Starting to Collaborate

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Last night I was in the RPGnet chat room on IRC and plugging The Wheel because I have no life.  SOmeone mentioned a game called Ergo by Ian Millington that was similar.

Among Ian's stuff was a page called Starting to Collaborate about evolving to a GM-less game.

It can be found here:
http://www.agon.com/ergo/collaborate.html

When I first posted this, I was going under the misguided assumption that Ian's pages were no longer up.  A quick search found them.  Go figure that one.  But you shoulda seen the original post.  I was offering to c&p the text and stuff.  Riot.

Anyway.  I'm interested in what Forge member think of Mr. Millington's ideas here.

[ This Message was edited by: pblock on 2001-10-12 23:32 ]

[Mike Holmes]

I remember that guy. He's the guy who published the "Avatarism and the Myth of the Red Queen" essay.

Hmm... I wonder what he thinks of the Forge.

I think his game can best be summed up as "how to play simulationist games with directorial power and distributed GM authority, in general, in order to drift them to Narrativist." I think that it's interesting that he's come up with what he has, but he seems to have missed the debate on GO and here. Or at least he hasn't updated his ideas, if he has stayed on top of it.

Mike

[lumpley]

By coincidence, I just put http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/rad.html">this up on my site.  It's about gm-less games too.  (And it's in no way related to puppies or old nick.)

I'm skimming through Mr Millington's game right now.  It does look like he's talking about drifting from Simulationism to Narrativism, but I think it's incidental to his main thrust, which is Play Without A GM.  Breaking the game into scanes and keyframes and lead characters and extras sounds Narrativist but I think he's using it to support gm-less play, not vice versa.

Or maybe that's just my bias.

I'm glad other people out there are doing this.

-lumpley

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Interesting Lumpley.

I'm working along similar line for The Wheel.  It's encouraging to see other people doing similar stuff.

[Le Joueur]

Strange as it sounds, we've been developing our live-action role-playing game mechanics for Scattershot (talk about an omni-general system) to function without a gamemaster.  (Although in playtest we discovered it calmed the traditional players a great deal to call the 'setting originator' the gamemaster even though they wield none of the assumed gamemaster powers.)

Fang Langford

[Ron Edwards]

Fang,

With any luck, this isn't hijacking the thread, but permit me to say that if Scattershot can successfully integrate LARP and table-top mechanics and approaches, or otherwise permit these approaches to be taken using a common basis for play, I will be delighted.

Not that my delight should concern you ... he said humbly ...

It's just that these grossly tacked-on, cribbed from Mind's Eye Theater, vague-ass LARP sections in the back of many RPGs are starting to annoy me a lot. I'd like to see some Live-Action stuff that really inspires me to try it, and that makes sense relative to the table-top issues and goals of play.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Machell]

It's just that these grossly tacked-on, cribbed from Mind's Eye Theater, vague-ass LARP sections in the back of many RPGs are starting to annoy me a lot. I'd like to see some Live-Action stuff that really inspires me to try it, and that makes sense relative to the table-top issues and goals of play.

Trouble is, too many people see LARP as solely a Minds Eye derivative, and try and sell their product off that, without really having played much in the way of LARP games. They ignore the fact that some LARP groups/systems have been running some 20 years, and picked up some novel play ideas along the way.

Shame.

Matt

[Le Joueur]

Matt wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote:

It's just that these grossly tacked-on, cribbed from Mind's Eye Theater, vague-ass LARP sections in the back of many RPGs are starting to annoy me a lot. I'd like to see some Live-Action stuff that really inspires me to try it, and that makes sense relative to the table-top issues and goals of play.

Trouble is, too many people see LARP as solely a Minds Eye derivative, and try and sell their product off that, without really having played much in the way of LARP games. They ignore the fact that some LARP groups/systems have been running some 20 years, and picked up some novel play ideas along the way.

I quite agree.  One of the sources I have explored for live-action role-playing is civil war reenactment.  They're arguably role-playing games, and, as you said, they have both been going on for some time and have many novel insights into the process.  It helps stretch my thoughts outside of those same forms that you cite.

Fang Langford

[Matt Machell]

It's interesting you mention Re-enactment. LARP in the UK evolved out of re-enactment, and early groups like Treasure Trap had a lot of crossover. This is possibly why you get things like the Lorien Trust, with it's "1000 LARPers in a field" games. From what I've heard (I could be wrong), there's a lot less of that in the US.

Hmm, I seem to have contributed to highjacking this thread. *looks sheepish*

Matt

[ergosum]

You're right.

I think the GNS model is interesting, but is largely incidental. Every system supports each mode of play to a different extent, while you can do anything with any system, some are more difficult than others.

Collaborative roleplay doesn't do Gaming very well, because it is collaborative, but it certainly can do good Simulation (in fact in my experience it does better simulation as players take pleasure in interpreting mechanics into game events and reinforcing the internal logic of the game).

Ergo draft 1 specifically is quite NS neutral, it mixes N terms such as scene and keyframe with wargaming concepts such as strategic and tactical situations. A very big part of making CoRP work (in practice, rather than in theory) is keeping it structured. In draft 2, I have homogenised the terms to be all concepts in performance arts - I have found this helps people learn the game, but doesn't overly constrain them.

I talk to a lot of people about Ergo who have misconceptions about how it plays. I take responsibility for that, since I must have miscommunicated the reality. I would encourage you to play it, because with care it works as an actual, practial game, rather than a theoretical curiosity.

Ian Millington

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ian, and welcome! I look forward to some discussions about your stuff, and maybe some folks here can get to playing it.

(Weenie geeky GNS point: Gamism and Narrativism have so much in common that a lot of the same terminology/concepts are very compatible. I don't label any RPG design technique absolutely G, N, or S, so your use of "scene," for instance, seems quite OK to me.)

But this was really about your work. Welcome again and good to see you.

Best,
Ron