The Forge Archives

Recently in another actual play post ---> http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=22017.0, Ron wrote something that really resonated with me.

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My take is that if CA is left to fend for itself, or more accurately, if differences in desired CA are left without resolution, then a group can function via what I call incoherent play. They can enjoy how they play together, the techniques and color and whatnot.

But only in comparison with play that does not utilize those techniques. Which is like someone saying "I like bucket seats, so whatever we do, as long as it has bucket seats, that's better than not." And everyone else either likes bucket seats, or can take them or leave them, so that's what happens.

The problem, or potential problem, is that bucket seats are not, themselves, the car, nor its destination. So people basically say, "you know, originally or if it were possible or serendipitous, I'd sure like this car to go somewhere. But every time I ever did this, those fucking other seats kept hurting my back. So now, hey - all I want is the bucket seats. Someone else make it go somewhere, as long as I'm in the bucket seats, I'm good."

Translate this into a ten-to-fifteen year history of role-playing. Now, the person is going to be flat-out certain that all they need to have fun, is that the game must have (e.g.) no one-hit kills, and lots of cool effective powers. Because when their character gets killed with some one-hit NPC action, and when they have magic but can't do anything except "read magic" once a day, it sucks. They'll tell you so. First priority, man - first priority.

Did they ever want to Step On Up, Dream, or Address Premise? Maybe they did. One, two, or all of them, maybe. But that is long, long gone in their creative history, They didn't know about it at the time and they know damn well, now, that any effort or thought in that direction is off the radar screen. So it's now off of theirs.

When those preferences take such priority that they override all else, then people stay together with a group only because it's the only group which doesn't inflict massive irritation upon them via non-desired techniques. This is Mark's Champions game, big-time. Plus nearly any other late-thirties, former college buddies, bored-wife-included, still-playing-Champs (or Ars Magica or D&D or whatever) group.

This described the exact situation that I now find myself in with two separate gaming groups. It was almost as if he was a silent watcher at my gaming table. He suggested that I follow up by posting an Actual Play account describing my experiences, focusing on the one I think has incoherent play. Once you open pandora's box it is hard to go back, once you figure out that you want to the car to go somewhere, you want to start taking a trip and stop arguing about bucket seats.

The Group and History
First, a quick history of the group. It was formed in early 2004 when I moved to Japan. A fellow gamer reached out across the intraweb and replied to a post that I had on the WoTC boards. Here are some details about the group, its formation, and some other social contract level details. I can go into more detail later if needed for the discussion.

Me – Steve – 31, gaming since the early 80's. Pretty steady gaming until college, where there was a gap playing some mini games with roommates and magic.  I started playing RPG's again after college. Due to my job, which is not military, I move about every 6mo to a year. The longest assignment has been the current one, Japan, for almost three years. The last place I lived prior to moving to Japan was Doha, Qatar (a small middle-eastern country near Dubai). I lived there for about 1.5 years, and the only gaming was done sporadically as play by post. When we started I only had this game group, and didn't know the guys except for Dennis. My background is basically "club play", meaning finding games through gaming clubs or game store adverts.

Dennis – also in his thirties – gaming since the early 80's. He also cut his teeth on Basic DnD. He was the guy who reached across the intraweb to build the group. He has a creative writing background and commutes all the way from Yamanashi to play (about 2 hours one way). He also has other game groups in Yamanashi. Dennis played with Gene in a different city a while ago when they were both in Toyama trying out 3E when it first came out. Dennis put the group together, and I hosted since it was central. Dennis is similar to me in that most of his groups run short session games.   

Gene – 20 something – to be honest I don't remember a lot of Gene's gaming background. He had played with Dennis in Toyama. Gene moved away about a year ago, so he doesn't show up in the later game accounts. Gene lived in Chiba and also commuted 2 hours to play, one way. In total Gene and Dennis are about 4 hours apart and we met at a central location (my flat).

Pete – 20 something  - didn't play basic ODnD I don't think, but has a long gaming background. He has expressed a preference for high power play and longer campaigns. Didn't commute as long as the others but still it was a good train ride. Probably knows the D20 rules the best of any of the group.

The sessions basically follow the same schedule which is:
* eat lunch together starting at noon
* start playing about 1pm and play until about 6-7pm
* eat dinner
* sometimes continue play until about 8 or 8:30 pm.

Generally I supply the beer, wine, and food. But that is because I don't have to buy train tickets and the other guys do. I have occasionally socialized with Pete outside of the game, because he lives close enough to do so, but Gene and Dennis live pretty far out. They would occasionally crash at my place if they had to do something in Tokyo that involved an overnight stay. We have two game sessions a year that are "lite", a hanami cherry blossom party and Christmas party. While there is still gaming, it is light stuff like LoTR risk, and generally the non-gaming spouses or SO's show up to if they can get the time off. No one in the group until recently had spent much time with the "Big Model". So for the purposes of the discussion of the first game, you can basically assume that we had never heard of it.

The Games
In the last 2 and change years, the longest single game was about 4 sesssions, we couldn't get anything to last longer than that. I have pointed this out to the others recently that perhaps this could be a symptom of incoherent play. Pete has stated that he would like longer running games. If I recall correctly, almost all of the shifts between games was initiated by myself. We also rotated GM's quite a bit, although Gene never GM'd.

I am not going to talk about all the games we did, I'll just start with the first one which is a typical one for the longer running games, and can always elaborate more if needed. Towards the end of the two years the number of sessions per game has been getting shorter. Now they are basically one shots.  But most of our games for the two years were similar to the one I am going to describe below. With the exception of some playtests of homebrew stuff (mine), play was D20 based.

Early 2004 – Eberron D20 – Lasted for about 4 sessions. I had just gotten the book and found it interesting. We started either at first level or second. There was some discussion on this, Pete wanted it to be a higher level game. But eventually we settled on the lower level game for a new group with a new setting.

I was GM. I basically took the movie plot for "ghost and the darkness" and plopped into Eberron. I can elaborate further on the prep later if needed. There some interesting themes in the book, and the whole fantasy train system combined with the "magebred" beasties suggested that plot. I do remember spending a lot of time pouring over the train details, the time it took to get from x to y, and other details from the book including the various noble and magic houses. I also recall that while one of the Eberron Nations is solidly based on the "English", the others don't have that feel. The one we played in, I picked a French theme, and made all the titles French, like instead of knights we had Chevalier. I also just picked some random Eberron beasties and made a micro-dungeon for a part of the adventure. The dungeon was to bring some of the ancient history of Eberron into the spotlight. I didn't do the travel time stuff 'cause I liked it, but did it because I thought it wouldn't be fair to fluff something like that in the first session. I wanted the word to act in a consistent manner for them. If I was doing it again it would depend on the type of game the group wanted. If they didn't care I would just fluff it, if they did I would make it consistent.

Character creation was done after adventure creation. That was a function of logistics such as only meeting once a month but meeting for about 8 hours. But I do think now it would be better to do character creation first, and then build the adventures around the characters.

The GMing was a mix of behind the scenes set encounters and key based encounters (all in all I think basically what the DMG tells you to do). For example, certain parts of the adventure were givens, they were going to face the controller of the lion regardless of what the PC's did. There were giant neon sign type of clues in the game as well, that said these guys don't want you to investigate their dig site. But in other points it wasn't. It was a given that they would find the micro dungeon, but not a given that they would go into it, but knowing Gene I didn't think that would be a problem.  There were definite "loss points" in the game, and there was real risk.  But given the system, D20 Eberron - which has "fate points or something similar", the general rule that it is damn hard to die in D20 with the -10 Hitpoint rules,  and the fact that I pretty much stuck to the CR system in D20, this risk is one of death through attrition and not single rolls. The bigger loss point was being sidelined for a while.

The reward for the mission, was (A) some social recognition in-game with the various factions, (B) a very large black magic lion which they had to somehow turn into a more real reward, but for now they had angry lion in a cage, and (C) a magic demonblade. But I knew they were never going to keep it. Taking it away was the next plot point. We stopped the game right after the blade was taken away by some bandits. I told the group that we should break and would return to it later. I was burned out after 4 sessions of prep and was tapped for what to happen next. 

I also recall that there was a very elaborate travel plan that I created, creating villages along a major trade route, figuring out encounters at which village, and the trigger for if the PC's faced those encounters. It was basically a balance between traveling in the wilderness under cover or traveling open through the villages. This was for the post adventure when they were traveling back to the person that gave them the "mission".

Pete has stated that he liked this game as one of the best we have played. I am not sure where Gene or Dennis weighs in. But based on my memory that there were moments in the game that overshadowed Dennis' role in this game, so I would speculate that this wasn't one of his favorite games of ours. But he may chime in at some point in the discussion.

Here are a couple of the highlights from that game looking back based on what I know now (i.e. after opening Pandora's box or crying the emperor has no clothes). These events took place over 2 years ago, these things I mention the players still talk about today:

(A) I don't think I could play that game again. I wouldn't choose to do the prep work.  There was a lot of prep in that game, including reading the entire manual, and teasing out themes I liked. Then there was all the balancing of Challenge Ratings, tweaking inconsistencies in the NPC motivations, making sure the time tables worked for traveling from point A to B, as well as statting the whole damn thing up. I think I spent roughly 14-20 hours prepping that game, not including reading the Eberron manual.

I understand now that I was taking player choices away from them at a lot of points in the game. My enjoyment from that game came from seeing how the prep material would unfold in the world, and seeing how the players would react to certain parts of the game. In the end, it turned out like my vision going into the game. At the time I thought, "cool, the game went the way I planned and some cool stuff happened", now I think it would feel flat like "oh, the game went as I planned, no surprises". The fact that the next adventure was based on them losing the sword, just feels plain wrong to me now.

The most interesting point looking back now in the game was seeing how the players reacted to situations, such as "what do we do with a 1000 lb. magic bred lion as a reward"?

(B) Gene is the type who just wants to see what is behind the next door. Even if that door is marked don't fuckin' open it, it will kill you. He did that in this game and almost every other game. He poked his raiper in little holes that were obviously traps. He went down to negative Hit Points, and the group found out he was a shapechanger not an elf. He got sidelined for a while, and lost a lot of rep as the "party rogue". Gene's rogue wasn't the tomb raider type, he was the shapechanging sneaky type, at least that was how he statted him. As a data point, Gene was also the one who comb through the splat books the most, looking for stuff for his character. I also think it is important that Gene never once got upset in our games, no matter how bad he got hosed, and he never GM'd. Gene was act first, think second. I don't think Gene was constrained by setting at all, the other players would have to remind him about how certain actions might not be consistent with the character concept.

(C) Pete seems to be happy as long as things go the way he wants it to go, but he won't always state what he wants directly to the other players. You usually find out after the fact.  He had a pretty strong character vision, a Neutral Good Paladin from the frozen north. I remember having to kind of shoe-horn that into the setting. He accepted the other color I threw on to it to make it fit, even if he never embraced it.  And I think he has a pretty strong vision of what he wanted in the story. He is somewhat constrained by being consistent with the world, but will choose characters that have little moral, societal, or setting constraints. For example, while playing a Paladin, this paladin is neutral good and from a far flung tower in the mountains and doesn't revert any known god in the setting, thereby removing a lot of constraints typically associated with Paladins. So while it was a paladin, it was the loosest one I have ever allowed in a game and the most "un-eberron" of the group. But he doesn't mind applying setting constraints to others.

His most frustrating moment was when Gene just shot the bandit leader. The heroes were riding home with their prizes (including the cool sword that Pete was eyeing). They encounter a place called "gallows gorge" (big red neon sign here) with a single lone bandit, saying hand over your stuff. Pete, the Paladin, was going to talk to the bandit leader with high diplomacy to start.  This was, of course, not as it appeared. Obviously a single bandit is not going to single handily try to take down a group of 4 tough looking folks with a caged 1000 lb black lion. But Gene went ahead and shot the bandit, and then 15 other bandit buddies popped out to ambush. I think Pete was upset with Gene because it wasn't the smartest trick in the book and he as the Paladin could have tried to talk his way out of it. End result was an afternoon of heroes v. bandit fighting. He did like that he kicked ass and took names during the battle.

Pete also played the token wizard in the group, a kind of PC who was never really around. He was used when spells were needed, and for comic relief. But again, I think that was hoisted on the group that you need an arcane magic user as I told them there was an encounter that they would die without an arcane spellcaster, and Eberron is heavy into magic. The wizard spent most of the battle under the wagon, hiding.

(D) Dennis was unhappy when his ranger didn't feel like a ranger. He had a pretty strong idea of what he wanted in the game. He also was pretty good at getting into the setting material, and being very consistent with his character. I think his game priorities are best described "I want it to feel like X book or Y movie or Z myth".

I had a critical fumble rule at my table, you roll a 1 and something bad or funny happens. At the start of the battle his first roll he rolled a 1. His bow string broke. I don't think I would do that now; it broke down the dream. Ancient archers of mythic tales never had their bows break at the start of the battle. He had bad dice rolls during the entire battle, and spent most of it hanging from the side of the cliff (he kept making his climb rolls good enough not to fall but not good enough to go anywhere). Again, the loss point is sidelining the character for a while. To the rest of the group it was somewhat humorous and memorable, but to Dennis I think the whole experience soured the image he was going for. Dennis was most frustrated with the Dice I think. It didn't help that Pete was jumping from one side of the gorge to the other in medium armor, and Dennis the light thrifty wilderness fighter was stuck hanging out on the side of the cliff.

I think this whole game is similar to what Ron describes in the quotes above about incoherent play, bucket seats and all. I have one or two more games to discuss with regards to the thread, but won't mind questions or comparisons first before diving into them.

My Goals for the discussion are:
(1)   help understand coherence better
(2)   understand the difference between individual goals at the table and the concept of coherence to a creative agenda
(3)   develop a means to communicate the above to points to the group

Very cool AP report! Let's see if I can help a bit.

Help me understand the social contract of the group. What was the understanding among you and the other players about what the game would be? Was there discussion among the players about the kind of campaign it'd be, beyond the PC levels and the fact that it was Eberron?  It sounds like you as DM drove the choice for the adventures but did the players have any input on that? Did you use any aspects of their characters as fodder for the adventures, like "Oh, I should include X for the paladin," or "Oh, I shouldn't include Y because no one in the group likes that stuff"?

I just realized you said, "Character creation was done after adventure creation," so obviously you didn't prep the adventure around the PCs but did you alter the adventure any based on character creation?

Were there any agreed-upon house rules? Was character creation done as a group with lots of interaction, or largely as an individual exercise? How much say did you as DM have in what they played (any vetoes or any "steering" on your part)?

I think I need to understand more on a few different layers to really understand your group dynamics and, therefore, try to answer your specific concerns. I'm drilling down through the Big Model, starting with social contract.

Hi there,

Adam, one thing I suggest is using a little inference, making a few guesses or proto-identifying statements, and asking the person (Steven in this case) how well they fit. The key is definitely to give them authority over the overall portrait, working from the suggestions. This tends to work better than asking them to do all the reflecting.

Steven, I'll list the stuff that jumps out at me in this post. You tell me which elements of the social setup are on track and which should be discarded.

1. Expats. Well, not really, but overseas English speakers, some of whom have traveled very extensively and widely, almost all of whom met in the context of "hey, we're here in Japan, let's hang out." So my first inference is the presence of a social glue at work which is significant - it extends the range of personal tastes and differences which people might be inclined to consider hanging out with. Granted, Steven, Dennis, and Gene knew one another before the group really got together, but I think this entire context is probably a big deal.

(Subtopic: ordinarily nationality isn't of extreme importance, but in this case, it's a factor. So, Steven - Americans, Brits, both, or?)

My second inference about that same feature is that everyone seems inclined to go to some trouble to meet up; there's a high logistic buy-in that everyone accepts. This also generates - over two and half years, mind - social glue, sunk-cost to put the worst face on it, or laudable commitment to put the best.

2. Age and gaming background indicates some possible inferences about the nature of the game being played, probably initially described as "D&D" without much clarification. This may be important because the thirtyish guys were both trained to role-play via something Steven calls "Basic D&D" (which needs to be clarified, but my current point is that it's definitely older-school), whereas the younger ones (twenty-something) may well have only discovered it though D&D3.0. If that's the case, then we're dealing with very different games as an assumed-to-be-common background. If that's not the case, then I'm interested to know what prior D&D strain the younger guys came up under.

Subtopic: one point about Steven specifically is that he has not lived in one place (prior to this one) for more than a year since college. That's like, eight or nine years! My hesitant inference from that is that he may not have much sense of role-playing as a part of a settled social life, and as part of adult life as opposed to remembering college life. So if one's model for "D&D" is best understood as "back in college," then think about what that means for any activities described that way.

3. The game - they play D20, period, never mind the bit of homebrew (more on that in a minute). This may be worth keeping an eye on ... how much does the group, as a whole, buy into the D20 myth, which is exactly the same as the GURPS myth from 15 years previously? The myth that says, "now you can play anything, because this is the system for anything." It's a comfortable illusion and tends to be strongly defended until it collapses by itself.

How long? Two and a half years, guys - keep that in mind. With all that effort and travel and hospitality embedded in it. That's the left-hand jab'; you shift your head back and away from it ... just in time to take the cross on the opposite cheekbone, knocking you off your feet. What's the cross? They manage four whole sessions per game (i.e. setting/prep/characters), maximum. This, for a group of folks whose gaming background - if I'm right - includes the assumption that play goes on a long time, including a reward-mechanic involving incremental improvement.

My mind boggles a bit, from that right cross. Yours should. You guys know what making up characters and prepping scenarios is like for any version of D&D, in this case D20 (which is even more so if you count stuff like monster-building). They've done this how many times? (Granted, in recent months or so, my impression is that people are more-or-less expecting one-session games. I don't know whether this is gravitation toward a preference or a coping mechanism for an ugly reality).

4. Does anyone seem a bit like the odd man out, in any way? Why look, Steven, it's you. I'm very interested in why and how you end up being the guy to instigate switching to play something else, especially since sometimes you're the DM and sometimes you're not. But for now, let's hold off on this point until after we talk about the Eberron game.

How's this looking, Steven? A decent foundation for us all to understand where the group is at and what issues or connections might be at work?

Best, Ron

Hi Ron/Adam,

I agree those questions are a good foundation to start from. I almost cross posted answers to Adam to yours, so let me take the time to digest and address each one in detail. I will say that I agree that I am the odd-man out with the exception of game in particular, which was a mutual decision between Dennis and I to stop the game. But I am getting ahead of myself, that should be something for later development. Let me work on this and get back to you. I will probably add a few more points which could be important, which is "other gaming activities", and situtation for being an expat in Japan (i.e. the only non-english teacher in the group)? Am I right in assuming these could be important?

I am hoping that Dennis will jump in as he has more knowledge of the gaming background for both Pete and Gene than myself.

Cheers for now,

Steve

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1. Expats. Well, not really, but overseas English speakers, some of whom have traveled very extensively and widely, almost all of whom met in the context of "hey, we're here in Japan, let's hang out." So my first inference is the presence of a social glue at work which is significant - it extends the range of personal tastes and differences which people might be inclined to consider hanging out with. Granted, Steven, Dennis, and Gene knew one another before the group really got together, but I think this entire context is probably a big deal.

(Subtopic: ordinarily nationality isn't of extreme importance, but in this case, it's a factor. So, Steven - Americans, Brits, both, or?)

For sure there is some social glue when we first met. At the point of the Eberron Game I believe that Dennis was gaming mostly through online, as was Gene. Now it is a bit different. Over the two years things (of course) have shifted a bit. Dennis has a group much closer than my flat in Yamanashi. I have a second group that has been playing the same game (Polaris) since September. Gene gamed regularly with a guy in Chiba, John, who showed up once at our meeting and then didn't show up again. John only played DnD. Not D20 Conan, not Risk, not D20 Aliens, only DnD.
Both Pete and Gene were heavy into World of Warcraft (there are various levels of intensity for that particular aspect of the hobby, Pete and Gene where in the Hardcore Raiding Part, I wasn't). Dennis isn't, and I was for a while.

So all in all, when we started playing I would say that this was the "main" group for everyone, as we continued playing there were definitely other avenues to get their fix, but we continued as a group. We do socialize when we can outside of the game table, and I know that Dennis has quite a larger group of socializing with others in Yamanashi, as does Pete where he lives, and Gene where he lived. Primarly for me this group has been the primary socializing, other than one or two guys from the office.

There is definitely some other Geek/Otaku culture going on as well. None of us are Japanophiles, so not otaku in the Yank sense of the word but in the Japanese sense of the word. But we all like similar movies, I have the "library" of books that everyone borrows from. We occasionally (when I could ... ah what you give up to be a father) go out to movies together, but of the action/adventure flick kind.

For nationalities, I am American, but haven't been there since 2000. In case its important, as you know I do move a lot and travel a lot for my job including living in the UK (several locations), the Middle East, and now Japan, traveled to India, etc. Work in a very multinational fortune 50 kind of office, with workers from all nationalities, spent about 2 years working offshore, etc. Gaming is how I meet people outside the office.

Dennis has been in Japan for a while (something 8+ years), speaks it, reads it,etc. He is also American but from up north somewhere (Illinois I think).  Pete is Aussie, and Gene was Canadian (which I was born Canadian so we have some shared bonds there) but is not from major urban centers of St. Lawrence River valley or the west coast. 

I only mentioned it, in case it could become important, most of the folks in the group are in Japan by choice (English teachers with varying degrees of ties to the country), whereas I am here by fate (Japanese company happened to get the job). Most of the group has a liberal arts education, while I have a solid techie background with a high interest in art and history. Pete's wife didn't believe him that an otaku would be living in Ebisu, and I think was a bit of a social anomaly for her. And while Gene would sometimes game with his students, I dread folks at the office finding out my hobby (I just put down art, history, travel for hobbies), especially when I worked offshore (you want to discuss interesting social dynamics among people and ribbing, try living on a rig 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off for 2 years). 

All of us are well traveled (occasionally we play step on up for who has been where). But Dennis, Pete, and I all have common interests beyond gaming going into art, history, and books. I have a strong Christian background, and pretty close ties with the church here in Tokyo, and read LoTR every year not just for the fantasy aspect but also for its religious significance. None of our SO's game. 

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My second inference about that same feature is that everyone seems inclined to go to some trouble to meet up; there's a high logistic buy-in that everyone accepts. This also generates - over two and half years, mind - social glue, sunk-cost to put the worst face on it, or laudable commitment to put the best.

Certainly there is in both Time and Money. On average the game day is pricey, and Christmas party about 5 times that.
But I think this should tempered a bit, in consideration of what I mentioned above regarding how at different times over the 2.5 years everyone had an opportunity to say "not worth it" and still get their fix else where. Some folks did, like John.

Quote2. Age and gaming background indicates some possible inferences about the nature of the game being played, probably initially described as "D&D" without much clarification. This may be important because the thirtyish guys were both trained to role-play via something Steven calls "Basic D&D" (which needs to be clarified, but my current point is that it's definitely older-school), whereas the younger ones (twenty-something) may well have only discovered it though D&D3.0. If that's the case, then we're dealing with very different games as an assumed-to-be-common background. If that's not the case, then I'm interested to know what prior D&D strain the younger guys came up under.

First clarifications on the DnD that Dennis and I were talking about. I know a bit about the history, so I understand what you mean, I cut my teeth on Moldvay '81 Basic/Expert and also on Dungeon! (remember that?). I had the AD&D first prints (with the weird covers and the naked succubuss in the index along with the +3 backscratcher joke), but we didn't use them as is. I could easily get lost in the past, so that is probably enough, except to say I think we were both in our youth both part of the local non-con version of play. Dennis was the '83 elmore cover edition. Yeah Dennis and I are the grognards of the group, we talk about things like when Dice were hard to get, players hard to get etc. We talk about MUDs and intellivision version of the game, etc. From what I understand, Gene was introduced to 3.0, and Pete may have had some 2e exposure? Dennis can you fill in this gap for Pete and Gene?

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Subtopic: one point about Steven specifically is that he has not lived in one place (prior to this one) for more than a year since college. That's like, eight or nine years! My hesitant inference from that is that he may not have much sense of role-playing as a part of a settled social life, and as part of adult life as opposed to remembering college life. So if one's model for "D&D" is best understood as "back in college," then think about what that means for any activities described that way.

I think I need to clarify a bit some of this. Here is the short order breakdown of my "hobby", let me know how much to elaborate more on. I would say that rather than "back in college" it was, back in "high school".

- Youth 6-13 – Playing '81 Moldvay with some 1ed ADD, my deities and demigods had Elric in it, I pretty much had all the ADD but played with the basic for the most part. I remember UA being revolutionary, etc. We played in Greyhawk and took over the Barabarian nations,  etc. I played a lot more Dungeon! though. And some old C64 games as well with friends like Bard's Tale.

- Teens – Stuck in the 2ADD glut, nough said on that, little actual play and hell of lot of talk. Most of our fun games were Marvel Superheros! (before the ultimate powers book), Gamma World (oh sweet 3rd edition gamma edition gamma world),  and Talislanta (the old first edition one, the one with the thrall on the cover). Add in a good dose of Star Frontiers. Dennis is also a big Yazarian fan. Shadowrun 1ed, etc. But I want to point out that I continued buying the frickin' books from TSR. I read the first FR book when it came out (remember when there was 1?). We played Axis and Allies and some other stuff as well.

- College – Still played some off and on, mostly one shots, heavy drift. Got in WH40K and Necurmunda mostly, and of course M:TG (and we played for ante, I got someone's forcefield that way). I would say I was in about 3 sessions of RPG all of college, but we still bought the books.

- Post College – stuck with mini's for a while, escpially silent death. But then itched for some RPG. Played a lot of Alternity, dipped my finger in Palladium for a very brief time. This was what I now call club play. I would go and find a club/gamestore and play. This is the last nine years. I think I definitely say this is different than college, where I basically broke from the game for a while. Between Uni and 3rd Edition, we were solidly playing Alternity, L5R, Deadlands, 7th Sea, some really heavy drifted WH Fantasy.

- Post 3Ed – mostly stuck with D20 for a while, but in the UK had some really good and some really bad expierences with it. We also played a lot of AEG stuff. Though my samurai were never right (I always wanted history in the game, so I played a Kamakura era guy which din't fit, stupid swords).

-Qatar – nada. I couldn't even bring most of my game books into the country based on the advice the company gave us regarding censorship.

-Japan – brings up to the Eberron Game. More recently have been buying indie games like crazy.

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3. The game - they play D20, period, never mind the bit of homebrew (more on that in a minute). This may be worth keeping an eye on ... how much does the group, as a whole, buy into the D20 myth, which is exactly the same as the GURPS myth from 15 years previously? The myth that says, "now you can play anything, because this is the system for anything." It's a comfortable illusion and tends to be strongly defended until it collapses by itself.

I would say I have 50% bought into the myth, with the big assumption of a bunch of drift. I don't now. If I want to play DnD, I would go back to the '81 Moldvay. Pete is solid belief that it is the game for him. John left the group cause we were going to play D20 Conan, and that was too different from basic DnD. Dennis is also a bit frustrated with D20, but I don't know where he falls in the myth category. I think we definitely knocked some walls down recently, although Pete is solid D20 all the way. 

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How long? Two and a half years, guys - keep that in mind. With all that effort and travel and hospitality embedded in it. That's the left-hand jab'; you shift your head back and away from it ... just in time to take the cross on the opposite cheekbone, knocking you off your feet. What's the cross? They manage four whole sessions per game (i.e. setting/prep/characters), maximum. This, for a group of folks whose gaming background - if I'm right - includes the assumption that play goes on a long time, including a reward-mechanic involving incremental improvement.

My mind boggles a bit, from that right cross. Yours should. You guys know what making up characters and prepping scenarios is like for any version of D&D, in this case D20 (which is even more so if you count stuff like monster-building). They've done this how many times? (Granted, in recent months or so, my impression is that people are more-or-less expecting one-session games. I don't know whether this is gravitation toward a preference or a coping mechanism for an ugly reality).

Yeah there is some truth there. I think Dennis and I thought "this is what you get". Personally we both like to tinker, and we both do heavy prep (Pete is the no prep required, lets wing it school). We both have reams of campaigns started and not finished. I actually think there is a different reason why we don't finish games, but think that may be too much of an assumption now, so I will hold off until I understand incoherence better. We just found out that Pete likes long games?! But yeah it was getting harder for a while. We were starting to go from RPG's to Pirates of the Spanish Main Day. But then Pete and Dennis knew I was working on a game, so they said lets play it after a few games of Pirates. That has been keeping us going for 3 months, but that game is basically designed as a 6-8 hour RPG game to play. Now we are here. But lets focus on the Eberron before going further like you said.

I will say that the left, right cross thing I don't quite understand. Not that I disagree, I just don't understand the analogy that well. Perhaps that could be rephrased, I think there is something important there, I don't want to misunderstand it. Let me rephrase to see if I have it right, "people invest a lot of time, energy, and money, and don't get to drive the car very far. Its like a vacation from the 1920's: you drive 10 miles on bumpy muddy roads, you spend 3 hours to get unstuck and have some nice lunch, then you get going again, you blow a tire. You wait 2 hours to fix it. Maybe stay overnight at some small town. You drive 30 miles, you have to fix the engine, etc. You are driving, it is just a real pain to get there. But people still talk about how much fun their vacations were from back then, there was socializing and singing, and you got to see the small towns, etc. That is where we are. Compare this to how it could be, get in a modern car, with all the right people and stuff, and zoom your off, on good roads with a well built car having fun getting to where you want to go as a group" Is that close or am I still missing something?

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4. Does anyone seem a bit like the odd man out, in any way? Why look, Steven, it's you. I'm very interested in why and how you end up being the guy to instigate switching to play something else, especially since sometimes you're the DM and sometimes you're not. But for now, let's hold off on this point until after we talk about the Eberron game.

How's this looking, Steven? A decent foundation for us all to understand where the group is at and what issues or connections might be at work?

Agree so far, with the clarifications. And yeah, I agree that's me. I kinda of knew that before posting, which is why I brought it up. Do any of those clarifications change your thought process?

Hello, this is Dennis.  I'm still digesting all Steve has said so far, and Adam and Ron's responses, so this will just be a quick post. 

As Steve said, I first started playing with the Mentzer red box Basic D&D game.  My friends and brother and I played that, and Star Frontiers all through late elementary, Jr. high, and high school, plus a bit when I was back on break during college.  We tried out quite a few other games (some TSR, most not) during that time as well, but only had long-running games with those two systems. 

Like Steve, Magic: the Gathering (plus beer fueld Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo nights) were my gaming fix at college.  A group of friends and I played maybe 2-3 sessions of a game (1st edition AD&D) and that was it. 

After college, but before coming to Japan, I played for a year with a group of guys I met through a co-worker.  The group dynamic was similar to the current Ebisu group.  In that year, all 5 members of the group tried their hand at DMing for a while (weekly sessions), some of us more than once, so we had at least 6 different short lived campaigns in that year.  We played a hybrid 1st/2nd edition AD&D game.  Shortly after I left for Japan, two other members of that group also got jobs elsewhere (but still in the U.S.) so the group broke up, but we still keep in touch.

In Japan, I didn't game for the first two years or so, until 3rd Edition D&D came out.  I picked up the PHB while I was home for the summer, then a few months later ordered the DMG and MM over the internet, and got a group together to play (including Gene).  We found out the hard way about some of the flaws of d20, that you can't expect to play it the way older editions were played, but we also found it to be refreshing because we all bought into the "myth" mentioned above, that you could play ANYTHING with these rules. 

Gene had played a LOT of 2nd Edition (don't remember if he ever talked about older editions or not), mainly Planescape.  And in this game in Toyama, he also liked to play (often goofy) characters that just HAD to look behind the next door. 

This group actually stuck to a campaign I ran (based on Arthurian and older Celtic myths), with a few players coming and going.  When everyone works on a year-to-year contract basis like we do, it's just something you need to deal with.  We often discussed other campaign ideas, but we were enjoying this game. 

At the end of the year, it was my time to go, moving to where I am now, Yamanashi.  However, Gene and two of the other players and I played online D&D and d20 Star Wars and d20 Modern for a while, but we had problems with a) the fact that Gene hates Star Wars (his Force Adept charater was named Smurfette), and b) playing online, even with voice chat, made it hard to focus on the game (players getting phone calls and ignoring the game for 30 minutes, or reading the news, or whatever).  We had a successful game going in Toyama, but online it just wasn't working.  So we stopped. 

About that time, though, Gene moved to Chiba and Steve and I met (and I soon met Pete also through the WotC forums), and we decided to get a game going.  Steve's told you the rest.

The Eberron game was our first game together as a group.  I wasn't too interested in the setting from the WotC PR (they focused on all the things that don't push my buttons like the magic as technology and halfling dino-riders and constructs as a player race), but listening to Steve talk about the political intrigue of the Dragonmark houses, and pulp adventure potential, I got interested.  Still, though, I really don't know the setting that well, and neither did Pete or Gene.  Only Steve had read the book, the rest of us had just read selected parts of it relating to our character concepts. 

Wow, this got long, and now I've gotta go teach a class.  I'll post more later.

Hi Dennis! Great to have you here.

Hey guys, no need to post blow-by-blows of every detail of your gaming history. Lots more room in Actual Play, eventually.

I'm drafting a post to explain the left-jab-right-cross, Steven.

Best, Ron

Here's what I mean by the left-right thing, Steven. First, no, you're not seeing my point. I'll state it very bluntly.

It amazes me to see that much time, energy, and effort (significantly including creative investment) into playing games which, despite their design focus on prolonged play, only last four sessions max.

Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

That's what I mean by the right cross. It is a punch. Someone hit me with a knockout punch upon reading about that. It is hugely significant and as far as I can tell, obviously the case to the point of being irrefutable.

To continue being blunt, I suggest that the extra-game aspects of the Social Contract (you guys like each other, you're getting a chance to socialize in your own language for a bit each month, you enjoy the shared pop culture background of having played D&D, et cetera) are very strong glue, and they'd better be, because the game-play itself is barely adequate even as a cover activity. I suggest that if the very same game-play were occurring among a group less strongly held together by personal and extrinsic factors, then well, it'd probably not have sustained the continuation of the group as such.

OK, now I have to clarify some incredibly important things, as you (Steven) are relatively new at the Forge and Dennis is brand-new, speaking of posting not reading.

- I am not saying you guys suck at role-playing and are terrible, dysfunctional morons. In fact, to the contrary, I'm a bit awed at the "spirit of persistence" at work that really values the creative effort and talent that you guys do have. Because readers will probably invent what they think I'm saying and repeat it elsewhere, I'll use jargon right now - this situation appears to be both functional (i.e. fun enough, sustained) and incoherent (in terms of Creative Agenda, there ain't any because no real reward cycles ever occur).

- I recognize that the Eberron game is from a while ago, and that you guys have entered into some significant dialogue recently. I'd like to discuss it in that appropriate past-context, which means that in some ways I'm playing catch-up to where you are now.

So let's talk about that Eberron game in terms of your three questions, Steven. First, you didn't plan on it being only four sessions, right? But the investment didn't pay off. Let's see what kinds of things led to (or expressed) its incoherence.

1. I don't see much group buy-in into the SIS itself, i.e., Eberron. It's pretty clear from your account that all three characters were effectively D&D drop-ins from previous play. You bought into Eberron and prepped accordingly, in terms of plain old gross-level SIS features (where, what it's like, et cetera). No one else did. I'm lookin' at a ranger, an MU (I use the slang term on purpose), and what appears to be a curious cross between a paladin's effectiveness and a chaotic-neutral do-what-I-want fighter. This seems to accord with the points I make about setting and situation in my [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21952.0) thread.

2. Your aesthetic focus seemed to be upon carrying out the storyline of The Ghost and the Darkness, more or less; theirs seemed to be ... well, I dunno what, but it involved a lot of decisions with dubious consequences, like figuring out what to do with a magic lion or thinking about who's going to get to keep the magic sword. If I'm not mistaken, everyone was most comfortable simply running through the mechanics of fights because that was most familiar.

3. Yet those fights seem also to be marked by a lot of murk - why do they get into fights? Because one player says X. What does one player saying X mean we have to get into this fight? (That is rhetorical; most role-playing offers no answer.) Then as you GM the fight, some stuff seems to get away from you a little and a character hangs on a cliff face, and in another scene, a character hides under a cart ... anyway, what I'm after is not that you're a BAD GM or anything stupid like that, but rather that no one seems sure about why the group is fighting or what it has to do with anything, and the procedural murk seems to instigate the fights without reflection or purpose.

What I'm suggesting is not that these things made your game incoherent. I'm saying that the condition of incoherence led to these things occurring. Does that make sense? I think it might be useful to walk our way through that reasoning.

Best, Ron
edited to fix the link

I'll jump in here with a few opinions about our Eberron play of my own before Steve answers your questions, Ron.

As for me, you're right that I hadn't fully bought into the Eberron setting (not knowing much about it, and having initial reservations about it) but as the play went on, I think I was trying to buy into it.  One of the problems was that I was playing a character that knew his world, but I knew relatively little as a player.  Like you mentioned, getting into combat, where we all knew the rules and the trappings of Eberron were irrelevant, was a bit of a relief for all of us, I think. 

Pete, playing the Paladin, I think just wanted to play his character concept, and accepted Eberron because it plays fast and loose with alignment. 

Gene, playing the Changeling Rogue, got into the setting a bit more, as a "cosmopolitan spy in more rustic lands" but not 100% into the setting, either.

I think that might have led to some of Steve's frustration at the game.  He spent a lot of time preping and getting to know Eberron, but due to logistics, he's the only one who had the book so the rest of us just got to look at it during down time at game sessions.  So he was jazzed about Eberron, the rest of us were either on a "let's just give it a test drive' attitude, or "I could care less if it's Eberron, Faerun, or Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory as long as I play this character."

I also feel that Steve was trying hard to work with my character's background (his House, relatives, backstory) into the main story, but Pete's PC background, other than a connection to my character we decided on, had no real "play" within the story, and Gene's character from Sharn's background was sort of nebulous and never came up in the story of the first few sessions either. 

This may have kept Pete and Gene from enjoying the game as much as they could have.  I was getting into the story, but in combat and skill focused encounters was not performing well, so that was part of my hang-up. 

__________________________________
Also, a slight aside about our group's social contract.  As this Eberron game was our first game as a group.  I've never liked critical fumble rules (and in the string of incoherent play before I came to Japan I mentioned in my first post, the group insisted on them so I was the odd man out).

But I didn't speak up when Steve said he would use them.  I guess I had the attitude of "it's his game, we'll use his rules."  If I'd spoken up, Steve might not have used them, and that would have solved one of my biggest problems with how the game was playing out.  I've got only myself to blame for that. 

Ron,

I am going to try to unpack some of this to get my head around it, there is a lot there. Let me know if I am missing something crucial thing to the next step. I am going to go a bit out of order if that is OK to the things that made the biggest impact of what I was hoping to get out of the discussion? I don't want to miss stuff though, so remind me or poke me for more details as warranted. I am not trying to be rude by quoting or posting, let me know if you think this is too much akin to interrupting the conversation.

Part I - The issue

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What I'm suggesting is not that these things made your game incoherent. I'm saying that the condition of incoherence led to these things occurring. Does that make sense? I think it might be useful to walk our way through that reasoning.

and

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this situation appears to be both functional (i.e. fun enough, sustained) and incoherent (in terms of Creative Agenda, there ain't any because no real reward cycles ever occur

This strikes home. I 100% agree lets take the discussion down this road. I want to learn more methods to aplly in a roleplaying group to have coherence from the set-up on so that such things do not happen in future play. Being honest I still don't get the big model all the way, so let me check some of the jargon, using the old standby of rewording it to test comprehension:

By Coherence, we mean that all the players at the table *share* a common agenda beyond let's play. That play that emerges from pursuing that agenda as a group is engaging enough that players want to continue  that play on its own merit outside of other extra-game social bonds or the concept that "playing any game is enough".

If this is correct, my follow up questions to pursue in this discussion are how do you turn invidual objectives into a coherent agenda? I am assuming that when you start a game, since as you say you need sustained play to see the rewards in action, you don't have an agenda? Or am I missing something, or is this whole thing determential to the discussion at hand?

I have never played in a group yet that sat down and said, right we are pursuing a "insert word" agenda for ths game.  (and as you are aware I have a broad range of contacts with gamers from around the world, not the same as others but clearly more than the college buddies who have been playing since college together). Is this the problem that we don't do that?  

I understand that it make take some other discussion to get around to these points, but don't want to orphan them. They are important to me.


Funactional means that the activity is engaging enough to continue to do it, month after month for 2.5 years. By activity we mean the whole shooting match, food, jokes, outside conversations, rolling dice, etc.

The implication is that functional coherent play >>>more fun>>>than incoherent functional play. I think I can get behind that and want to learn how to turn one into the other.

Part II - Addressing this in the Actual Play

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1. I don't see much group buy-in into the SIS itself, i.e., Eberron. It's pretty clear from your account that all three characters were effectively D&D drop-ins from previous play. You bought into Eberron and prepped accordingly, in terms of plain old gross-level SIS features (where, what it's like, et cetera). No one else did. I'm lookin' at a ranger, an MU (I use the slang term on purpose), and what appears to be a curious cross between a paladin's effectiveness and a chaotic-neutral do-what-I-want fighter. This seems to accord with the points I make about setting and situation in my [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu thread.

Agree with a clarification. I didn't eloborate enough, I think that some of the players at the table, Dennis and Myself, did address some of the setting. Dennis' ranger was tailored made to Eberron. One of the things that Eberron does address is saying lets make setting fit 3E rules and not the other way around. Here is an example, Half-Elves in Eberron are a seperate and distinct race, they have their own culture, language, etc. the new kids on the block type of thing. Dennis totally got into that. Eberron has different houses with competiting issues, these were central to the color of the game, and reinforced at every point in the game from myself and to a lesser extent through his character Dennis.

The sword was particullary Eberronish, based on the myths.

Gene was focused on Eberron in terms of the rules for this new race. Agree that this is just putting your pinky toe in the water.

Again, these sound defensive, and they aren't meant to be. Lets say at the Macro level if there was any buy-in, it was parital and primarly focused on color.   And clearly did not not impact situtation, or character actions to the extent that a juicy good setting can (ala your excellent thread on TSOY and the world of Near). The Ghost in the Darkness was the primary driver with Eberron color? Is that fair or too defensive? Part of the symptom is the "steve has all the books situtaiton to a great extent, and the fact that folks around the table (including GM) weren't digging into the setting to bind all of the elements into the SIS together. I could tentatively say that if the latter happened, potentially a SIM CA woud have emerged? Or this a stop right there statement.

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2. Your aesthetic focus seemed to be upon carrying out the storyline of The Ghost and the Darkness, more or less; theirs seemed to be ... well, I dunno what, but it involved a lot of decisions with dubious consequences, like figuring out what to do with a magic lion or thinking about who's going to get to keep the magic sword. If I'm not mistaken, everyone was most comfortable simply running through the mechanics of fights because that was most familiar.

Fair enough. There was definetly some excitement around the table for some of the exploration (I mean that in the little sense of the world) as the story unfolded. Fights weren't the only thing they did. Lots of talking and stuff too, but in general that was it. I think the magic Lion was my way of saying you complete the mission and instead of getting a bunch of gold, you get a "magic lion" now figure out what to do with it. I seem to recall castle rustlers being brought up, which while funny sorta killed the dream.  To be honest I was hoping that those two points would turn into "bangs". You have these two things now what do you do? Cause I didn't have much after the Ghost and the Darkness, that scenario took a lot of prep and lot out of me.

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3. Yet those fights seem also to be marked by a lot of murk - why do they get into fights? Because one player says X. What does one player saying X mean we have to get into this fight? (That is rhetorical; most role-playing offers no answer.) Then as you GM the fight, some stuff seems to get away from you a little and a character hangs on a cliff face, and in another scene, a character hides under a cart ... anyway, what I'm after is not that you're a BAD GM or anything stupid like that, but rather that no one seems sure about why the group is fighting or what it has to do with anything, and the procedural murk seems to instigate the fights without reflection or purpose.

I want to go one further with this, and say not just the fights but everything, including Gene sticking his raiper in the "obvious" trap. Let me unpack murk again. If I understand correctly this is an IEEE issue? Down at the implementing techniques and what is allowed by the group regarding the implementation of those techniques. Just because Gene says I shoot him before Pete says "no wait" i want to talk to him, don't neccessarly means that I (GM) should be rolling initiative? This is murk right? The uncertaintness of how you apply techniques as a group and some of the issues that you have raised in other threads about authority? Or is this offbase?

Does is change anything at all if I stated at the beginning of the game think carefully before you say what your character does, I will take that as stated fact? Or if I use initiative to determine whether Pete gets to talk first before Gene gets to shoot?  I ask that to see if understand correctly where Murk lies. If I understand it right, these two questions wouldn't address Murk. And that even stating those two facts means that I could potentially upsetting someones objectives/agenda going into the game if those aren't discussed openly?

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Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

Right on, clearly number 2. There is an evolution that happens, besides a brief sustainable stint with the D20 aliens game (my favorite game we had to date), the games got shorter. We shifted more frequently. Board games and mini-games started to be talked about. A brief injection of some playtesting of steve's wacky games (which we agree to discuss later, but is important in the chronology eventually).

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It amazes me to see that much time, energy, and effort (significantly including creative investment) into playing games which, despite their design focus on prolonged play, only last four sessions max.

Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

That's what I mean by the right cross. It is a punch. Someone hit me with a knockout punch upon reading about that. It is hugely significant and as far as I can tell, obviously the case to the point of being irrefutable.

To continue being blunt, I suggest that the extra-game aspects of the Social Contract (you guys like each other, you're getting a chance to socialize in your own language for a bit each month, you enjoy the shared pop culture background of having played D&D, et cetera) are very strong glue, and they'd better be, because the game-play itself is barely adequate even as a cover activity. I suggest that if the very same game-play were occurring among a group less strongly held together by personal and extrinsic factors, then well, it'd probably not have sustained the continuation of the group as such.

Again, I don't think you can discount the "out" that everyone but me had that this was not the only or major source of some of what you talk about in the paragraph. But I think that even strengthens what you are saying.

Now, I am a bit suprised that you are suprised that we continued play for two and half years. I thought this was par for the course for 99% of gamers out there. But to continue the analogy, here is the kidney punch:

We tried with this "party" at least two more times.

The second one used the same party. Again signifcant DM work, I took the Isle of Dread and customized for Eberron, including detailing up all the drow (I can eloborate more on this, but these ain't your FF type that have typified elsewhere, in fact they felt as fresh as when they first appreared in FF). This ended in a TPK. So we stopped and regrouped and switched GMs (and that was when Dennis, Pete, Gene said I was like their arrentino GM). But In essence this was a new game. The sword was "handwaved away" but the villan in the first one appeared in the second, sort-of, he was always off screen. There was a lot of fun stuff in Sharn, etc. I can eloborate if needed.

Third had new characters but in Eberron continum still. This attempt was, screw this encounter key crap in the DMG, lets go back to the dungeon. So I take Ages of Worms and try to start them off at the entrance, which kind of worked. But we lose track and Paladin ends up killing the Deputy of the town, etc. etc. eventually we give up. I find out Pete hates puzzles and dungeons?

OK - hopefully this answered some questions and can lead us forward into addressing the issue you first brought up, that I quoted at the top. Becuase this got long, to put back into perpective, simply, at the macro 98+% level I agree with everything you said. I am very interested in talking more about incoherence in terms of how to identify and fix it, or in terms of how to set up so it doesn't happen. Again, if the post seems defensive, I can avoid the extra clarifications, its the nature of my job and carries over into most writing I do.



Offtopic

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OK, now I have to clarify some incredibly important things, as you (Steven) are relatively new at the Forge and Dennis is brand-new, speaking of posting not reading.

- I am not saying you guys suck at role-playing and are terrible, dysfunctional morons. In fact, to the contrary, I'm a bit awed at the "spirit of persistence" at work that really values the creative effort and talent that you guys do have.

This made my day :) Thanks [/size]

p.s. crossposted with dennis

p.p.s - Since the all important 3rd Annual Ebisu Gamers Christmas party is this weekend where the forces of Mordor will square off against those upstart hobbits, and the wife has made it clear in a very authoritative, both creatively and procedurally, that I must help in the preperation including strict division of labor of making of the cheese ball of doom, purchase of the liqour, cooking the pumpkin pie, I won't be able to post this weekend. And I don't think Dennis will either (since he will be there with bad luck dice hopefully being crushed under my heels). She has made it clear that the social contract is dependent on this fact.

Cheers Steve

 

Steven,

You don't have to use the terminology with your group to get on the same page with regard to Creative Agenda. Hell, lots of people play coherently without ever having heard of CA or the Big Model. We didn't invent this stuff; we just named it. ;)

Are you saying, however, that you never talked as players about whether the group preferred to kick ass and take names in a DM vs. Players sorta way or if it preferred a game where the DM would put the players (through their characters) in tough positions and make the consequence of every choice hurt, or at least say something cool? Or maybe someone wanted to explore the Eberron world and really stay true to the setting material, as filtered through the lens of the group. That's all, more or less, Creative Agenda, just spoken in everyday terms. (And, grant that it takes a lot more language to say "Narrativism" or "Gamism" or "Simulationism" in everyday terms.)


As I see it, the "Murk" in your games is the "Why are we doing all this anyway?" that seems to be floating around the heads of all the players, including you. It ended up defaulting to a "well, let's wander around Eberron and kill stuff" without really clicking in any major way for anyone. Gene was interested in the setting only as far as it got him bonuses for his character, and I'll bet he would have been overjoyed by a series of difficult tactical encounters that let him show off his rules mastery (Gam). Dennis was more interested in the setting and I'll bet, with a little push in the right direction and the right group, he'd have really enjoyed digging into the guts of Eberron and seeing what made it tick (Sim). Or perhaps he cared about that setting detail only as far as it gave his character social context that could get him into really interesting role-playing conundrums and showing what he the player cared about (Nar). With his yearning for high-level characters at start, the Paladin character with little connection to the world, wanting to use his buff Diplomacy skill to "win" the encounter quickly and being annoyed when it turned to a tactically senseless combat (yet enjoying the combat itself once it got going), Pete might be angling towards a Gamist CA but who knows -- I have no idea if his distaste for dungeons and puzzles is a "tell" or not. Really, we can only guess at CA with this little knowledge.

In any case, I don't think the Murk had anything to do with IIEE or any other low-level procedures and techniques. The huge umbra of incoherence overshadowed any concerns at that level.

If you all agreed on the answer to "Why are we doing all this anyway?" and you were able to carry through and achieve those goals, then I suspect the fourth game, and the fifth, and the sixth would have happened.

I, too, admire your tenacity and I'm glad you're all having fun! Maybe we can help make it an even better experience for you all.

Adam,

Thanks for clearing that up, I think I understand Ron's point 3 a lot better now, and bascially what I think you are saying is that there needs to be some discussion before the game about "whats the point of all this?" or at the very least if it looks like we are getting deeper in the murk, pause and ask that question.

Cheers,

Steve

I don't speak for Ron, for sure, and if I've misrepresented something he said I'm sure he'll clear that up. But, yeah, you don't have to have explicit conversations about this stuff, but once you realize everyone is heading in totally different directions, it's a good idea to share a compass. And, really, why not have a short conversation before starting into the woods?

I am still confused about incoherence in some way (at least as it applies to this particular game). Adam's post helped somewhat for murk, but I am still confused about CA. In his note he mentions individual CA, while in Ron's it mentions that a CA couldn't be formed because of the reward cycle and incoherence. Again the big point that I am looking for is how to set-up a game, and facilitate play to create a coherent game.

I think our next game after Eberron (D20 Aliens game) might have some good examples of a game that started in a direction that perhaps could have been coherent and then went down a different path.

Here is the problem for me, how do you take the things that people are excited about and weave them into a coherent CA? It seems really damn hard from my perspective for this particular DnD group, but easy for my Polaris Group (which I think is something closer to a Sim agenda than a Nar agenda after 4-5 sessions and some folks becoming vetrans). Is that an impossible goal for DND or for this group? Or is it that you just try, cross your fingers and hope this time it will be different?

But before going into the Aliens game, I wanted to check if we are done with the Eberron game and check my understanding of the above. I got the impression that Ron wanted to talk a bit more about the story and SIS from his three point post, and then I went off on some wild ass tanget screwing that up. Is better to shift the discussion to the Aliens game? Or get back on track to the Eberron game with the points mentioned above.

Cheers for now,

Steve
----------

As aside, not to detract from the above, but just to mention, the three-fold what do players want in the 3rd Paragraph of Adam's post seems a bit pigeon holed or forced to me and definitely off-target for Gene. The players at this point definitely didn't think in those terms, and since the play comes from them, I don't think it can be said, hey that is what they really wanted, they just didn't know it.  So while I can agree to majority of Adam's post upon further reflection, I can't take on board most of the third paragraph (sorry man, not trying to be rude, just saying how I see right now). It might have been more useful if I had said what they thought was exciting and what they wanted to do. 

That doesn't mean that I don't buy into the three exclusive categories though, I just think you can't say that someone sits down at the table and says I want to be one of these three exclusively. It is more like "oh man I want to be a shapechanging cool and smooth talking rogue" or "I am excited about the pulp adventures of Eberron I hope this adventure has some of that in it".  I think you can say that as play emerges that if it is coherent then one of the three emerges. At least that is where my understanding is now. So the real question is how do you take what people come to the table with and create play that generates enough coherency that allows one of the three CA to appear?  I can elaborate on what I think what the players brought to the table if that is important.

Hi Steven!

Let's hold off on the Aliens discussion until we're done with Eberron. Those games are separated by a lot of time, too, so it's good to focus for a bit.
I think you're getting a little tied up with "what the player wants" as a motivational thing. You should probably let that take care of itself, as a phenomenon. If I observe Bob to be enjoying a Narrativist CA with the rest of the group, then I simply don't trouble myself with whether Bob wanted it prior to play, or developed it during play, or responded positively to the opportunity provided by someone else's decisions during play. It really doesn't matter. CA is an effect, or an outcome, or more accurately, a motor that must "catch" in order to run. I see no reason at all to discuss putative or intended CA, if it's in any way distinct from one that occurs.

On a related note, due to the medium of forum/text discussion, we should always remember that when someone who wasn't there characterizes someone who was, it's just trying on a shoe. Adam doesn't know Gene and wasn't there. If what he says doesn't really fit, then no biggie, just say so, and we move on if it's not a crucial point. I think Adam's general point that folks really didn't buy into the setting in any way that made a CA possible is not at dispute among us, so the details about this-or-that person aren't so important.

QuoteI am still confused about incoherence in some way (at least as it applies to this particular game). Adam's post helped somewhat for murk, but I am still confused about CA. In his note he mentions individual CA, while in Ron's it mentions that a CA couldn't be formed because of the reward cycle and incoherence. Again the big point that I am looking for is how to set-up a game, and facilitate play to create a coherent game.

Well, let's think about that big point ... specifically, that you're basically asking for a whole lot right at once. Right now, though, we're only reflecting on that early, early game, right? The upcoming discussion of the Aliens game will give us all a line, rather than a point, to talk about. It is a big point, so therefore we need to take our time and really consider all these games you've played. I think that you're jumping ahead a little. We have plenty of time.

QuoteHere is the problem for me, how do you take the things that people are excited about and weave them into a coherent CA?

The problem is in how you're looking at it, based on your phrasing. You don't do any such thing. You don't take their things and weave them for others' benefit. CA is something that all of you want, in forms that are compatible enough to function as a full-on SIS with an inherent reward cycle in the system. Somehow, you're really hyped on the idea that you, personally, are going to make it happen for them, and the fact of the matter is that no one can take care of anything else, in terms of CA. You can't make them want it and you can't make them want your version of it.

Now, if you're using "you" as a collective thing, basically saying "we," then we can talk about that more easily. But at this point, you are like a guy who wants to learn how to fight and asking "how do I knock him out? How do I win?" And here I am, saying, hit the bag. A lot. Over and over. We'll correct anything that needs it, but we can't pre-correct (until we watch for a while) and we can't just give you an instant answer for "How do I win?"

Hitting the bag is repetitive, tiring, and demanding. Even worse, you can't be a machine, you have to get better via your own concentration and self-assessment as you go as well. It's not really fun. But that's how it goes, and what we're doing here. There is no "win this way" answer.

I'll be back with some more posting about the Eberron game tomorrow, and with any luck, we can finish up there and move on to the next.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Sounds good from my end.

In the interim between your posts, just want to answer a few of your questions bring up a question regarding the discussion (not the content but the actual process of discussion). I did mean the global "you" and not me personally. So to rephrase what can "we - gamers in general, this group specifically" do to help create a coherent agenda during play? I'm cool with taking the discussion down the current lines, and also understand that there isn't going to be an answer, but rather a process.

How does that motor catch, I think is the heart of the discussion, and I'm with you that it takes a while to understand that and get there, hit the bag so to speak.  But yeah I know there is no silver bullet, just a process and I can get behind it takes time to get there, and that you need lines not points. I can get behind processes, its what I do for a living.

Apologies (and specifically to Adam) if my previous aside was coming on too strong that wasn't my intent, I see where you are coming from. And I appreciate you, Ron,  pointing that out to me, cause it helped my understanding of where folks are coming from around here. I was basically trying to say what Ron said: "shoe doesn't fit, but its probably not critical to waste time to figure out the exact shoe that does since the overall point makes sense that the people don't dig the setting in the same ways or not at all".

But I do think I need to be able to point out when the shoe doens't fit.  I think you are saying, sure you can do that. Is that cool, or is that too hampering the discussion?  Really, I'm not trying to speed bump this or try anyone's patience, just trying to get on the same page about this.   

So not much really to add other than to say, I'm with you so far, thanks for clearing up some stuff, and looking forward to hitting the bag a bit more.

Cheers,

Steve

No apology necessary, but it's appreciated anyway! I just like to try to get to specifics quickly, even if they're wrong, rather than talk at some abstract level. If I'm wrong at my guessing, at least you can tell me where I'm wrong and where I'm right and I can correct my misinterpretations but keep the discussion going. When things get too abstract, we could talk past each other for weeks and not realize it.

(Also -- my personal disclaimer -- I understand this stuff about 90% of the time and I use these discussions both to help other people understand them as I see them and also to correct my own misunderstandings via teaching. That is, of course, I'm not always right.) If I start steering you wrong, someone else here will likely step in and gently correct me and get you back on course.


In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

Quote from: Adam Dray on December 07, 2006, 02:55:32 PM
In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

Yeah, its starting to make better sense, I see where you are coming from. Thanks.

Hi there,

All right, I've looked over the thread so far and here are some things I want to conclude - or rather, to check with you, Steven, to see if they work as conclusions. And yes, you (and Dennis!) are the arbiter of shoe-fitting, because you were there and we were not.

Let's think of that platform I keep talking about, constructed of green-painted wood. That's the shared imagined space (SIS). Let's go over that term a little.

Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself. No sharing. No imagining except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind, and certainly in the case of that paladin, it shows the narrow limits of your capacity or authority to do that in this group. Even if you did it thoroughly and re-tooled every character to fit perfectly into Eberron, you were only doing it for yourself. No one else bought into that.

This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?) The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters. As I wrote in a previous post, it is very likely that this group of guys got together to play D&D in a much more abstract or retrospective sense, and your setting could have been freakin' Dimension Z or ancient Rome for all they cared.

Hence no Situation (the key/core of the five components of Exploration). Hence no SIS, with the possible exception of fleeting moments of tactics or rolling damage amounts.

What I'm driving at this that your play-account certainly looks incoherent in GNS terms ... but not because of differing views on desired Creative Agendas. That's totally off the radar screen. There is no point to discussing that; that's like talking about whether we're going to have a democracy or a dictatorship when we don't even have a population, or even a planet. Sure, we could talk about such things, but without a population or a planet, it would be so abstract, and conclusions would depend so greatly on real-population issues which at the moment aren't known (they don't exist), that such talk would be absolutely worthless.

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

Does it also make sense to you that in those circumstances, even talking about CA is of no consequence or interest, when discussing or reflecting upon that game?

Dennis, I'm interested in your views and responses too.

Best, Ron

Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 08, 2006, 10:58:46 AM
This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?)

I don't find it odd at all. In fact, it seems like the two are causally related. As I understand it, the use of a setting means two things:

1) Develop the setting as play proceeds. However, a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed: everything has been sufficiently developed, and reading the sourcebook or the GM's campaign prep or whatever tells you everything you need.
2) Use the setting as a springboard for conflicts. However, if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

In fact, you've already discussed this before. Assuming I read you right, it's exactly the Karaoke pitfall you described in your Narrativism essay (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html). Is that correct?

Quote from: Ricky Donato on December 08, 2006, 03:53:32 PM
a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed
. . .
if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

All about presentation, man.

When I'm not GMing, I stay the hell away from the setting material books, so I can experience all that discovery during play.

When I am GMing, I try to tell the players just enough to know how to play their characters in a gameworld-appropriate fashion and nothing more.  Lecturing them on taxes and city gates is relatively boring.  Making them play through the first time they get to a big city, "There's a wall around it?  There's a queue going in?  There are four armed guys at the entrance?  They want me to pay a farthing?" is much more fun.  (In subsequent trips, we don't need to play through it again if the players don't want to; they already have a mental model for the experience, which is generally sufficient to communicate the setting features.)

Maybe this is why I never run games where the players know the setting as well as or better than I do....

Hi Ron,

I am still digesting through your response, I don't want to say yes or no just yet until I can puzzle through it a bit more thinking about the whole game.  Espically the bit about there being no situtation.

Quote
The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters.

I am not disagreeing perse, but I am having trouble understanding how we didn't have a situation as a feature of that setting. Is this saying as well that I (personally) had situtation as a feature of the setting, but the rest of the group didn't really care about that situtation at all, or that situation in terms of its relationship to other setting pieces?

But I am still mulling this over, like we have said before we aren't in a rush, and I would like a chance to mull this over more before continuing to much further.

I had a somewhat similar problem in my Eberron game, discussed here (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18369.0).  I think the linked thread might be helpful, as I did a lot of shoehorning myself, using pre-published adventures and dropping the characters into them.  I had all these players that had characters with strong backgrounds and motivations in the world, and I ignored them.

To root in Actual Play, I now play Burning Wheel (http://burningwheel.org/forum/showpost.php?p=31812&postcount=6) with the same group.  Everybody in the group made a character with the same focus on the situation I had in play (a huge glacier swiftly covering their lands).  Everyone wants to stop it, everyone has their own reasons for doing so.  There's talk about what to do next, and how it melds into the motivations of the characters.  It's amazing what a little discussion can do for a game!

Hello,

I thought I'd address David's and Ricky's questions in the interim. David, I'll start with you, and brace yourself, because I'm going to be a little blunt. As in, "blunt instrument."

QuoteWhen I'm not GMing, I stay the hell away from the setting material books, so I can experience all that discovery during play.

When I am GMing, I try to tell the players just enough to know how to play their characters in a gameworld-appropriate fashion and nothing more. Lecturing them on taxes and city gates is relatively boring. Making them play through the first time they get to a big city, "There's a wall around it? There's a queue going in? There are four armed guys at the entrance? They want me to pay a farthing?" is much more fun. (In subsequent trips, we don't need to play through it again if the players don't want to; they already have a mental model for the experience, which is generally sufficient to communicate the setting features.)

Maybe this is why I never run games where the players know the setting as well as or better than I do....

My quick response: so, how's that working out for you?

Which is rhetorical; please don't answer it. I am saying that, I think this approach is one of the primary causes for some of the dissatisfactions and hopes you've expressed, both in previous threads and in our conversations. It seems to me that it hasn't been working out for you. All those statements are written as assertions - whereas I'm saying, it's probably time to recognize them as entrained habits which should be reflected upon and quite likely abandoned, if you're to achieve some of the goals you've mentioned to me regarding both play and design.

Do you really think that the kind of engagement, which we agreed in our conversation was your meaning of "immersion," can be reliably achieved through these statements of yours? Based on your actual experiences? A lot of people answer yes, but they always leaven their answer with "if you have the right GM," or "if you have the right players," both of which are code for "No, but I don't want to admit it." The right answer is "No, it cannot." This isn't one of those things which can be left up to individual tastes and preferences; this is an empirical conclusion based on observation and critical reflection. What you describe is best understood at hurling handfuls of unidentifiable muck in a general direction, in the hopes that once in a while it may stick and that once in a further while the result may have some kind of shape.

Add to that the notion that a CA only appears and persists in the presence of a solid SIS, in which that level of engagement is reliably available (if not necessarily constant) for play. Therefore, if you're interested in these concepts and issues in application, then I suggest considering that these very techniques you've described are chains, or even limb-transfixing spikes, that sabotage that very goal.

Does that mean (as you imply in your brief counter-argument) that every player needs to have at least a Master's degree in the details of a given setting? No, it does not. It does, however, raise the question about how setting (specifically) is prepped and utilized towards the ends of a strong SIS and a reliable CA. There are several answers, all of them good, all of them different. However, I think going further into this shouldn't be permitted to jack this thread, though. We'll pick it up another time, although you can find most of my recent thoughts on the matter in [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21952.0).

Ricky, you're next. Braced?

I was contrasting the fascination with setting inherent to role-playing culture with my observation that many role-players have a terrible time utilizing setting as a reliable, fruitful element of play itself. You wrote,

Quotedon't find it odd at all. In fact, it seems like the two are causally related. As I understand it, the use of a setting means two things:

1) Develop the setting as play proceeds. However, a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed: everything has been sufficiently developed, and reading the sourcebook or the GM's campaign prep or whatever tells you everything you need.

2) Use the setting as a springboard for conflicts. However, if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

Since when? Which is rhetorical; I am using it as an expression of dismissal. The issue, as I discussed in the thread I referenced above, has to do with strong, usable setting, which as a variable is entirely separate from richness (meaning lots of stuff) and detail (meaning stuff about the stuff), as well as separate from the issue of developed-prior-to-play or developed-during-play. As long as a setting is strong and usable, it might be plenty rich and detailed too, and even well-developed prior to play. I used Glorantha as the poster child example and still do.

Here's the part you nailed perfectly: your phrase "springboard for conflicts" is right on the mark. A setting's role is to contribute to situation, which by definition means the fictional characters of interest are in unstable, dynamic circumstances. You could give me a one-page setting or a twenty-four-book setting - and in either case, if it lacked that feature, then it's suck-ass bullshit, and if it has that feature, it rocks.

Now, it seems to me that you are mixing in two problematic features and confounding them with the kind of setting I'm talking about. The first thing you're mixing in is to equate setting with plot, which is to say, exactly what conflicts will be faced by the characters and exactly or roughly, how they'll turn out. Yeah - I agree - if setting presentation includes those features, they're ass. But a setting may be a rich and detailed source of conflict-springboards which neither presuppose who the characters are in them, nor how those conflicts will be resolved, not even roughly.

The other thing you're mixing in is to equate pre-play developed setting with pre-loaded conflicts in a kind of highly-prescribed way, much like a published "ready to play" scenario. The only thing I can provide is a counter-example ... let's see, a few years ago, I prepped extensively for our upcomign Hero Wars game, which much to our surprise lasted far beyond our assumed 4-5 session run into the dozens of sessions and one of the longest (in terms of actual imaginary events), most significant games I've ever participated in. You know what that prep was?

It was all about a particular spot in Glorantha (the uplands of Heortland, for those who care), and a particular time after an occupying army had established a fairly stable cultural presence there. I prepped tons of stuff about it, in a small locale (it involved a theater troupe and a fairly isolated barbarian community, plus some incest-based backstory), including a variety of NPCs and a whole bunch of details to consider. But I did not presume who the player-characters would be. They could be Lunars, Heortlings, some of each, and any number of complicated subsets of each. How would they deal with the situation I was prepping? Didn't matter - who those characters would be, what "side" they'd be associated with, and what any one of them chose to do wasn't up to me at all.

So I'd prepped a small bit of the setting, loaded for bear in fact, but not yet the Big Model Situation, because real situation only occurs when the fictional characters of interest are actually in it. And it even gets more unpredictable from there, because the situation's conflicts (for those characters) were absolutely constrained only to arise through play itself. You used the word yourself: "springboard" for conflict, which is to say, we do not know what the conflicts are yet. And we won't until after the real-world participants have been actively affecting the SIS for a bit.

In conclusion, remove three things from your understanding of setting: when it's most developed (prior to play or during it), pre-established character-specific conflict (a form of railroading, potentially), and pre-established plot (outcomes; that's the karaoke right there). What's left? Setting. Places, times, locales, people, stuff in the past ... where whatever is to happen is set. Without all those connotations you've mixed in. Is it strong and usable? That's the only question. Just because role-playing tradition and text has confounded that other stuff into it doesn't mean we have to.

Hey Frank Tarcikowski, this next part is for you, perhaps as ammunition if you're interested. It is apparently widely believed and repeated that "Ron [or the Forge] hates setting." Nope - what I hate is stupidity, waste, and irrelevance in setting presentation. Those three things I've outlined for Ricky have very often been present in setting-texts for role-playing, and they have consistently contributed to stupidity, waste, and irrelevance in people's attempts actually to play and to enjoy play. I do, in fact, hate that. Given that history and the overwhelming presence of such texts in the hobby, it seems hardly surprising that the bulk of RPG design aimed at reliably fun play would start by avoiding the whole problem and taking utterly different approaches to setting.

But that does not mean that strong, usable setting is itself "bad" (nonsense - how could it be?). It means only that if someone wants to present an RPG with a rich and detailed setting, and if they want the game to be any damn good, they better make sure that that setting is strong and usable as well. To date, the games that have tried this include Conspiracy of Shadows, The Shadow of Yesterday, and Nine Worlds; to a lesser extent, The Riddle of Steel and (in a cunning way) Burning Wheel; I also think Legends of Alyria and the upcoming Robots and Rapiers offer good examples. My own Sorcerer & Sword offers a means to generate such a setting throughout the course of play, and I think my Azk'Arn setting in Sex & Sorcery validates that approach.

Best, Ron
edited to add the bit about the karaoke

Hi Ron,

You'll find me agreeing wholeheartedly, quicker than you can say "Setting Challenge".

Frank

I am going to focus on Ron's questions, particularly how they relate to the Eberron game at hand. My apologies for waiting so long to post, I needed to sit and think about Ron's original post for a while. Also, I think Dennis is away out of the country, we can hold off until he gets back if you want, but I am also comfortable with continuing.

Ricky, Jon, David, I am going to skip your questions for now, or at least assume that Ron has addressed them. I spent most of the weekend thinking about Ron's original post and have not digested the follow up ones. Although the "throw paint on the wall and hope you get a Jackson Pollock" analogy is probably pretty applicable not to just this game but many others I have been in.

So lets go back to the last post regarding the Eberron Game (which I quote a bit since there are so many between)

Quote
Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that
things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself [Steven]. No sharing. No imagining  except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind...

Snip

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you [Steven] that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

Yes, I think it is starting to make sense that we didn't have a strong SIS to build upon. I don't think it is quite as cut-and-dry as I had setting and the others didn't, Since it is a bit more shade of gray I want to check my understanding as to why I think it applies*. If you read the following points and say "yes" or "close enough" then I think I understand and we can conclude this game session as being incoherent due to a lack of SIS.

We have four players in this game, Steve, Dennis, Gene, Pete. I would like to look at some specific examples from play which make me think that we did not have the [bold] shared [/bold] imagined space, with the shared part being the big part.

example 1
Steve (using Eberron themes for situation) | Everyone else just got Eberron as Color
                                                    --------------------> Not everything got through, not shared

There was no sharing of Eberron as setting, rather just as color. So while we played out the adventure like you said we could put that particular situation in any setting. So there was some group shared engagement specific situation (e.g. what folks were doing)
(1) find out there is no ghost rather there is someone who is controlling the attacks
(2) there is someone digging at ancient tombs for something
(3) the train is being built late and the attacks are on the train to keep the train makers from completing the station meanwhile another group is using the delay to explore the tombs
(4) someone doesn't want the train station to be built for some reason

But the other half of those plot elements the ones that I was using on the left half of the line (the why part of all of the above):
(1)the Dragonmarked Houses of Eberron
(2) the History of the setting with the Hobgoblin Empire, the Draconic Prophecy, etc.
(3) why those attacks were going on, the power struggle of the two dragonmarked houses – the one who ran the trains clashing over trade routes and money for the one that ran the wagons and other animals
(4) the shifting of power with the dragon marked houses to the local gentry, etc.
(5) the shifty banker types who were searching for ancient tombs to get goodies for their own particular reasons and their understanding of the Draconic Prophecy

All of these parts (the setting parts) were not shared, in fact it was even crossing over the line in the diagram above, which means to use your earlier analogy the motor wasn't catching. Some part of it did cross the line, such as Dennis embracing his house and background and such, but that wasn't enough to sustain the SIS, since those were character specific points and didn't quite overlap into parts of the setting that I was drawing from in a meaningful way, so they just became color for Dennis' character since I was sharing them to impact the situation. 

Since the particular setting and character elements didn't become shared, it didn't really matter if we ended that game and picked up a brand new one. The most that got shared was just color. So as long as everyone was happy with whatever other color we threw out (such as later deciding to use Conan) then it didn't really matter that we stopped the Eberron Game.

(If I was going to draw the diagram as a picture, I would use circles rather than a line, but I think the little texty graphic gets the point across)

example 2

Gene [changeling character/dragonmarked house] | Everyone Else
                                                               ---------------------> Just came across as color

This is an example going the other way. Gene really got into the changeling character, and a very specific dragonmarked house. But those things he got into didn't really impact the adventure or the immediate situation in any way, they weren't part of the of the later list of five plot points pulled from the setting. Nor did it really engage or "catch" anyone else around the table to the point that impacted the "imagined space" in any way. So while Gene got into a specific aspect of the setting it didn't cross that line again to get into the imagined space that everyone else was doing. So to us, what Gene was doing with his character was just color.

Example 3 – contrasting  example from a different game
While we haven't discussed it that much, in my other group that is playing Polaris, all of the players are really engaged in the setting and what is going on in everyone's scenes. To the point that if you took that game and changed any of the players, or any of the characters, or any part of the setting, or the game that has happened so far that it wouldn't be the same game at all. Even though we have only had one scene where all three protagonists are involved, we are all deeply engaged in the setting and situations. We are definitely sharing in this game.

Whereas in the Eberron game, like you said, you could probably change any of the players, locations, characters, etc. and it would feel like the same game except for some color changes.

wrap up
OK, if those examples strengthen what your (Ron's) conclusion's above, and are illustrative of why we didn't have shared imagined space, then I think the shoe fits for the game. But before moving on, I have some more thoughts to finalize my understanding of  this specific game, SIS, coherency, but I want to check my current understanding before finalizing those thoughts.


Cheers,

Steve

-----------------------------
* I think I need to be able to get very concrete with the discussion and the examples, it's the only way that it is going to work for me to understand. If we just say Steve is engaged in the setting, and the others aren't, then I might get lost in a future game and just say, well lets get them engaged, lets throw more setting stuff into the adventure (which this one was already chockerblock full of it) to try and fix it. But rather if I can talk about the specifics of the adventure and where the players (all the dudes around the table) did engage, and where they didn't, and then conclude that the setting wasn't catching for everyone, then I think I can understand the concepts in a concrete applicable way, and not just a theoretical. Appreciate the patience for the examples. 

All of that fits fine with the suggestions and conclusions I presented, Steven. We're on the same page.

Also, your footnote is a perfect and wonderful explanation for why I now insist all discussion of theory at the Forge be rooted right here in Actual Play, or a similarly practical context like Playtesting.

Best, Ron

Great! Now I can add one final check of my understanding (which was in the first draft of the previous post but was taken out to make sure that my first thoughts were inline - hence the reason why I can post so quickly after since you basically said yes).

Now if I understand the exploration part of the big model, here is one of the biggest reasons why we didn't have SIS, is that I did have some of the particular thematic elements of Eberron in the adventure, and that those elements were very important to me and to my sastisfaction of the game. And because  I was part of the group, and they weren't picked up by the group, the motor didn't catch.

As a group we can choose to emphasize certain elements of the SIS and de-emphasize others. So, in speculation, if I had just been intending to use Eberron as color, and others were also equally supportive of just using Eberron as color, and it was OK to everyone involved to de-emphasize setting themes then it would have made for a more coherent game? I guess what I am asking is, you don't have to have strong emphasis on setting to have coherent SIS right? If hadn't had so much stake into the thematic elements of Eberron we could have very well said, we like this color lets keep going onto next mission? It was the twofold fact that this important aspect to me didn't become realized in play, and it sort of took the wind out of my sails to the point where I had a lot of let-down for the creative investment into the adventure without the pay-out causing the motor not to catch.

Or in other words (again some speculation here since it hasn't been played, take that into account), if we had all been willing to do "solve the mission" play going into it, and just used Eberron for color, there might have been a more coherent if weaker SIS. Now that SIS would have been shared at all levels equally, and whether it was good SIS is a matter of asethics, but if everyone had the same expectations going into it, and were cool with that, then it might have sustained play longer.  I wanted to discuss this, cause I think there are some players in the group, where the "setting" isn't really important, it only serves as color, they could care less if it was dimension z or rome or whatever. And I don't neccessarly think that is un-fun, its only un-fun to me if I was expecting heavy emphasis on setting.

It would seem to me, that the most important point to getting a coherent SIS is to get the shared part right first.

So is this still consitent with the concepts of SIS, or did I go down a wrong path with this train of thought? If the answer is yes, it is consistent, then I think we can wrap this up and talk about where to go next in the dicussion. If the the answer is "hell no" that is wrong as wrong can be, then I think I need to understand where I went wrong and spend a wee bit more time on that.

Cheers for now,

Steve

Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 10, 2006, 12:38:24 AM
Here's the part you nailed perfectly: your phrase "springboard for conflicts" is right on the mark. A setting's role is to contribute to situation, which by definition means the fictional characters of interest are in unstable, dynamic circumstances. You could give me a one-page setting or a twenty-four-book setting - and in either case, if it lacked that feature, then it's suck-ass bullshit, and if it has that feature, it rocks.

I have caught up a bit with the inbetween threads, and gone off and read some of the other referenced threads. I am not sure how much others know about the Eberron setting, and it may not be important here at this point now, but might be for David and Ricky and others reading. I wouldn't advise anyone characterizing the setting until they have had a chance to look it over. Now I understand based on the history of other products you might not want to even take the time as a consumer to do that. But at least give me the credit that I did, and so can discuss it a bit.

Now I don't think its bee knees or anything and it may not be as great as the ones that Ron's referenced (I can't comment on those, cause I have only skimmed one of them), but I do think it does contain some unstable and dynamic circumstances that can be ripe for play if you know where to look for them and tease them out. When I designed the adventure, I said, oh look here is a house that has X, and here is one that is looking for Y, and look over here is a little border war just ready to boil over, some sort of Luddite group. And here is a group that does Z and another that has W. It suggested the plot elements from Ghost and the Darkness, rather than the other way around. There were issues about techonology being brought to the frontier, the changes that makes to power struggles, the side agendas that different power groups have in the name of "progress". The feeling that someone goes through when they see their way of life changing and their own authority figures that they look up to saying, accept it and move on, and you really don't want to, you want to fight it. 

As someone who has been following the TSR franchise for a long time, I can tell you that it definetly isn't Greyhawk nor espically isn't Forgotten Realms in terms of overconstraint. And when I planned the adventure, I did it in what I have now learned is a DITV way, that is here is what is going on, here is what everyone wants, and here is what happens if the players don't do anything. To the point there was a timeline from day 1 to 12 of here is what happens assuming no outside forces. So I don't think it was the setting that was the problem, rather it was that the setting wasn't realized in actual play in a meaningful shared way.

Sorry for detracting, just wanted to get that in before the posts got away too far.

Cheers,

Steve

All completely on track and correct.

To provide another example which may be helpful, a group may be most invested in Color and System, with only the barest interest in Situation (and therefore Characters + Setting), just enough to provide the minimum "things" for "things to happen."

One might contrast that very strongly with still another group which invests most strongly in Color and Character, even diminishing Situation per se, and treating System in a funny way, i.e. imposing a "never really followed" overt one as a mask over a highly socially-driven, Drama-heavy, covert one.

Both of these groups may have a nice solid SIS ... as you say, if they're on board together regarding how it's done.

Two final points.

1. None of this has to be hard. It's quite possible for it to be stunningly easy, specifically by everyone contributing and expecting basic investment in all five components without making a big deal out of it. I've found that impromptu groups, such as the campus club "mini-groups" I used to organize, did very well with that approach. If a group does that, it's quite simple and in fact, predictable for them to arrive at a more "profiled" version of the SIS later, if they want, and for everyone to find their own place in what aspects get hammered hardest. But that cannot happen without that basic if minor shared commitment to all five to start.

2. Two things seem to be tripping up multiple groups described in multiple threads at this moment. First, a remarkable degree of murk, specifically a failure of procedures to arrive at situations during play - the people seem to stare around wildly a bit, then fall back upon "uh, Indians attack you!" or "the dying man gasps out his last breath, and his hand opens ... revealing a gold coin! With a map engraved on it!" Second, a lot of problems regarding authority as I've defined it earlier this year, which is not to say a power struggle, but rather ongoing confusions about credibility of input (what counts when who says it). What I'm seeing is therefore a lot of characteristic SIS-failure, which, to repeat, simply obviates the possibility of a meaningful CA ever gelling.

Best, Ron

Great, we can wrap up Eberron and put a bow on it. It has been informative, I originally thought we were going to get into the whole nar,sim,gam thing, but it turns out not. The fact that the conversation went in other directions I think is indicative that it was a usefull discussion (at least to me on this side of the world). I'd also like to thank Ron and Adam for their patience and being willing to stick with it - thanks.

Specifically to Ron, do you have the time or interest to keep going with the thread (I hope the answer is yes!)? If so, where do you think best line of thought is to talk about your points number (1) and (2) above?

(A) To dive into the Aliens session that was next, and that was a bit more coherent (or at least a big chunk of it was) in terms of the SIS,but still had some problems particullarly to an end-game scene that was rewarding to some, but frustrating to others? (Where Dennis was the GM - D20 modern)

(B) Or would it be better to skip ahead to where we are now in the last 3 months playing steve's homebrewed games which was a lot more shared for sure but again blew up at the very last scene of each one? (no-one is really GM in these ones).

(C) Continue a bit with the same SIS frustration, with the high level DnD game (except this time I think if I understand right, it was the system part that was tripping us up) But this I think is just a different symptom of what we have just been describing, except the motor wasn't catching on system for Dennis and Me when Pete was the GM for that game.

(D) Or better to warp this thread up entirely, and hold off until January to get the actual play for our upcoming game of '81 Moldvay Basic and see how we do now with the knowledge from this thread?

I think that A and B have a type of murk, but one that is different than your point number 2. I think those suffered from some very specific things that happened at specific points that ended up being big enough frustrations to be game-enders. 


Cheers for now,

Steve

p.s. I think besides telling me which direction Ron thinks is productive to take the conversation (assuming he wants to continue)- I think we should maybe a pause a bit before more posts of substance appear to let this all sink in a bit and would ask others to do the same if they could.

It can be a little tricky to go away and think and then come back with two or three posts that while seem to apply but are really a bit tangential. While they were useful, they made it a little tricky for me to follow.  I would humbly ask that if someone thinks there is more good discussion for the Eberron game to start a new thread and link to this one instead of posting more about it in this thread, I think I am ready to move on to the other games. Assuming that request isn't too out of line

Hi Steven,

My thinking? The Aliens game in a new thread. Let's keep going step by step and not jump all 'round the place; remember, the more context everyone has for your group's history and development and experience, the better the most relevant and recent concerns can be addressed.

So everyone, let's also call this thread closed. No more posting to it, please.

Best, Ron