, I don’t have a right to say so. The Big Caveat that those of us who lean hippie in our play preferences always have to put out there applies here: If everybody in the group is really okay with the arrangement, if everyone is having fun and getting what they want out of it, then I have no right to tell them they’re wrong.

And for that matter, even though in the past I may have said that it’s wrong and even though I’m sure that my occasional rants still carry some of that judgmental tone, I think that my problem is not so much with the actual thing itself – although in my own play it is something up with which I will not put – but rather with my belief that the thing is so extremely prevalent in the hobby that it is considered the norm and that attempts to examine, discuss, and offer alternatives STILL meet with so much mainstream resistance. In other words, I have no problem with admitting that the powerful GM-passive player model is A way to play. But I have a big problem with the prevailing notion that it is THE way to play. I will harp against that notion until someone manages to smash my harp and shut my mouth. And good luck with that.

So, thanks, Ben, for stirring my pot and giving me an excuse to get back on my favorite soapbox. If nothing else, it’s finally gotten me to put some passion back into my journaling.