Helpful and Enjoyable? Bah humbug!

[contracycle]

Having changed hemispheres, I would say that the 'No OOC' rule is so firmly established that you can reliably expect it to be in place pretty much everywhere.  I do think of it as a constant of gaming culture, and I do think it was present in the early works.   It may not be universal, but it is certainly common IMO.

[John Kim]

I, personally, am sick hearing responses that boil down to, "Oh that NEVER happens," or "Gee, that must be some FREAK thing that only ever happened to you," regarding how the groups I've been a part of functioned. It's incredibly insulting and is a complete belittling of mine own and others' similar experiences, so, really, please knock it off.  

Er, who is this directed at?  Me?  I thought I clear stated that it does happen.  As I said, I think that both gamers and published game texts vary pretty widely in the degree of IC/OOC conversation that they imply as ideal.  So that means that there are some on the heavily-IC side, as well as some on the heavily-OOC side.  But there is a big difference between "Some game groups seek a high level of immersion as an ideal" to "Almost all games inherently promote total immersion as an ideal".  

It's possible that we've had different experiences on this front.  I've gamed in a number of different groups, and they've been pretty varied on how much out-of-game conversation they prefer.  Do you suppose this is unusual?  From what you say, I can't tell if you consider my experiences to be a freakish outlier, or if you just have a different perspective on similar experiences.  

Raise your hand if you remember the "if you say something, your character says it" house rule? Yeah. That one: the one that's been spoofed in gaming comics; the one that's been offered as advice by the wise and sage as the cure for DMs in dealing with "disruptive" players.  

I've heard of it, but never actually seen it or experienced it in practice.  Are you suggesting that it was actually dominant among gamers?  As you note, this is a house rule.  The only game which comes close to institutionalizing it that I know of is Puppetland.  

All this is illustration of that supporting culture, the idealization of "what good games are like" and "what good players are like," which gives rise to the problem of discussion about the game, during play, being labelled as bad or distracting from the experience of play.  

I don't think this is simply a "designer's notes" phenomenon, either, since the games really aren't meant to be played like that. This seems to be an unintentional side-effect brought on by subconscious weighting in the text and in the indoctrination of players to the gaming culture at large.

Well, at least we seem to be agreed that published games generally aren't meant to be played like that (i.e. in a heavily-IC fashion).  So at least from the publishing side this ideal doesn't seem to be dominant.  And game writers are game players, in general.  

While I don't reject out-of-hand theories about patterns of subconscious influence and subtle indoctrination, it seems to me that the simpler explanation is that some people like to play that way.  They might not be able to write out a theoretical paper justifying their choice, but that doesn't invalidate it as a personal preference.  At this point, I don't see any reason why the simpler explanation isn't plausible.

[Valamir]

I've heard of it, but never actually seen it or experienced it in practice. Are you suggesting that it was actually dominant among gamers? As you note, this is a house rule. The only game which comes close to institutionalizing it that I know of is Puppetland.

You keep repeating this.  But surely you're aware that the actual game texts in the earliest days of the hobby were probably the least influential pieces of verbage about "how to play the game".

Its the discussions in Alarums & Excursions, the face to face discussions at cons where "real roleplayers" would criticize the "tourney players" in the first episodes of Role vs Roll.  Theres a vast sea of tradition from the earliest issues of A&E to regional mimeographed gamer zines to the early days of Dragon Magazine and the first BBSes that shaped and molded the traditions of gaming.

That's why so many gaming texts obliquely acknowledge the various trappings of playing fully immersed but, as you correctly point out, do not generally carry detailed instructions for how to do this.  The detailed instructions are not necessary when the tradition is already so firmly established.

When you give driving directions to a friend you might reference "turn left at the 3rd stop light", but you don't describe in detail what the lights on the stop light mean, or how to use a turning signal.  Those things are already deeply ingrained into any trained driver that you simply brush over them and rely on their own understanding of how to drive to fill in the details.

Same with these gaming texts.  

You are claiming that because the texts are not explicit about it, that they don't support the theory about how prevelent this attitude is.  In fact, I feel quite the opposite.  It is because they are not explicit that proves how prevelent this attitude is.  They brush over the details because they know they can rely on the reader's own understanding of "how to roleplay" to fill in the rest.


And by brushing over the details I mean throughout the whole text, not just in the "how to roleplay" section.  Look at how few games get really explicit about the IIEE of their game.  Without IIEE being established you can't really play at all.  If its not being established in the text, it has to get established in the play group.  Yet the writers of the game didn't feel the need to explain the details...why?  Because they could rely on the underlying knowledge of "how to roleplay" that pervades the hobby to fill in those details, and to fill them in closely enough to how they play to make the game work..."Of course everyone knows its the GM who gets to decide when a roll gets made..." etc.

There are lots of built in assumptions in the rules of RPG texts about how to play, and a very close to universal assumption in most of the traditional games is that players will strive to remain immersed.  Its all through the text in as much what's not said as what is.  You can't just read the "how to roleplay" stuff and expect to have it neatly spelled out.

[iambenlehman]

You keep repeating this.  But surely you're aware that the actual game texts in the earliest days of the hobby were probably the least influential pieces of verbage about "how to play the game".

Its the discussions in Alarums & Excursions, the face to face discussions at cons where "real roleplayers" would criticize the "tourney players" in the first episodes of Role vs Roll.  Theres a vast sea of tradition from the earliest issues of A&E to regional mimeographed gamer zines to the early days of Dragon Magazine and the first BBSes that shaped and molded the traditions of gaming.

That's why so many gaming texts obliquely acknowledge the various trappings of playing fully immersed but, as you correctly point out, do not generally carry detailed instructions for how to do this.  The detailed instructions are not necessary when the tradition is already so firmly established.

I disagree.

For one, an incredibly large body of gamers never participated in cons, never read A&E or any other mimeographed zine, and merely learned to play from "the books," which most commonly were AD&D, "Basic" D&D, Tunnels and Trolls or Call of Cthulu.  These books are ambiguous in some cases, and in other cases give strong indication of pawn/author stance.

I am one of these gamers or, at least, I come from this heritage.  My first contact with a gamer from outside my own particular lineage was 8 years after I started playing and, lo and behold, they supported the same "close to character but not personification" pawn/actor stance play with a lot of OOG chatter.  I had some idea about deep immersion gaming, and even played around with it myself, but I had no concept, all through high school, of this being the best sort of gaming.  It is not until I arrived at college that I encountered any sort of strong emphasis on actor stance, and this was in the context of LARP where, frankly, it makes a good deal of sense.

To give a sense of the disparateness of most gamers, I have yet to meet a gamer outside of myself who has heard of Alarums and Excursions, and I have yet to meet any gamer who has ever been to GenCon or, in fact, any strictly gaming convention of larger than local size.  And I have met a large number of gamers, probably between 100-200.  With the dawn of the internet and Knights of the Dinner Table, these people have come into some contact with the "gaming community" but, frankly, not too much.

I think that a *very* large chunk of gamers, including people who were writing for TSR throughout 2nd edition, hold these opinions.  I hold up as evidence the Planescape book, which contains a faction whose special drawback is that you cannot "take back" or discuss actions -- if you say you did it, you did it, and if you say it, you said it.  The fact that this restriction is applied to a specific type of character directly implies that this restriction is not applied to other characters/players, which implies to me that a degree of table-talk and "no, wait" existed at the Planescape authors' gaming tables.

Note that I am not saying that deep immersionists did not exist.  I am simply saying that they were not and are not the only type of gamer, by any means.

yrs--
--Ben

[xiombarg]

Note that I am not saying that deep immersionists did not exist.  I am simply saying that they were not and are not the only type of gamer, by any means.

Um, Ben, no one is claiming that. The claim is that it is very culturally common.

[iambenlehman]

Note that I am not saying that deep immersionists did not exist.  I am simply saying that they were not and are not the only type of gamer, by any means.

Um, Ben, no one is claiming that. The claim is that it is very culturally common.

BL> Okay, so I was being hyperbolic with "the only type of gamer."  Clearly they aren't the only type of gamer -- people here sometimes don't play in that style.

My point is that it is a little short-sighted to consider this the background that every gamer comes out of.  Because, frankly, it isn't.  Yes, you and Raven and Valamir have that experience.  Well, frankly, I don't.  And neither, it seems, does John Kim.  And we won't know who is "the most common" without heavy polling.  So lets not fight about that, and consider that the fact that there is disagreement about this strongly suggests that gamers (an insular, isolated culture to begin with) are high non-homogeneous in regard to Social Contracts, particular in regard to Stance.

yrs--
--Ben

[xiombarg]

My point is that it is a little short-sighted to consider this the background that every gamer comes out of.  Because, frankly, it isn't.  Yes, you and Raven and Valamir have that experience.  Well, frankly, I don't.  And neither, it seems, does John Kim.  And we won't know who is "the most common" without heavy polling.  So lets not fight about that, and consider that the fact that there is disagreement about this strongly suggests that gamers (an insular, isolated culture to begin with) are high non-homogeneous in regard to Social Contracts, particular in regard to Stance.

I dunno, Ben, I think there's a reasonable argument that it's very common. If it's so uncommon, why does it get made fun of in gamer comics? Why have I encountered people making it a sort of de facto assumption on the old Amber mailing list, on the In Nomine list, and, for that matter, vitually every gaming mailing list I've ever been on, including even Nobilis and the new Marvel RPG?

So, okay, there isn't a survey, but the anecdotal evidence is strong, and it's worth mentioning at least in part because it's common in a lot of places. I mean, we're not talking about something that only happens in New Jersey.

I mean, I'm more than willing to admit that not all groups do it -- I'd say it's been about 50/50 in my experience. But the point is that some groups do it, and that it's not a rare abberation.

Regardless, however, I'm not sure what you're arguing, Ben. The original question that opened this thread was: "Does this really happen?" And I think that Raven, Ralph (Valamir), Gareth (contracycle), myself, and Ron (who was the person originally quoted on this) have shown that, yes, yes it does, as difficult as it is for people who haven't encountered it to imagine it. The fact that you've never encountered it (and I say, "lucky for for you") doesn't change the answer to the question James opened this thread with, which is "yes". Do you deny that? If you don't, there isn't any real disagreement here, methinks.

Now, frankly, assuming that we can all agree that such groups exist, even if we disagree about exactly how common they are, I think they're common enough that it's worth discussing why those groups exist, and what they're actually trying to achieve with such techniques, and whether it's really immersion they're after, or something else. I dunno if that would be thread drift or not, but I think we've more than adequately answered James's original question, that there are indeed people with such attitudes and they are not a hallucination, and that their existance doesn't mean people like Ben is familiar with are a hallucination, either, which I don't think anyone was saying. So I'd like to get to a more interesting phase of discussion about those sorts of groups, but that's just my agenda.

James, where do you want this thread to go? Has your question been answered? Do you want to stop, or expand the discussion?