[Circle of Hads] No gentry here!

[Moreno R.]

Hi!

It seems that, finally, I have the right players (I hope) to play Circle of Hands. We did char creation a few days ago, this is the list of the characters. Ron, take a look to see if you notice anything wrong or if you have any comments (other people, too, can comment obviously).

The players are:

Angela, she played with me for a long time now (more than twenty years) from the old times of story-before, railroading and long sagas to the times of strange new different rpgs. She plays everything, just don't ever ask her to be the GM (GM-less is all right, thought) or to read a gaming manual (she doesn't know a word of English anyway). She likes to hack and slash and magic that doesn't force you to study long spell lists, so it's no surprise that her preferred game is Trollbabe. And with a simple magic system like that, she is the players that always surprised more in Trollbabe.
If the Circle of Hands game will last I will probably translate the spell list in Italian, but at the moment she has not read anything of the manual.

Silvia: she played with me a long time too, just a few years short of Angela. She can read English but she doesn't like to read gaming manuals anyway. She likes to play complex conflicted characters that keep to themselves (and sometimes it's a problem when I have to GM bringing conflicts to these characters, not knowing what they want to do). Her preferred game is a draw between Annalise and Primetime Adventures, I suppose.
(and at Trollbabe she likes to play low-number characters, more apt with magic than fighting).

Gabriele: he's the new guy at the table, he has begun to play with us only a few months ago (when he went steady with Silvia), after playing for years only in traditional games, mostly D&D, where he was never the GM. After playing with us a couple of campaigns of Primetiume Adventures and Annalise and after discovering these new strange games he did read some (and I started making evil plans: finally another guy at the table who read manuals...) and after reading Dungeon World he was enthusiast about the game and wanted to try GMing it. I am always happy to let somebody else be the GM (it happen so rarely...) and we started a Dungeon World campaign. It went badly. Seeing him make all the old mistakes I did when I started GMing Forge games, and not considering Dungeon World a good game to break away from these habits (because it don't break away enough from that style of playing) I tried to give him advices but he ended up trying to guide the game in a pre-determined story anyway, simply because he didn't know any other way to GM that kind of game. After a few weeks he did step down for the GM's role, confessing that he had in fact "cheated" behind the screen (pumping the NPCs stats as needed), because he was seeing his story unravel, but that was the last straw for his enthusiasm for Dungeon World.

So, I have a player that likes to read gaming manuals, and wants to learn how to GM long-form fantay games with a large setting. I want to show him that there are precise procedures that would allow him to do right that without preparing a story, and I have just the game on my library that I wanted to play for months that has a very good (In my opinion) of doing exactly that... so the book that I would suggest to him about how to GM these games it's the exact same book that I need being read by the players to be able to play... what a coincidence! (insert evil laugh here...)

It would have been even better if he was the GM in this Circle of Hands campaign, too, but after the Dungeon World fiasco there was no way to make him do that. It's better to show him in play what he do read in the book. The problem is that too often having big settings, preparation time, and having to explain too much of the setting to the players, bring me down, lower my enthusiasm so fast that sometimes it doesn't last even to the first session. I am not good at explaining pages and pages of setting material during a game, it tires me, and the results usually is simply a game session where I have always to explain things: what to roll, when, where, why, what people in this setting do in this situation, what are the different possible choices... I want to play, if I wanted to teach I would have tried to become a teacher, not a GM!

By the way, I am taking notes about what kind of preparation I am doing for the game, to show Gabriele at the end, to let him see that really there is no need of having a "story before". Having already to write all that down I though of posting it here, too, to get suggestions and having someone to talks about it.

So, after all this preamble, let's see what happened in the first session, totally dedicated to explanations and character creation.

-----------------------------------------------------
First session, Gabriele has read half of the pages I gave him (I gave him prints of roughly half of the manual, he didn't need the heart-breaker essays, Grey Magick and all the stuff that it's essentially Ron talking with other Forge people about stuff that happened at the Forge: and I removed the maps because I wanted to use them, too: I did leave only the regional big map), Silvia has read around 50 pages (the setting) at Gabriele's urging, Angela don't even know what we will play apart from some bits I told her around a week ago.

During the initial explanation of the setting to Angela, I begin to get the fruits of my strategy: Gabriele and Silvia are much better at explaining things by voice that I am. I decide to never, ever play another game without having players that have read the book.

We do characters one at a time, because I want everybody to know who these characters are.  I begin making mine, as an example, then we go around  the table. These are the characters that we created:

I created:

HELGE the bard (we agreed that he's not really called that, but we did not know the dark age Rolke equivalent of Bard...)
Homeland: Rolke
Sex: M
Brawn 6, Quickness 5, Wits 4, Charm 9
Brave and Romantic
Entertainer (high) [professional]
Demeanour: stoic
Feature: emblem (of his musical tradition)
Arms: none apart from the standard circle knight ones 
Key event: I described a scene where Helge barely survive an Amboriyon manifestation, a celestial music that led an entire town to drown in a nearby lake.

KARL the dark one
Homeland: Rolke
Sex: M
Brawn 8 (it was 7, +1 for stats under 24), Quickness 6, Wits 7, Charm 3
Ambitious and Brutal
Scholar and Wizard [professional]
Demeanour: Friendly
Feature: blaze
Arms: none apart from the standard circle knight ones 
Key event: I described a scene where Karl put a knife on the back of his Rbaja master (he was an apprentice) that was refusing to surrender to the overwhelming power of the circle knights, and was leading his forces to certain (and "glorious") death. Karl realized there were better masters.
(he is the only character that did know some magic before joining the circle)

Angela did create:

ERNA the immortal (having the lowest stats she got a Gift, and Angela did chose "when killed, recover fully for the next scene, once per venture" (on a Brawn roll), hence the name.
Homeland: Rolke
Sex: F
Brawn 6, Quickness 3 (2+1), Wits 6, Charm 5
Cunning and Romantic
Merchant and Wizard [professional]
Demeanour: Friendly
Feature: blaze
Arms: standard circle knight ones + knife
Key event: She was in a ship with her wares when the ship was sunk by a rival merchant that was a Wizard (she was not, at the time). Swimming to the shore she did swear that she would become more powerful and get revenge.

GERDA the wolf
Homeland: Rolke
Sex: F
Brawn 7, Quickness 6, Wits 5, Charm 7
Ambitious and Brutal
Outdoorsman and Martial (low) [freeman]
Demeanour: Formal
Feature: Emblem (she was marked with fire with a wolf's head, the symbol of her clan)
Arms: the standard circle knight ones + staff, sling, bow, hand axe, crossbow
Key event: she describe a scene where she is the last one standing in a bloody battle between two clans. Being the last surviving one of the Wolf clan and having nowhere else to go, she decides to go to offer her service to the king as a warrior.

Silvia did create:

KUNIBERT
Homeland: Spurr
Sex: M
Brawn 7 (6+1), Quickness 5, Wits 8, Charm 4
Ambitious and Brave
Fisherman and Sailor [peasant]
Demeanour: Formal
Feature: distinctive work-related injury (he was bit by a shark that left a big scar)
Arms: the standard circle knight ones + club and knife
Key event: he was a poor fisherman that was captured and kept as a slave on a ship by Spurr pirates. The scene was when he was liberated by Circle Knights

SIEGHILD
Homeland: Famberge
Sex: F
Brawn 6, Quickness 8, Wits 5, Charm 5 (4+1)
Ambitious and Cunningl
Farmer and Artisan (she specified but I don't remember exactly what she did, she has not written it on the sheet) [peasant]
Demeanour: Blunt (she was described as a short, blunt no-nonsense woman with big muscles and a shadow of as moustache)
Feature: Emblem (she wears the sign of a tree, from her homeland)
Arms: the standard circle knight ones + knife and hatchet
Key event: she describe a scene where she was send away from her husband, shamed that she did save him during a raid on her village: she picked up his weapons and killed a enemy warrior that had already defeated and captured him.

Gabriele did create:

OTTOMAR
Homeland: Spurr
Sex: M
Brawn 6, Quickness 5, Wits 9, Charm 6
Ambitious and Cunning
Merchant, sailor and wizard [freeman]
Demeanour: Formal
Feature: Emblem (a yellow bandana)
Arms: the standard circle knight ones + knife and club
Key event: he described a scene very similar to the one described for Erna, but I don't remember who was the first one to be created. The one difference was that he was the owner of the ship, not a passenger. He, too, was still not a wizard at the time.

TORMUND
Homeland: Famberge
Sex: M
Brawn 6, Quickness 7, Wits 5, Charm 5 (4+1)
Cunning and Romantic
Outdoorsman and Artisan (woodworker) [freeman]
Demeanour: Formal
Feature: blaze
Arms: the standard circle knight ones + knife, staff, sling, bow, hand axe.
Key event: he described Tormund finding his best friend disembowelled and tied to a tree, in what he thought was a dark magical ritual

At the end the totals were 23, 24, 25, 19, 23, 23, 22, 26: 5 characters (up to a total of 23) got a +1 and Erna got a magical Gift.

So, in total: 5 males, 3 females. 3 Wizards,  5 not-wizards.  4 From Rolke, 2 from Spurr, 2 from Famberge, but the thing that jump to me is that we have 3 professionals, 3 Freemen, 2 peasants, but no one from gentry: shall we have class warfare in Rolke? 

[Ron Edwards]

Quickly (sorry about the brevity, not intended to be terse)

1. The rule is simply to show each player the bulleted list from Chapter 1, and to answer any questions. No other rules-reading should be involved. I don't really understand why you were so concerned with them reading rules and why you tried to get them to read so much of them.

2. None of the player's Key Events seem to have anything meaningful to do with the Circle or, even indirectly, with a principle-based opposition to the entirety of the Rbaja/Amboriyon war. That worries me that they have no idea what a "circle knight" is.

3. The social-rank composition of the whole Circle doesn't mean anything because you'll only see three of them in action at any given time. There's no implied original-gentry identity for the Circle, in fact, in your group's Circle, that seems entirely out of the question. I worry a little that you're bringing Arthurian expectations into your mental framework and seeing them violated, and therefore thinking that means something.

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

Why I think it's important that at least Gabriele will read the rules? Well, in this specific case, this time, because I want to show him another way of creating adventures (or, in this case, "ventures") that don't require all the "story-before" he did with Dungeon World.

But more in general, I think that the rpg subculture bullshit about "The GM is the one who must explain everything to the players" is socially and creatively totally bankrupt.

There is no reason why the GM should be the one who explain the setting or the rules at the table (I am often the rule checker or arbiter even when I don't play as the GM, for example), apart from the old habits from the times of "secrets GM guides that players should not read" and mega-plots. And this old habit should have been thrown into the trash with them.

Why the fact that I, for example, would like to play as referrer and/or antagonist in a game should mean that also like, or even be good at, explaining the game? It's like saying that if you like to read books you should love to teach literature at school...

Non only this is absurd, it's even a crock: rpg publishers sell you books over books with settings that then you have to....  explain by voice at the table to the player. And if your verbal improvised description of a 300-pages setting is not the same as the one in the book... well, it's your fault, you are the GM, so you should be a fine narrator able to narrate all that in a few minutes, right? You are the "mythical GM" after all...

Ron, I know that you posted about all these assumptions about the "mythical GM role" a lot of times, but it's never enough, it has to be said more often, and I don't remember you ever talking specifically about this particular GM task.

I don't like to teach. I don't like to explain settings at the table. It's boring and often a waste of my time. And I find it absurd. If people play with me a game based on a setting, they should like that setting, right? So why they usually don't read anything about it?

When I like a movie and tell about it to my friends, the assumption is that I am giving them advice about the movies to watch, not that I will narrate to them every single scene of the movie for three hours every week to save them the effort to watch the movie. The same with books: it's assumed that I am saying "go read it yourself" with any kind of books... apart from roleplaying games. Then the assumption is that the book is so good and the setting so catchy, that they should avoid reading it themselves and hear me droning hour after hours to save them the effort to read a good book...

I would say that we play in a setting and the players show absolutely no interest in reading the book... then it's proof enough that they are really not interested. So if I start to explain I am boring them, so I should simply avoid to play in that setting.  It's logic, right?

It would be logic, if players (and in particular my players) were not conditioned themselves by years of this rubbish subculture, and had not internalized these bad habits, so that they are almost trained to avoid the book to avoid "spoilers". They (we) have played for years in a environment where reading the GM guide meant "not being able to enjoy the game the same way anymore", where the player who read the book was considered a rule-lawyer: I have expunged this bullshit from  myself, but the players are not immersed in these kind of discussions, these are concept that, ironically... I should explain at the table. And it doesn't ever really works.

(I am excusing any player who can't read the book because they can't read English, of course)

To put it clearly: without at least one player who had read the book and could show the others how to play, without at least a player that could be an example for the others, I would have never played Circle of Hands nor any other game with a setting that was not already know to the player (from movies, books or history classes), and for the same reason I avoid any game who cannot be explained at the table in a few minutes, tops (the last games I GMed with that group were The Pool, Trollbabe, Primetime Adventures, and two games - Dogs in the Vineyard and Annalise - that we had already played a lot of times with other two players who did read the book carefully - being the Italian publishers and editors...)

I have already tried, a lot of times, to play games where I had to explain the game and the setting at the table. It's not only boring and unpleasant for me, but it damages the game, too: the pace is shot down, with half an hour of explanations every time there is a new choice, the players don't know what to do and look at me all the time and do only what I tell them to do - it's for this reason that I want that the person who show them the rules is another player, by example, and not the GM telling them what their character should do.

You have read me describing what this kind of play looks like, Ron: do you remember when I tried Sorcerer the last time? And how you screamed in frustration when I described how I would explain, every single time, what the character possible choice were, by the rules? Well, this is what actual play looks like... when the players have no idea about what they can do in a game and always ask you what their choices are. I don't like it either. And I am not going to play like that anymore if I can avoid it.

Quickly (sorry about the brevity, not intended to be terse)

1. The rule is simply to show each player the bulleted list from Chapter 1, and to answer any questions. No other rules-reading should be involved.

This is what I did when I did ask them if they wanted to play the game: I copy-pasted that list into a email that I sent to the english-speaking players.

I am not interested anymore into bringing a game to passive players: I told them "look at this list: please don't say that you want to play this only because you don't care which game we play: I am going to ask you more effort for this game and it doesn't make any sense even starting if you are not really intrigued and interested". The "at least one player has to read the manual and still want to play the game afterwards" was clearly spelled, together with "or, if you don't want to read a manual, I could find another game that doesn't require it" (I would have chosen the pool probably, new games tend to be too long and full of rules these days, it's the Big Book Renaissance...)

They like the list enough to agree to try to play the game, so I said that they had three weeks to read at least the setting chapter and character creation (it's a ridiculous amount of time, but we had to jump three weeks anyway because of various absences).

I consider the reading of the manual absolutely necessary when you go and ACTUALLY PLAY the game, the bulleted is good enough to understand if you WANT to play it, but then... you don't know what to roll and for what from that list, no?

We were unlucky the evening we created the character: the player who got the free magic gift was the one who had not read the book, who could not read the book or even the single page with the gift because she can't read in English. I had to read to her the list of all the magical gifts, translating on the fly, and explaining what did mean "roll this or that" in this game. It did took more than an half hour (a 25% of the time spent on all the rest of character creation), with the other players already late past the hour we usually stop playing. Imagine having to do that with any single roll for the entire character creation. True, a lot of it is made up of rolls on tables, so you simply have to translate a single point. For every roll. For every character.

Then, the very first time we play a Venture, imagine the players say that they want to rent a room at the best inn of the town. And I have to explain the historical facts of life, there are no inn, there is no money, so why this happen and that, and try to summarize 50 pages in as less time as possible, and with the usual results of having players totally at loss looking at me and asking "so, what are out possible choices in this game in this situation?" AAARRTGH!!!

I don't really understand why you were so concerned with them reading rules and why you tried to get them to read so much of them.

See above.

2. None of the player's Key Events seem to have anything meaningful to do with the Circle or, even indirectly, with a principle-based opposition to the entirety of the Rbaja/Amboriyon war. That worries me that they have no idea what a "circle knight" is.

Yes, I imagine this is true. Don't ask me to explain it to them, though (explain that AGAIN: I did a little explanation about what the key even was, you see how it worked)

I have to admit that my own reading of the rules is at fault here:  what I remembered at the table was that the key even had to show WHY the character joined the circle, nothing else. So this is what I did try to show with my first description (the musician who survived the massacre of the village by the Amboriyon manifestations): you wrote to avoid any "and then he did go there and did that" and simply narrate a scene, but in my description I tried to convey the realization that these forces had to be actively fought, that simply avoiding the conflict was not going to be enough to survive. I don't know if that's enough, I considered a good enough reason to leave his profession to go join the only organization in the zone that fought both the magics

Even after the explanation and the example, at least half of the other descriptions had absolutely no tie to the the two magic forces. They were almost "and then he/she went adventuring" bits. I tried to rein them in by asking "what made you want to join the circle, in this scene?" and this is what caused the inflation of enemy magicians: "a guy sunk my boat!" "and this made you want to join the circles because..." "mmmm... that guy was a wizard!"

This is PERFECT example of what I was saying before: one player had not read the book, the other two maybe did not reach that point, or they didn't remember it or they didn't see its importance. All I had to fall back to was the old, tired, usual "explanation at the table", but...
1) I am not the book: I can misremember, I can not recall everything, I can be misleading, my explanation can actually make thing worse, and in any case, it's a short explanation out of context, not something tied to the book exposition.
2) I am not very good at explaining thing by voice (I am much better in writing, but then there is the usual problem of players that don't read...), so I did not make the point clear enough. Or clear enough to defeat years of ingrained "this is how a adventurer start" habits.
3) I dislike having to explain things, and I dislike even more explaining again, and again, and again.

So I weighted my options: accept the "oh, he was a Sorcerer" or explain AGAIN and ask AGAIN and at that point I thought that "Oh, he was a Sorcerer" was good enough for me.

3. The social-rank composition of the whole Circle doesn't mean anything because you'll only see three of them in action at any given time. There's no implied original-gentry identity for the Circle, in fact, in your group's Circle, that seems entirely out of the question. I worry a little that you're bringing Arthurian expectations into your mental framework and seeing them violated, and therefore thinking that means something.

That was simply a pun. Even if I say that I find strange that you say that "I am bringing" Arthurian expectations when you are the one who described first a young king uniting a kingdom with a circle (round) of knights and a magician as a guide...  :-)

[Ron Edwards]

However you feel is how you feel, I suppose. Let's see how the next thread goes.