A Faustian Arc, or The Thin Line Between Narrativism and Munckinism [7th Sea]

[Wormwood]

Bear with me here as this is a portion of a game a ran some time ago, but I believe it presents an interesting case study.

Context:

The system and setting were both mostly traditional 7th sea. This was played with a fairly large group, in a weekly college setting. The entire campaign had some turn-over in terms of players over the course of the year that it ran. In most cases my GMing approach was two-fold:

1) present a variety of options, and let the players decide where to take things (one of my typical GM styles), extending things so as to make them both credible and interesting.

2) challenging players by presenting them different approaches to roleplaying. This took many forms, from getting several completely new players "hooked" on RPGs, to helping a wargamer to understand the more social (in-game) aspects of RPGs. The objective was not to convert players to a different approach, but rather to expand their range in general.

The events of this session occur ed the session after the introduction of new player. He was playing a spy for Die Kreutzritter, and OOC bemoaned that he did not have as powerful a character as the players who had been present since the first session. This was also a player who had a history of disruptive power-gaming and a history of getting treated unfairly for this and other reasons. I elected to give him a chance, and also attempt to expand his approach to RPGs (as above). Ultimately this was both successful and unsuccessful.

The general setup was the PCs are privateers with their own ship. The session began with them at a port selling off stolen goods, and generally looking for more leads.

Events:

At the beginning of this session the new player discovered that an enigmatic NPC, Spite, who had been staying on the ship indefinitely was openly offering to give anyone sorcery, essentially for free. The other player characters had been too wary to take up that deal, fearing some unexpected catch. The new player decided this was an ideal way to bring his character's power to the level of everyone else (or debatably beyond everyone else's). As such he took the opportunity to gain a new sorcery, which was basically Illusion (which contained both the theme of creating illusions and gnostic approach of treating the world as an illusion). I also informed him that the taint of this sorcery is that he would project an aura of being untrustworthy. He accepted this as the bargain for new magic. The particular details of this were worked out early in the session, and the other players were not made aware of this bargain.

Now at shore, he decided to inform his superiors in Die Kreutzritter of his discovery. He met with them, and demonstrated his new powers. They expressed some concern about this sorcery, as Die Kreutzritter is not particularly friendly to sorcery, especially ones due to bargains, in the very least they requested that he cease using it until they could determine the risks. He demurred, telling them to trust him that he would keep this new sorcery under control. Considering how much this caused him to be suspect, I decided that they would want to send a second agent with him to investigate Spite, who apparently possesses powers related to their enemies, the Bargainers.

Returning to the ship, with a stranger, the new player attempted to get access to the Spite. However, several other player characters, who have already become protective of Spite, were concerned about him bringing a stranger to speak with Spite alone. These two characters were the captain and a monk. Things became hostile, and the captain demanded to know who the stranger was. The new player attempted to bluff his way out of the situation, but given his aura of distrust, this only exacerbated the situation. Seeing things turning towards violence, the agent grabbed the captain, and ran through a shadow, eventually taking her to their local HQ, for interrogation.

With their captain gone, the other PCs went into something of a frenzy. They captured the new PC and tied him to the main mast, and tried to threaten information out of him. He refused to talk, keeping his society's secrets till the end, although again his aura of distrust was the final straw causing the captain of the guard (another PC) to decapitate him. Eventually the captain was returned (several hours too late to save the new PC), with a mission to observe and report on Spite. (This seemed the most interesting way to resolve her capture).

Ultimately, while hard feelings existed with the new player's character death (he tends to hold grudges), everyone seemed to enjoy the session. Most interestingly it was immediately clear that the session followed a perfect arc exploring the themes of the power and loyalty.

Now I find this particularly interesting because when developing a content-based theory, I deduced a strong similarity between traditional Munchkinism and Narrativism. Looking back on this session, it appears to present that theoretical implication in more concrete form. To me it says that the inherent munchkinist drive to dominate the culture of the local play group, can be halted part-way into a drive to mix together cultural input from different players, acting much more like a narrativist drive.

   - Mendel

[Josh Roby]

Sounds like a neat game.  Did the decapitated player enjoy it, or was it just the other players who appreciated the story?

As far as your munchkinism and narrativism equation, I think you're comparing apples and oranges.  Or more accurately, you're comparing a social agenda with a creative agenda.  Certainly a "munchkin" can play narrativist -- if your goal is to dominate your local group you can as easily do it with characters and stories as with tactical use of game rules.  People with other social goals (like 'collaborate with the other players') can also play narrativist, and munchkins can play with other creative agendas, as well.  There's no fundamental link between munchkinism and narrativism that I see.

[Andrew Norris]

It is an apples and oranges comparison, but I've heard it before.

Some groups have a situation where the GM pretty much decides what happens, and the players fill in Color and snappy dialog and whatnot. If someone tries to steer the focus of play, especially (gasp!) to focus on issues specific to their character, then they're obviously Munchkins, right? When "The GM is god" is really entrenched in a group, sometimes people take any effort at all to take the wheel as "dominating the game".

Our gaming group is playing a few awkward Sim-heavy sessions this month, run by a friend of a friend who's visiting. I definately felt "iffy" when having my character address a self-chosen Premise, as I was attemption to exert influence on play well out of bounds of what she was used to having players do.

[mutex]

The so-called "munchkin" sounded like he was doing a great job of propelling the story and generating interesting conflict.  Whoever beheaded him sounds like they were overreacting.  I hope his next character got a little power boost.

[Wormwood]

Josh,

From what I could tell and from what he told me after the fact, he enjoyed things right until his character got decapitated.

On the matter of fruit, munchkinism and narrativism are both social agenda, the later one just also happens to be creative as well. In this case the analogy is better put to comparing an apple and a red apple. As social agenda, one could reasonably transform into the other. I'm presenting a situation where that seems to have occurred, with very little effort, implying that the two agenda are closer than they first appear.

I could go into more detail on the theoretical underpinnings of a possible connection if you would like, but that should likely be for another thread, elsewhere.


Andrew,

Thank you for presenting a pathology where munchkinism and narrativism can be confused. This helps demonstrate why such confusion is not occurring in this case. The game in question is about as distant from a "GM is god" situation as it is possible to be without removing the GM entirely. Nothing above would have happened without player decisions at every point, in essence this game was of the form "the Players are god, the GM is the janitor". This is one of several reasons why I feel that this example should not simply be dismissed out of hand.


Mutex,

Regrettably he wasn't interested in returning with a little power boost. He did express significant interest in returning with a character who could kill off all the other PCs. I believe this had more to do with some of his prior experiences with player-killing (some of which I've heard were rather egregious - all the other PCs ambushing and killing his character at the start of the session with no in-game justification and with the GM fudging against him as well).


  - Mendel