Frightening the Horses

[rafial]

There have been numerous postings lately from folks who have become frustrated in trying to introduce "Forge ideas" into their regular play group, whether it be new games, GNS terminology, or gaming techniques, and running head on into an unconcious resistance characterized by "that's not the way we are used to doing it."

I've recently had a number of experiences from a slightly edge on point of view.  I've been lucky enough since returning actively to the RPG hobby a bare 9 months ago to have fallen in with the Seattle crowd of hard core "Neophiliacs".  Not only have I found a group of people who are willing and eager to play the kinds of games I used to buy, read, and file on my shelf under "who could I convince to play this?", but I've also gained insight into the roleplaying act itself that has allowed me to look at my past experiences and actively identify what things it was that I enjoyed, and what things caused me to be frustrated.

Now, in the past month, I've had a number of experiences where I was "reexposed" to the RPG mainstream, and have come to realize that I have unconsciously assimilated the norms and techniques of "Forge style" roleplay such an extant that stumbling across incidents of "standard operating procedure" has been jarring to both myself, and I think perhaps others around me.

I've have three specific incidents of actual play I'd like to report on.  The first two took place in the context of the annual gaming convention in the Seattle area (Dragonflight), and the third took place as part of the weekly "one shot" night that Seattle Gamers Assemble promotes.


Case #1
Type of Play: Con one shot
System: Deep7's Red Dwarf XPG
My Role: player
Incident: after a rules briefing and character creation, the GM began to go round and do scenes with individual players, slowly bringing them into play.  She was introducing each of the characters primarily in isolation, and doing some one on one roleplaying with each of them.  At one point, one of the other characters was engaged in an activity (trying to break into some old storage lockers) and I saw an opportunity to frame my character into the scene in a way that involved both characters schticks, and was also humorous.  I spoke up, and got slapped down hard and told to "wait my turn".

This really jarred me, because I've become so used to the idea of players and GMs working together to "set the scene" that it didn't even occur to me  it would be taken negatively.  I instantly realized that the GM had perceived me as a "scene hogger" and acted to cut me off.

An aside on the game system itself:  Deep7's system is a pretty light skill + attribute and roll under thing.  However in play, the system was all but ignored, in favor of alot of player to player schtick.  This reminded me greatly of old Paranoia play, where success or failure eventually became more of an adhoc consensus based "what was funny" rather than any consistent application of the system.  Now I'm curious to see how something like Red Dwarf would play with more of an "Elfs" style system, where humorous failure is rewarded by the system, rather than incidental to it.


Case #2
Type of Play: Con one shot
System: Dust Devils - Ronin variant
My Role: GM
Incident: As part of the SGA sponsored track of events at Dragonflight, I ran my Ronin adventure Stone Hearts, Stone Memories.  I had four player slots, and it turned out I got a full set of players.  What was even more interesting was that the four gentleman playing were a group of four GMs who run a "team GM'd" multi-session Feng Shui every year.  One of them had purchased and read Dust Devils, but had never played.  The others were unfamiliar with the game.  I spent some time going over the idea of scene resolution, and also emphasized the shared narration mechanic.

A bit later in session, when three of the characters were camping in the woods near a roadside shrine, waiting to see if the "badness" would come and find them, and another players was escorting a woman through those very same woods searching for her missing grandfather, I noticed that the players were spending an awful lot of time feeding me "tactical details" about what they were doing.  "We build a big fire, but then sit in the shadows away from it."  "I never look directly at the fire."   I suddenly realized that despite all the talk of scene resolution and player narrates outcome, they were busily establishing their bonafides for when the big GM screw came down.  I thought about stopping the game for a little pep talk, but when the searchers stumbled across the campers, and got into a player vs. player argument over "my tacticals are better than yours", I realized that these guys actually enjoyed this kind of stuff, so I just kept mum, and let them entertain themselves.  Very surreal to have a pure narrative game like DD be dominated by gamist tactical patter, but hey, the customer is always right :)

Aside: these guys, unbeknownst to them, were responsible for one of my more significantly frustrating RPG experiences a couple years ago when I tried playing in their big Feng Shui tournament at DragonFlight.  In retrospect, I can now identify my dissatisfactions as Gamist (my character had a healing ability whose use was repeatedly disallowed for various reasons boiling down to "the GM doesn't want you to") and Exploration of Character (the players were placed in a situation where they were pretty much forced to kill a bunch of cops who were just doing their jobs rather than being allowed to avoid them).


Case #3
Type of Play: informal one-shot
System: Hero System (Dark Champions)
My Role: Player
Incident: Two new people (husband and wife) who have recently moved to the Seattle area showed up at our SGA monday night, and the wife had prepared a  "low powered vigilantes" murder mystery game to run.  The players were the husband, three SGA Monday Nights regulars (including myself), and two people who were visiting SGA Monday Nights for the second time (one of whom is just now getting back into role playing).

There were two specific occurrences that were jarring to my current habits.  First, it became pretty obvious that for the GM and her husband, their accustomed style of play involved everybody being very secretive about their character, and massive note passing.  SGA play has historically encouraged lots of kibitzing in other peoples scenes and an informal understanding that player knowledge != character knowledge.  This led to a very strange dynamic as most of the players sat around with their character sheets face up, and happily talked about what their character was doing, and commented on other players scenes, while the husband sat with his character sheet face down, and was constantly leading the GM off for "private chats".  I was even reprimanded by the husband at one point when a player seated near me asked a question about the rules and I picked up that players character sheet to offer advice.

The other jarring incident in the game was suddenly falling into a game of GM "twenty questions."  My character was a Batman type, and near the end I was trying to break into the house of a very wealthy guy, which house had only been described in very abstract terms.  So first I narrated disabling the security systems and sneaking over the wall, and was told there was no wall.  So then I narrated myself gliding up to second story porch on the on the house and picking the lock on the door to the porch.  Nope, the house doesn't have a porch...

I do have to give this GM props in one respect.  Early in the game, I narrated my character (a playboy billionaire) as driving a large black Hummer, and alluded to the fact that it was tricked out with all manner of crime fighting gadgetry.  While the initial "Let's take my Hummer!" got a weird look from the GM, later she got great mileage out of riffing off it when the computer hacker in the group started fiddling around with my security systems while my character was off elsewhere.

What's my point in all this?  Well, I think its a small case of "you can't go home again."  If you've inculcated a more deliberate and thoughtful approach to your roleplaying, and you find you are someone who enjoys that sort of thing, I think you are going to wind up "frightening the horses" occasionally, even when you are trying to fit in.

On the plus side, being able to quickly understand what is bugging you about the current play situation goes a long way to helping you figure out how to "work within the system" to try and fix it.  Or if it is not fixable, tolerate it for awhile, and then move on.

[John Kim]

What's my point in all this?  Well, I think its a small case of "you can't go home again."  If you've inculcated a more deliberate and thoughtful approach to your roleplaying, and you find you are someone who enjoys that sort of thing, I think you are going to wind up "frightening the horses" occasionally, even when you are trying to fit in.

On the plus side, being able to quickly understand what is bugging you about the current play situation goes a long way to helping you figure out how to "work within the system" to try and fix it.  Or if it is not fixable, tolerate it for awhile, and then move on.

Interesting.  

I can relate to this, I just went to a gaming convention for the first time in several years.  The convention was ConQuest in Palo Alto, and I played in four games, and GM'ed two games.  I don't think I scared the horses per se, in that I got positive feedback from most of my games.  I'll go through them, just to add to this.  

Game #1 was a Cthulhu Live event entitled "Fear Stalks Whitechapel".  It was set in London in 1992 at a convention for Jack the Ripper writers and theorists.  It was a closed-room event, in that the 25 or so PCs were all literally locked in a large room for the 5 hours of the game.  It had a single storyline, where one PC was possessed and was trying to summon an evil entity.  This meant that a lot of PCs were effectively sidelined since they had nothing to do with the main plot.  I spent most of the time trying to debunk the strange events which were going on, which kept me out of the plot.  The interesting comment to me at the end -- anyone who had said "Hastur" three times during the game died.  The GM said that we should have known better.  I think that in the GM's view, we were supposed to use our OOC knowledge more and try to solve the main plot instead of just doing our own things.  

Game #2 was a homebrew live-action game set in Tekumel, entitled "The Imperial Audit".  This was different than the previous LARP in that it had at least a dozen plots going on simultaneously.  Each character had their own goals to achieve, which were defined by a point system listed on the character sheet.  My character was a bodyguard for the local lord and a drug addict who was also in love with another woman working for the lord.  Here I pursued my own goals and it worked fairly well.  I tried to use the confusion of other events to shake people down for money with which to buy drugs.  However, I was so deeply in debt that there was no way to really repay.  I ended up killing myself after the woman I loved died trying to protect me.  In theory this was very well set up, and it was certainly a good game -- but there were a number of details which ticked me somewhat.  

Game #3 was a HeroQuest Game entitled "The Mines of Engiziland".  It was set in the history of Glorantha, before Dragon Pass was colonized by humans.  The PCs were an expedition sent to find and plunder the Lost Mines of Emperor Khordavu -- in the style of King Solomon's Mines, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so forth.  My character was a big game hunter set on bagging Earthshakers in the pass (i.e. dinosaurs).  The event that struck me was when I tried to hunt one of these.  I started to outline a plan for catching a triceratops -- which would involve a trap to immobilize it for the group to attack it.  The GM then said that my character would try to hunt them on his own.  However, when I followed this advice, it turned out that the triceratops essentially couldn't be harmed by a lone crossbow (I shot it and it didn't even notice).  On my second shot, I rolled a 1 -- and the GM said that my bearer stumbled into me and the shot went straight up into the air.  Eventually it fell down and gravely wounded my bearer.  This basically broke my disbelief meter, and we discussed it a bit.  I think the GM intended that my character should be dismayed at the failure (i.e. Earthshakers are just too tough); but since this was exactly what I expected in the first place, I wasn't phazed.  Overall, the game had a fairly linear plot of making it to the mine, being trapped, and barely escaping.  

Game #4 was the Buffy RPG game which I GMed, entitled "New Girl in Class".  The core of it was about a Jersey girl from the 1950's who finds herself reincarnated in an android body in modern-day Santa Cruz.  The clash of old and new was important to this.  I was a little disappointed, but nevertheless the players got into the spirit eventually.  I tried to list some potential plot twists for Drama Point spending on the character sheets, to give them some ideas to riff off (the examples were tailored for each character).  Two or three (out of 6) of the players got into this.  One player several times tried to pay as a plot twist for ordinary actions.  Two players never used plot twists.  Still, they made up a lot of stuff pretty freely.  

Game #5 was a Hero System game entitled "X-File High: The Boogeyman Cometh".  This was my favorite game of the con, I think.  It was set in an anime-inspired California high school where the PCs were a student club dedicated to supernatural investigations.  My character was a Japanese girl who was a kitsune (were-fox, essentially).  She had many allergies, and would change into a fox whenever she sneezed.  There was a central mystery about a strange rash of fearfulness and a mystic prophecy, but it was very nonlinear in how we investigated.  There was a lot of fun PC interaction as students which the GM encouraged.  As it turned out, there was no combat, so the Hero System was only minimally involved -- though there were opportunities for it.  On the other hand, at one point the GM did bring out a hex map to draw the building we were approached.  This turned out to be a false alarm, but it was an interesting use of system in that it played to the PCs apprehension as they approached the spooky old junkyard.  

Game #6 was a Hero System game which I GMed, entitled "Extra Credit".    This is a game I had run before, and one I like a lot.  A bunch of students (I had 6 players out of 8 slots) volunteer for a psychology experiment on insomnia.  Due to an accident, they begin manifesting psychic powers.  However, the researcher who was behind this wants to cover it up.  It's a very open-ended scenario, and has gone in totally different directions each time.  I have full Champions character sheets for each of the PCs, but the players only see a mundane version with no point totals.  In this run, one of the players went bizarrely paranoid -- and I think the player had some thought that he was "breaking" my scenario by exposing things to the authorities.  The interesting thing to me was that all of the other players instinctively banded together against him, even though it meant they were working with the unscrupulous researcher.  They were all roleplaying really well, I think, and had a lot of fun going in different directions with their powers.  

Overall, I think my favorites were #5 and #6, followed by #4 (Buffy) and #2 (Tekumel LARP), followed by #1 (Cthulhu Live) and #3 (HeroQuest).  I don't think I scared any horses, but as GM I think I did a decent job encouraging improvisation and Drama Point usage in Buffy, and in open-ended plot development in Extra Credit.  I had been aiming to make my con games accessible, but I don't think I pulled any punches in sticking to my thoughtful approach to gaming.

[rafial]

John, thanks for the follow up.  I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for when I dumped this big ball of something that had been festering in brain out on to the pixeled page, but I think your post has helped clarify it for me.  And I think I'm actually talking about two different kinds of situations:

1) The original "frighten the horses" idea, where the use of an unusual type of play produces a "startle" reaction in another player.  And how to avoid having that "startle" reaction turn negative

2) A situation where theory gave you an insight into the current dynamic in play that allowed you to steer around a situation that once would have been quite frustrating for you, or at least allowed you avoid having that frustration dominate the game.

To expand on my original incident #3, in the case of the GM "twenty questions" gambit, my realization of what was going on allowed me to switch to a "you tell *me* how I can get in the house" mode before I got too frustrated about the situation.

I don't think I scared the horses per se, in that I got positive feedback from most of my games.

I don't think "frightening the horses" is necessarily inconsistent with positive play.

I tried to use the confusion of other events to shake people down for money with which to buy drugs.  However, I was so deeply in debt that there was no way to really repay.  I ended up killing myself after the woman I loved died trying to protect me.  In theory this was very well set up, and it was certainly a good game -- but there were a number of details which ticked me somewhat.

Can you recall any specifics on what ticked you off?

My character was a big game hunter set on bagging Earthshakers in the pass (i.e. dinosaurs).  The event that struck me was when I tried to hunt one of these.  I started to outline a plan for catching a triceratops -- which would involve a trap to immobilize it for the group to attack it.  The GM then said that my character would try to hunt them on his own.

Wow, that's a great example of the second sort of situation I was talking about.  Here we have a GM who is "taking the character away" from a player, when player starts heading in a direction that doesn't fit with the GMs preconceptions.  You mentioned this broke into discussion at some point.  Was your understanding of the GMs motives in this situation (as unfortunate as they may be) helpful to resolving the situation in a way that helped both of you?  Or was the situation resolved?
 

I don't think I scared any horses, but as GM I think I did a decent job encouraging improvisation and Drama Point usage in Buffy, and in open-ended plot development in Extra Credit.  I had been aiming to make my con games accessible, but I don't think I pulled any punches in sticking to my thoughtful approach to gaming.

Excellent.  Did you consciously make use of any "Forge-style" techniques such as scene framing, bangs, no-myth, etc in your con GMing?  And if so, did any of the players seem to notice that something different was going on?

I guess what I'm looking for are examples of how a more aware style of play, as either a player or GM, can contribute to more successful outcomes, even when playing in a group that is mostly used to "mainstream" playing styles.

[John Kim]

Excellent.  Did you consciously make use of any "Forge-style" techniques such as scene framing, bangs, no-myth, etc in your con GMing?  And if so, did any of the players seem to notice that something different was going on?

I guess what I'm looking for are examples of how a more aware style of play, as either a player or GM, can contribute to more successful outcomes, even when playing in a group that is mostly used to "mainstream" playing styles.

It's a little hard to say, since my own style was pretty developed before joining the Forge in January.  For example, Extra Credit is built around a powerful set of bangs: namely the psychic powers that the PCs discover early in the scenario.  However, I first came up with that scenario in college 14 or so years ago -- so it doesn't seem like a Forge thing for me.  In the two scenarios I GMed, I mostly went with approaches I felt comfortable with -- i.e. had practiced for longer than the 7 months I've been on the Forge.  

I have definitely had influences from here in the Forge.  Based on a thread here, I tried out Soap Opera structure for my ongoing campaign which worked pretty well (though right now we are in party mode again).  I haven't really followed scene framing here on the Forge, though as I read about it, I can see relations in my own techniques.  I don't really go in for no-myth, though.  I'm a map-using type.  

As a side note:  In my experience, the most important thing for convention games is the PC design.  What I spend the most time preparing is the character sheets and other player-visible items (i.e. maps, information sheets, etc.).  

(Re: The Tekumel LARP)
Can you recall any specifics on what ticked you off?

Well, for one, the player of the older woman I loved was a nervous 17-year old girl in a low-cut dress.  A lot of my attention during play was trying to make sure she was OK.  Of course, she probably would've had problems with any of the PCs, so I can't really blame the GM but it did make me uncomfortable.  Also, I felt like the GM was intrusive at times, in that he stepped in several times to tell me the drug withdrawal my PC was feeling.  Also, the layout of physical space wasn't clear.  Players wandered around, but it was never clear if people being 15 fee away from my PC were really 15 feet away from my PC or behind a hill or what.  

(Re: HeroQuest dinosaur hunt)
Wow, that's a great example of the second sort of situation I was talking about.  Here we have a GM who is "taking the character away" from a player, when player starts heading in a direction that doesn't fit with the GMs preconceptions.  You mentioned this broke into discussion at some point.  Was your understanding of the GMs motives in this situation (as unfortunate as they may be) helpful to resolving the situation in a way that helped both of you?  Or was the situation resolved?

Well, I'd say it remained a clash.  My character was unphazed which I think ran contrary to what the GM intended.  To add to this, my character viewed it as karmic justice that the bearer should be hit by the arrow since it was he who disturbed my shot.  The other players actually picked up on this, and discussed the meaning of the arrow shot as an omen.  I later picked on the wounded bearer some more by asking him to apologize.  All this was taking things in a direction never intended by the GM, which he didn't try to shut down per se but quietly discouraged.  

I guess the broad answer was that the clash was not resolved, but it didn't permanently stop play or anything.