Help! Ending a Deathgrip on D&D

[RangerEd]

I would like to offer an assessment of my current situation with my long-time roleplaying buddy to seek advice from this esteemed group. I have learned a lot by trolling and then joining the forum. Perhaps I can continue to benefit. Please tolerate a little back story to set the stage. The specific question is at the bottom of this (please forgive) long post.

The Mythical Golden Age of D&D (circa 1985 to early 2005): The two of us were the stereotypical Midwestern United States D&D players. Nothing remarkable. Our behavior is well documented in the religious parallels Ron established in another post. We normed to a particular narrative-based style of D&D and considered any variation of it to be not really roleplaying. Variations would include hack-and-slash adventures and any system that was not D&D (although we played a few). Of note, I think of this time as a period of blissful ignorance and virgin naiveté. My best roleplaying buddy seems to remember this 20-year period as a journey to find the one true roleplaying game in third edition variants and eventually Pathfinder, specifically.

The Age of D&D Hacks (2005 to 2012): While my buddy settled (calcified?) into D&D 3.x (which I include PF as 3.75), we thought THE system should and could support our style of play better. He focused on the trees and I kept replanting the forest. Either way, we both hacked at things with splitin' mauls and chainsaws. Every game—once every six months or so by this point, with our real lives taking priority—was months of hacking anew followed by a three or four day one-shot. Both of us started to grow frustrate. In hindsight, I wanted a better system, built from scratch. My buddy wanted to put a layer of make-up on our Frankenstein's monster (the 3.x hack).

The War of the Systems (2012 to December 10, 2013): Then I found the Forge while working through another master's program. Instead of picking a new game and going with it, I foolishly decided to try to build another heartbreaker. The Journal was born, built custom for our roleplaying history and expectations. We tested it summer of 2013. It worked. It was the most satisfying session I've ever played. However, all was not right in the world: my buddy treated it like something less than a real game and was tepid about it. Not enough support material, not well tested, and not detailed enough. He returned to Frankenstein's monster and expected me to help polish it up nice for our coming game Christmas 2013, which he will run.

With my game-designing ego bruised and my confidence waning in The Journal, I asked to play anything—anything—but D&D variants. We exchanged multiple emails per day for a month. I offered links and information for The Pool, Sorcerer, Psi*Run, In a Wicked Age, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Dust Devils, D20 Modern, and even considered Heroes long enough to read 1400+ pages of manuals. I offered roleplaying game theory, books, and articles. I took a respectful, compromising, and Socratic approach, not wanting to force insight or come across all high and mighty. He took a polite, consistent, and superficial look, never truly coming off the track laid in the Age of D&D Hacks.

This period ended with an aggressive email from him. From his perspective, I seek change for change sake. He spends precious time developing optimal and detailed solutions that we use for one gaming session and he is losing patience with me. System does not matter as long as the story is good and the DM has the proper motivation. If I'd like to run something, by all means.

Try, Try Again (Current Day): After that message, I backed off. I have a desired end and he is a good friend and gamer (seriously, he is a good gamer and a narrativist to boot). The ways and means are flexible. Today, I sent a message of acquiescence and apology. I offered four character concepts for PF from which he could decide. The sneaking-shit thing I did was to explicitly use In a Wicked Age Oracles and Psi*Runs character questions to establish the character back stories and concepts. I then plainly and strictly followed the directed 6-step process for character creation from Pathfinder. My intent was to cool the situation and throw more subtle compare-and-contrast evidence of what other games offer into the discussion.

It is an indirect approach, I know. In all honesty, the effort will likely go unrecognized or at least unacknowledged. I would take the helm and run another game this time around, but after The War of Systems period and the poor reception for The Journal, now is not the time. My buddy's dander is up and he wants to prove how good Frankenstein's monster really is. Patience. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Although a narrativist, I think my buddy has simulationist-by-habit tendencies. It is not a good system unless it has six or more primary character stats with a skill system (common to all characters), and offers bolt on powers (feats and Vancian magic for instance). He is not especially tied to the class system. The real kicker is the system must be in glossy hardback with several hundred pages between them, have a publishing history of more than a few years, and not waste too many pages on setting information. He refers to these criteria as, "complexity and thoroughness and versatility," and, "play tested." I'm not sure why big-name publishers, expensive artwork, and book weight matter so much, but they do to for him.

My plan for this game session is to draw attention to system techniques from other games, and maybe show him the pdfs from a few if he is amenable. Perhaps next summer I will run Dungeon World to ease him into something. I know I need to get him outside of the comfortable little box he has built for himself. D&D is stunting him as the talented storytelling narrativist he can be. I sometimes wonder if he thinks D&D mechanics are how the world actually functions, but that is beside the point.

So my question...

What would you do to recruit such a player away from the D&D fold? I am out of Schlitz.

Thanks in advance (especially for the therapy of sharing),
Ed

[Eero Tuovinen]

That's one tricky project. My own approach has generally been to not bother with it, I can always find other people to play with, and we're both happier following our own paths. Personal issues might make it necessary to attempt to play with somebody regardless, of course, so that's not very useful advice. Still, from my experience with D&D-committed people like you describe here, this is as near a hopeless task as I might imagine in creative cooperation.

One strategy that I might attempt myself would be to just stop the "roleplaying project" (doesn't seem like there's much point to it right now, if you do not believe in his creative strategy and he doesn't believe in yours) and instead do other things with the friend in question. The trick is, these other things might build up into recognizable roleplaying, but under a different name, and in a different social context, which would then avoid the mental blocks associated with roleplaying games; ideally he might then come upon insight about his roleplaying when he came back to it after a time. I would assume that the key would be in discovering some genuinely meaningful pastimes that'd make sense on their own, and perhaps lead back to roleplaying later. I'm thinking of something like getting into FFG big box boardgames, Arkham Horror and the like. This would obviously be a project that'd take years to accomplish. I've certainly witnessed people reorienting on roleplaying after taking a 3-5 year break with some other hobbies, although I've never intentionally instigated this sort of sea-change.

The psychological core of the above suggestion is that the type of person you vividly describe here has a lot of external semantic load associated with roleplaying, which makes it difficult for them to take experiences as they simply are; as you say, even if some game might be fun, it's not "real" roleplaying without the proper trappings, and a person might not be able to perceive this filtering they do on their experiences themselves. I'm thinking that it might not be fruitful to try to convince the extreme orthodox to relinquish their iconography, as they simply can't do it without restructuring their entire identity, and why would they do that. So instead, you take the orthodox by the hand and take them dancing, and maybe teach them to enjoy life entirely outside the context of the religion, in a way that does not overtly have anything to do with the ideological matter - you can enjoy dancing even if you're a good orthodox, after all. When they learn about how life and creativity and whatnot works outside the ecclesiastical setting, they can then find themselves spending less time in church in general, maybe, if it so happens that they enjoy themselves more in some other hobby. And maybe one day they'll realize that this new hobby is actually just their old hobby, except outside the church altogether.

(I would suggest some specific entertainment paradigms, too, except those are so personal that I couldn't guess at where to begin. LARP or similar dress-up games - SCA, cosplay, paintball - might do the trick, it's barely far enough conceptually from tabletop roleplaying that even a hardcore D&D gamer doesn't automatically measure a LARP implementation against D&D, and reject it for not being the same. It's close enough, however, that it might be possible to later introduce the idea that one might create a tabletop game - not a roleplaying game, just a tabletop game - that provides an experience similar to larping without having to bother with the external rigamarole.)

People certainly can undergo paradigm shifts regarding roleplaying, so this isn't so much a hopeless project as a difficult one to actively trigger. And some people seem to stultify in place, too, so it's not guaranteed that just waiting a decade will change anything. I couldn't begin to guess whether this is about external experiences or internal nature of the person, though - it's possible that you can't change who a person is. When people I know better ask me advice about things like this, I invariably come to conclude that in their particular situation the best creative strategy is to take a break from each other for the time being and go play with people who are actually whole-heartedly with you on whatever gaming strategy it is you believe in. Can't make that determination over a web forum, of course.

One more suggestion: when I really enjoy gaming with somebody, but know that games of type A are not their thing, I do my best to get into game type B they want to play. Makes sense to me. Thus, D&D for example - I've found that I can get all sorts of high-quality gaming out of D&D with some friends who don't really game outside of it. Not the exact same kind of play I could get from say Dust Devils, but fun and worthwhile nonetheless. I suppose you've already considered and abandoned improving upon D&D, but from my viewpoint it's not the worst fate in the world to be stuck playing D&D with an otherwise entertaining friend. Assuming that they're open enough to house-ruling that I can fix the most overt issues with the game, of course :D

[Ron Edwards]

Great post. I'm amazed you don't see the answer at about halfway through, specifically the moment your friend discovered Pathfinder, but then again, that happens to me all the time when I post something like this and someone else says the equivalent.

Stop playing games with that particular friend and most especially stop designing "for" him, with him as a partner, or with him in mind. Be a friend in all the ways that you enjoy together. I'm certain he is an excellent role-player as you say, I'm certain he is a wonderful guy. I'm sure you do all sorts of things that are great. So good - do those.

But the two of you are in a folie a deux, regarding role-playing. Each one wants to get or do something out of it, they're not the same things, and each one seems to think the other's approval and participation is necessary. Ed, think for a second. You wrote the Journal to satisfy or try to achieve something you wanted when role-playing, right? What in the world does his opinion have to do with it? And vice versa - who on this earth are you to criticize or in any way pass judgment on his desire to gild the lily that is Pathfinder such that he calls it his own? Would you exert such social ownership over what bumper sticker he chose to put on his car? It makes it feel more like "his," despite the bank owning the fucking thing the way we all know it does but won't admit, right?

So instead of mildly supporting what one another is doing, each person is shoving Thing X in the other's face, crying out, "Like this! I did it for us! Give me praise for I have delivered you from unhappiness!" And elbowing out of the way whatever unspeakable abortion the other person happens to be shoving at him pfeh pfeh, get that out of my face, I'm trying to show you something. Why isn't each of you making your own Thing X for yourself and showing to yourself instead of to the other guy?

Or if all this has anything to do with wanting to do something together, then for instance, playing whatever game system you were using most in 1990, enjoying it to the hilt or hackin' it organically until you do, and that being that. Clearly it isn't about wanting to enjoy role-playing together, because if it were, this paragraph would be exactly what you're doing.

You know about the Geek Social Fallacies, right? Why has your friendship itself become founded on the premise that "we role-play together," and when it's not fun, then someone's betraying the friendship? Why must you exert such effort and agony to restore the role-playing together as if you were trying to restore a friendship? When not paradoxically, mixing the two things up like that is actually killing the friendship?

Which it is, by the way. Let me guess - you've mentioned me or this forum or the Forge to him at some point, and he's convinced that we've brainwashed you, right? 'Cause if not, then that's the next step. To him, he's the faithful, and you've become a cultist. "Yes, I shall embrace the New Reformed Church with all of its wonderful reforms (and see how 'supported' it is!), why do you doubt the words when they are in glossy hardback books," while you're all "But Rajneesh is such a great guy! All you have to do is admit that he's always right about everything! Here, you'll see, read this pamphlet, c'mon!" Friendships don't make it through that kind of thing.

Social Contract always comes first. In the Infamous Five discussions at the Forge, we discovered that gamers not only buy into the Geek Social Fallacies, they aggravate them further in a number of absurd ways by invoking the Geek Hierarchy - even creating a twenty-box microcosm within it, specifically from the Role-playing, LARPer, and 13-year-old ones. Anything about the role-playing itself, Creative Agenda and basic Exploration included, will bumble along through a series of stupid accidents unless all that crap gets cleared out.

Save your friendship. Stop role-playing with him and no matter what, stop designing stuff with, for, or about him.

Best, Ron

[RangerEd]

Gentlemen,

Thank you. First and foremost for focusing on my issues instead of joining me in my tangential assault on a good friend of mine. I am a little ashamed of myself, but this is a growing pain. It is good.

Second, after a little time to reflect after reading your posts, I see my issue. I am too in-the-weeds on this one and have been since The Age of D&D Hacks. If we have a good time, then who gives a flying fuck what system gets us there. I should have recognized and anticipated that a guy (my buddy) who hasn't moved a single piece of single piece of furniture in his house in over eight years isn't interested in system hopping. He is who he is and he's also a loyal friend. No need to let pettiness stand in the way. Ron, I agree I need to stop designing with him. But damn it, we have a lot of fun roleplaying together. I would like to think I am mature enough to let the small differences stay that way.

Third, I need to get out more often. Gaming is not exclusive dating. Keeping the metaphor, I now have a date tonight with a local hobby group. I think the game is Munchkin. I understand it is a spoof, along the lines of Elfs. I need to make fun of D&D for a while. I will also continue to keep an eye out for opportunities to try indie-games. In some ways, I have been a nice, demure, polite yet closeted judgmental, snobby, misinformed asshole about gaming for years. Time to live a little.

As for mentioning this cult? (Just kidding around by the way, I like these purple capes and nike shoes. They make me feel cool. When is that comet coming back around?) Nope. I grouped my learning here with a laundry list of topics I have studied the last two years, which had a convenient crosspollination with roleplaying games. I fear if I had put this group in the discussions' foreground, the disparagement you described would have been aimed at the cult instead of at me. As it was, I put forth the arguments—informed by you all—then presented and defended them as best I could. My buddy's barbed comments were aimed at me.

Taking a deep breath and looking back across the War of the Systems period, my research on RPG design and play techniques was still worth it. I feel I've gotten a lot better at the hobby by thinking about it a bit deeper. I say better because I enjoyed my last session more than ever before. Maybe self-awareness allowed for self-fulfillment. The Journal may have been a simple vector more than the active agent. I am curious to see what I can do to make story now in Pathfinder.

To Eero's point about paradigm shifts, Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Sorry, I just finished oral comps and thesis defense. Throwing authors for derivative authority is second nature right now. I'll chill out in a few months.) says it takes a whole stack of anomalies to cause such a thing. Okay. I will keep offering bite-size bits of other systems to my buddy when we game together. If he likes them, cool. If not, who cares. I am going to relax, enjoy myself, and demonstrate story now behaviors. Given the current pattern for my buddy and I, we have the rest of our lives to renorm to one another's gaming styles.

Right now, I have some cellophane to break on this hilarious looking box from Steve Jackson Games.

Thanks again for some perspective,
Ed

[glandis]

I'm a bit hesitant to add this possibly-hopeful note, but my last decade-ish of roleplaying has some similar but less severe (in terms of 1-to-1 personal focus and intensity) experiences. I found that getting RPG play that is more precisely tuned to my currently-predominate preferences SOMEWHERE (i.e., from different and/or newly-met friends) made me more able to enjoy playing with my other, longer-term but less exactly-matching friends. I don't mean to hold this out as an inevitable outcome, and I suspect (reinforced by recent discussion here, actually) I have a wider tolerance for what kinds of RPGs I can enjoy than some other people. Your personal experience may vary. But at least potentially, enjoyable RPG-play with this friend may become more possible if a) you find other times/people/places/playstyles to participate with, and b) you stop trying to "fix" play with that friend.

Hope that's helpful,

Gordon

[RangerEd]

Thanks, Gordon. In all this optimism, I probably ought to be emotionally prepared for a failure mode as well. Pick any activity, sometimes people simply grow apart from one another.

By the way, after testing it out this evening, Munchkin could be a card based roleplaying game. The folks I was with tonight treated it more like rummy. The cards are pretty funny, though. The only other game available there was the Magic card game. Eh, it was a night out.

[Joshua Bearden]

I've posted about my own frustration with a dnd 3.0 fossilized group as well.  My own solution over the past six months has been to slowly and patiently try to develop an "indie" scene here in my own town. I started by going to lots of board game nights at local game stores.  The big break through came when one night I met someone play-testing their own card-deck story game.  After getting to know him I invited him to play S/Lay w/ Me since then we've been very slowly expanding and including new people until now I'm about at the point where I believe I know 2 or 3 people whom I'd enjoy playing Sorcerer with. 

This link to my website starts to document our activities this year

http://higs.motd.org/

[RangerEd]

Great work on building a scene. The webpage is well done, too. I think you just added Halifax to my list of places to visit one day. Thanks.

[RangerEd]

For those interested in an update, the pre-game prep has turned into "guess the story-before railroad I have hidden behind my back and make a character for it." My buddy also implied I am min-maxing and not thinking about character concepts, probably due to his very tight and consistent scope of what "reasonable" is in his game. I think there is some reading comprehension issues as well. He has a stressful job that requires excessive skimming and he doesn't read fiction. When I read this paragraph back, it sounds terrible...hmm. More to Ron's point about the answer being right in front of me.

Perhaps surprisingly, the experience is darkly inspirational and affirming. After reading and participating here with you all, I can understand, label, and work with what is happening. The opportunity to apply the theory and concepts is turning out to be the highlight thus far. The hard part is swallowing my pride and taking the insults. My coping technique is the spaghetti method (throw a wad of what I think he wants at the wall and see if anything sticks) mixed with optimism that roleplaying will be fun once we're all at the table.

Cheers,
Ed

[Ron Edwards]

I'm confused. What I'm getting from your last post is that you're continuing to play role-playing games with your friend, and tolerating verbal criticism like a brave martyr. Whereas my advice was to stop playing role-playing games with him. You are of course able to do whatever you want, and my advice is merely internet chatter, but you wrote the post as if you were benefiting from the advice, so I'm confused, as I said.

[RangerEd]

Ron,

I suppose I interpreted your advice to stop roleplaying with him as a bit of shock therapy. You effectively laid the either-or decision at my feet: get over it or walk. It was very good advice, even if not executed exactly as you may have envisioned. Two points I'd like to offer here...

First, the benefit of the advice I received was an important shift in perspective. I did not follow the advice exactingly, but listened to it carefully and considered it thoughtfully. In retrospect, I failed to realize I was trying to fix my friend instead of enjoying what he has to offer. I was the stereotypical bad girlfriend. I know my buddy and I have fun together. The roleplaying is not what I would like it to be, but it is a pastime we have in common. No need to let perfection get in the way of good enough. "Let it be," and all that.

Second, there is no arrogant highroad here. I am not the brave martyr. More an intrigued field researcher armed with a little bit of new knowledge to understand behaviors. I feel like there is a learning opportunity in continuing to role play with the guy I grew up with in the hobby. In some ways, he is me as my past self. I get to glimpse a shadow of a younger Ed. I find uncommon potential for self-reflection in all of it that goes beyond roleplaying. The situation is fascinating.

Thanks again,
Ed

[Ron Edwards]

I see. No issue here - my advice wasn't a directive. I'll be interested to see how things turn out.
Best, Ron

[RangerEd]

Ron (and all you other readers out there),

I'd like to offer a follow up to the above discussion. The game with my old buddy could have lasted four days. I made an excuse early on day three and departed. The experience demonstrated first-hand to me many of the topics floating around these parts. I am a story-now narrativist, he a story-before simulationist. We compromised with a lot of story after over snack breaks (out of play discussions he calls them). Bottom line, we are incompatible role-players and it was glaringly obvious to me.

For a few details, during his introduction I blurted out a silly movie quote (from Soylent Green) as a joke that turned out to be the entire story-before plot arc he planned to reveal to me over the long weekend. Although I had accidentally preempted the reveal, he took it like a champ and tried to pretend I hadn't spoiled the mystery.

He was very strict about resolving every battle with Pathfinder's mechanics. Bear in mind this was a one-on-one, low-level session. I would roll my one swing and watch him roll and talk to himself for 4 to 7 minutes at a time for some combat scenes. He apologized at one point for grouping combatants into seven manageable groups of five or six each, saying he didn't want combat to take too long. In short, mechanics took all the time, describing action was right out.

I could go on with more observations, but these two examples establish the chasm. Everyone here was right, but I had to see it for myself first, I suppose. I definitely deserve an "I told you so" from each of you. But, moving on...

I have since moved halfway across the US again. Internet searches for indie games turned up nil in this part of North Carolina. Pathfinder Society is active, however. I think I'll join a group and see if I can't spot and recruit some players that may have a pinko-indie streak in them. Perhaps a nascent indie scene is hiding just below the D&D-alike noise floor here. We'll see. Josh, wish me luck.

Sincerely,
Eddie

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the post. Poignant.

I reviewed the whole thread, and found a point where I should have asked a question. You mentioned in the first couple of posts what a good role-player your friend was and how much excellent fun you two had playing together. I should have asked you to describe one of the top-of-the-list, most enjoyable game sessions to get an idea of what you meant.

At this point in the conversation, I'm still interested in that claim - to find out what kind of genuine fun has been lost between you over the years, or whether your insistence on that point was (and perhaps has always been) an example of magical thinking. Or at least to give others an example of the kind of reflection which is sorely lacking in our hobby.

If it's too much like picking at a scab, then maybe not, up to you.

Best, Ron

[Rafu]

As an aside, I don't know much about the USA geographically, but North Carolina is where Jason Morningstar (of Bully Pulpit Games fame) is based. There have to be people playing weird games around there.