A Idea Concerning Interruptions

My group has been playing with an ever expanding roster lately, and we’re up to 7 players.  I’ve heard of much larger, but this is the biggest we’ve been.  We’re finding that interruptions and out-of-game chatter are strangling the fun.  So, an idea for raising awareness.  The idea here isn’t to punish or shame anyone, but simply to make people aware of how our game time evaporates.

So, here’s my idea: whenever someone interrupts a scene in progress or makes an out of character comment, they take a poker chip from a pile in the middle of the table.

That’s all.  At the end of the session, everyone will be able to see where the time goes and make a conscious choice how to act.  Maybe some people will change, maybe they won’t — but at least they’ll be aware of how much game time is devoted to things other than the game and of what it gets spent on.

A Vision For A Functional Group

There’s been an ongoing conflict in our group regarding styles and personal preferences.  I’m right at the center of it, because the things I’m after are quite a bit different than what people are used to from other players.  I’m essentially after “addressing a premise, answering a question” fun, while most of the group  members are after “tell a good story, emulate a particular thing, dream the dream” fun.

The perennial argument is about what the responsibility of the GM is in accommodating different notions of what a good game looks like.  Because others are used to dealing with each other and have very similar desires, supporting those styles is “easy.”  Since what I want is different, that’s “hard” — they don’t have as much practice with it.  To them, it looks like I am demanding a lot more from the GM, when really I just want different things.

Yesterday, someone said “But that’s pandering!” when I described my attempts to understand and provide, as much as possible, the kinds of fun that each player was after.  I realized that I find the concept of pandering to be self-contradictory.  Pandering means catering to other’s viewpoints, and implies that those viewpoints are less valid than the one you already hold.  But if your viewpoint is valid without basis, without justification, simply because its yours, then so is everyone else’s, just because it is theirs.

This realization catalyzed a new vision for what a functional group would look like to me:  The group members would each take responsibility for providing everyone’s fun, including their own.  They would acknowledge that each desired kind of fun is valid, and, in a sense, everyone would “pander” to everyone.

Group Rewards

How about rewarding the group for collaborative efforts? I don’t just mean in-the-fiction or dictated by the system here either. This could also apply to things like cutting down extraneous chatter, making sure everyone gets spotlight time, or collaborative setting creation.  It’s something that can be explored in almost any system, and could be overlaid on almost any game.

Out-of-character knowledge and exploration

I have a long-standing disagreement with one of the players in our group, and I’m just starting to make sense of it.  We have very different opinions on how to deal with information that either some or none of the characters have a reason to know.  One incident that highlights our differing opinions involved a two hour conversation in a separate room in order to keep details of someone’s character background secret form the rest of the group.  We had to postpone certain scenes until it was over, and predictably, everyone else was quite bored while this was going on.  To this person, the less than desirable effects on the rest of the group were regrettable, but acceptable in order to preserve alignment between in and out of character knowledge.  I have never found knowing things out of character to be a serious hindrance to my enjoyment of the game, and I’ve never found “surprising” twists and turns to be critical for me.

It occurred to me recently that one reason for our differing opinions is our differing goals.  He prefers to explore the parts of the game outside of his characters, while I prefer to explore the inner life of my characters.  So for me, knowing what’s coming up can help me set up situations that explore my character’s motivations and psychological state in interesting ways.  For him, knowing what’s coming up ruins his exploration.

On an even more general level, the core of this realization relates to the One True Way.  Just as there is no One True Way, there is no One True Goal or One True Technique.  Instead, there are lots of equally valid goals, and for each goal, lots of techniques for getting there.

So that’s how…

Over on SG, Ron Hammack’s humorous and insightful description of how he ran a D&D game.  Worth reading to the end.  Wait for it…

Collaboration and Participation Gone Wrong

During my session last night, we ran into the age old problem of characters spewing out endless streams of new plans without any of them being acted on.  In light of last night (and perhaps some of your roleplaying experiences too), this passage from a post by Levi Kornelsen on Story Games seemed worthy of reflection:

“Where collaboration can go south is when it becomes “shallow” and starts to override participation. When I stop really listening to your cool stuff, and start just waiting for my turn to speak, and add my own ideas, then I (and likely others) aren’t actually exploring the ideas already on the table. We’re just making up shit and piling it up. If nobody actually uses those ideas and takes them further, enjoys them, and participates in their exploration, then they are devalued.”

This problem seems to occur both in the planning phase of an adventure, and with the cool stuff contained in character backgrounds that never gets used.  This leads me to ask myself questions like:

• How can I explore the ideas already on the table more fully than I currently do?
• How can I encourage others to do the same?
• What sort of concepts from a character background are most likely to be explored by the rest of the group?
• Does it make more sense for me to rely on the GM to link the concepts important to my character into the story, or for me to do it myself?  Which one will result in group exploration more often?  Which has a higher chance of producing enjoyable, fulfilling, or rewarding play experiences?

Technology for Self-Evaluation

Some time ago, while our group was discussing how best to elicit feedback for the GM, someone suggested that player feedback might be worth doing too. Most of us immediately said “No way!” It sounded like an excuse to air long standing grievances rather than honest effort to improve the situation. But there’s something at the core of his idea that might be worth examining: None of us are perfect players, and that means we have room to improve. I think this is something that many people, including me, don’t think about often.

So here’s an idea for prompting this kind of thought: After each session, ask each player a few questions. No one is allowed to answer or respond to the answers except the player in question.

“What did you do well this session?”

“What do you feel you can improve on?”

I think answering these questions has some value. Part of that is being prompted to think about it. Another part of it is that publicly committing to an answer encourages that thought to reach a conclusion. Of course, we’re all trapped inside of ourselves, so our own perspectives of ourselves won’t always line up with others’ perspectives. In this case, I think that’s OK. Growing and developing as a roleplayer is probably most rewarding when you’re growing in a direction of your own choosing.

Playing with your clones

I recently posed this question, after a discussion of play styles in our group.  It’s an interesting way to identify if your individual play style is frustrating your goals, or if elements of your style may be counteracting each other.

Suppose that you had a set of new groups.  Each new group is composed of five clones of one member of your current gaming group - I highly encourage you to start with yourself.  For which of these groups could you run the perfect game, one which satisfied all five of the clones?  What would that game look like?

This seems complex in most cases, so let’s lower the bar in order to explore a bit and come back to it.  Consider that satisfaction may not be a yes/no quality, and more like a percentage rating.  How much would you be able to satisfy the members of each clone group?

In some groups, could you completely satisfy some members at the expense of the others?

Is the average satisfaction in each group invariant, or would ways to boost the average exist?

Which groups are zero-sum games (if someone is more satisfied, someone else must be equally less satisfied) and which are non-zero-sum?

If non-zero sum groups exist, in which groups does increasing one player’s satisfaction increase other player’s satisfaction too?

With a little bit better picture of how these groups might work in mind now, consider this:  Which of these groups would require the most total work to satisfy at their maximum possible level?  Which ones would require the most work per percentage point increase in the average satisfaction?

A story from our game last week

From a group email:

As roleplayers, we attend games each week, hoping that the GM has cooked up something that will inspire us to care, to get involved, to investigate, to test what our characters are made of. And, nearly every week, we leave disappointed in some way. Let’s look at a time that wasn’t disappointing, and ask: What happy accidents happened to bring this about - and how can we become more accident prone?

Consider the strange case of Lance Bruce, gay linebacker. In our recent game of The Roach, I played Max Born, a gay psychology professor. In one of the first scenes, I was faced with the task of crafting a conflict that would involve someone else’s character. Since The Roach does not feature extensive character backgrounds, I had very little information to work with. Luckily, Steve had drawn the card “Expose,” which required him to publicize indiscretions related to another character, and his character already hated mine.

So, I outlined my vision for the scene: Max Born was attending convocation with his lover. Before the speeches, the faculty was chatting with the university administration, including the Chancellor. Professor Feebs, having come across evidence of Max’s sexuality, would seek to expose Max’s intimate relationship with his convocation guest in front of the assembled dignitaries. Max’s lover would help him keep their relationship secret. I asked Chris to play the Chancellor, Bruce to play Max’s lover who we named him Lance Bruce after a Simpson’s quote, and we started the scene.

The scene opened with “Good to meet you. Lance Bruce, linebacker, Ohio State University” and we were surprised. This macho, alpha male was exactly the opposite of what we had expected. “Get me a drink, woman…I mean, professor.” We all laughed. The scene built smoothly to a conflict - would the Chancellor believe Prof. Feebs’ accusations, despite Lance Bruce’s manly personality? Each of the characters involved in the scene, PC and NPC alike, had motivation for their actions, and when the dice were rolled, the result had a real impact on the outcome of the story for all of us. Without this scene, almost none of the future conflicts would have worked: Lance Bruce would not have been strip searched for microfiche at a football game, we wouldn’t have elected a new (kilt wearing schizophrenic) Faculty Senate Chair, and there wouldn’t have been a Lance Bruce Ass. Hall of Acoustics/Judgement. In short, our game wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable or filled with laughter.

The players were so immensely satisfied with this scene that you’ve heard several renditions of it by now. For those of us who were there, it’s a gaming memory that we’ll never forget. So what went right? I knew that Steve needed to expose someone. Steve knew what to expose. Bruce knew that he somehow needed to help me keep my identity under wraps. Chris knew to keep the chancellor reasonably neutral until we reached the conflict. We all knew our functions in the scene, because we’d communicated beforehand what was expected. Notice though that the results were still surprising, engaging, and also more fun than usual.

So how can we become more prone to happy accidents in our scenes, plot lines, and sessions? This story suggests that, in order to accomplish this, we should talk Before Rather Than After.

Gaming Responsibilities; What I’m Thinking About

Another link.  This one is on how responsibilities are divided among a group of roleplayers, and on a paradigm different from the traditional arrangement.

 I’ll have some original thought once I’m farther along on absorbing all these things I’m reading.  Much of my OT energy (original thought, not operating thetan) is going into a private conversation on the Knife Fight regarding combining my theory of choice with Mendel’s theory of even lower level interactions (based on views.)