Who we play with

[LordSmerf]

After some consideration over the weekend, i have decided that it is worth discussing the following point which was briefly mentioned in my Evolution of Preferences thread.

The question is this: How much does the group we play with influence our preferences and play styles?

I believe that the answer is that this is in fact the primary influence on our play.  This of course carries over into other aspects of life, if all my buddies like to play volley ball, chances are i will at least come to enjoy it since i'm playing it with them, and we would tend to play quite often.

This isn't to say that the people we play with are the only influence, i just believe that they are the primary influence.  I'd like to keep this discussion focused on gaming as opposed to branching out into life in general, so if i get off topic someone please smack me.

I will now briefly outline my own experience with this principle.  I first started gaming seriously about the time AD&D 3E was released, and i was gaming with a group who were very Gamist in their style.  From these people i learned about exploiting the system, optimizing characters, and other important concepts for Gamist style play.  There was a lot of combat, and plot wasn't that important to us.  I first experienced Simulationism while DMing a Shadowrun campaign of my own manufacture, but as we only had two or three sessions before schedule conflicts broke the game up i never really got a chance to explore it.

So at this point my main understanding of gaming was highly Gamist, i played to win and i designed characters based on their ability to win.  I was introduced to a different group at this point where of the five or so regular players, only one other was seriously interested in Gamism.  Having this ally allowed me to continue in my Gamist style, but i slowly added elements of the rest of the group's Narritive preference.  Somewhere around April of this year my Gamist ally took a leave of absence from the group leaving me with two very strong Narrativists as my gaming partners.  For now i am very interested in the Narrativist side of things with little or no interest in Gamism.  The other Gamist has rejoined the group and has returned with an interest in Narrativism as well.  Whether this is something that he figured out on his own, or whether there was influence from the group is something that i do not know, but it is interesting.

That's me.  What about everyone else?  Does your experience tend to move toward some sort of consensus within the group you play with?  Do you tend to all move toward some happy medium,  or is there some dominating personality that everyone moves toward?

I'm going to go ahead and say that this principle is a powerful one in gaming, so i also pose this question:  Is there any way to utilize this idea in design?  If so what is it?   or   Is this principle, instead, too dependent upon local conditions for a designer to have any hope of utilizing it effectively?

Let me know what you think.

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

I agree and disagree. That is, systems inform play styles in players, who then may become entrenched in a style. Yes, an entrenched player will impart that style to new players, who may also become entrenched. But changing system can overcome that entrenchment as well.

Changes in system for groups is often, IMO, semi-random. That is, they're not made for reasons of style in most cases. So you can't be sure that a group is going to change with the systems it changes to. In fact, a really entrenched group will sometimes reject a system because it doesn't support the style they want.

So it all depends on how entrenched the players are. If they think they have the best way to play, yes, they'll probably inform the other players that this is how to play.

OTOH, it's just as common to see groups with fragmented styles; the incoherence that we speak of here. Yes, people from these groups may gravitate to other like-minded indivisuals over time. But then you have sort of the opposite effect, where style dictates who you play with, instead of the other way around.

Basically, outside of an examination of the individuals involved, I'm not sure that you can make any correlations between play style and who you play with, other than to say that you're being incentivized to play the same way by the common systems you play with. In which case it's system not people who matter most in the style equation.

Mike

[LordSmerf]

I do believe that you have a point here Mike, but i feel that you are not giving enough weight to the group.  Perhaps i was unclear, or i could just be wrong.  I'll try to clarify my point and see if that helps.

First, i must agree that system does in fact have an influence on play style.  However, i maintain that it is a secondary influence and that the primary influence is the group.  I can only give personal examples and observations of other gamers.

Example 1 - D&D as a Narrativist game:
I have been (briefly) involved in a D20 game set in the Legend of the Five Rings universe as per the D20 supplements.  All the players were grounded in 3e rules and had some Gamist leanings, mainly because that was all they'd ever known.  The DM on the other hand was obsessed with making this a Narrative experience.  Over the course of play i saw more and more players slipping into a Narrativist style in which doing interesting things was more important than increasing their stats.  This was a case (as i see it anyway) of a single strong member of the group (the DM) influencing the other players to change their style of play.  And this with a system that does not explicitly (or, i think, implicitly) encourage Narrativist play.

Example 2 - Changing Systems
Early in my own gaming experience i went from playing D&D in an extremely Gamist fashion to a homebrew system some buddies had been using for their nefarious Narrativist purposes.  Upon my entrance to their game (which had a very sketchy numbers system) i took upon myself (with help from another Gamist minded player) the task of producing an effective and powerful numbers system for the purpose of furthering Gamist play (though i didn't recognize it as such at the time).  Before this, however, i was was in the midst of a Narrativist system, and was still (successfully i might add) clutching my Gamist preference tightly.  Though the system was far from ideal, i managed to continue Gamist play.  Over time the majority of the players' Narrativist leanings brought out my own desire to tell stories.  I am currently at this stage in my gaming preference; i like to tell stories, i find i care little about the numbers.  This is not due to a change in system, but to the influence of the group i was playing with.

Example 3 - Video Gaming
This example will step back and show (i hope) that this principle extends beyond the realms of gaming.  It will be somewhat robbed of its immediacy since it does not directly relate to RP gaming.  When i started college i was living in student housing.  On my floor there were a number of people who enjoyed playing video games, something that i myself enjoyed.  I was, at the time, strictly a PC gamer and had no interest in console (Xbox, PS2, etc.) based games.  The guys on my floor, however, were very interested in such things and through continued association i became so as well.

This example i believe shows us a little bit more about group influence.  I am not saying that the things i found interesting were changed (or not too much, in this case), but instead that i was shown the merit of things i had before ignored.  I think the same can (and does, continuously) apply in gaming.  All of use, i believe, have some things that each of the GNS produce that we enjoy.  The group you play with influences you to see the good that their style has to offer.

I hope these somewhat expand/defend/clarify my position.  You may still disagree, i just want to make sure you understand where i'm coming from so that we can have a productive discussion instead of arguing about two seperate things (something i end up doing quite often).  Thank you for your time and input.

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

I don't think we are disagreeing, really. I'm not saying that players are only informed by system, and you're not saying that they're only affected by social context. We're both saying that at some point will can overcome system in terms of players getting other players to play their way.

The only question is how common it is.

And for that we only have our annecdotal evidence. For each of your examples of overcoming system supports, I can give you an example of a game group that split up because of their differences. So, I think we'll have to leave it at the point where we say that the other players have an influence, but it's just one of many factors.

As far as what drives this, it seems to me that, again, it's a matter of individual wills, and/or player willingness to accomodate other players. And that's going to be a very individual experience, I think.

Mike

[Bill Cook]

Does your experience tend to move toward some sort of consensus within the group you play with? Do you tend to all move toward some happy medium, or is there some dominating personality that everyone moves toward?

I've seen a range: get along or move on; accept that this is as good as it gets; bend to the will whose concern is greatest.

Is there any way to utilize this idea in design? If so what is it? or Is this principle, instead, too dependent upon local conditions for a designer to have any hope of utilizing it effectively?

I feel, the latter.  I don't see how you can design a mechanic to control this dynamic (i.e. group influence on play preference.)  (It's funny, too.  I think I spend more time on these concerns than in involvement with game play.)  To clarify, it is evident to me that system can specify a target for social contract, but different groups will come to it with different kinds of game experience, expectations, biases, etc.

How much does the group we play with influence our preferences and play styles?

For me, hugely.  I would never have started playing Starcraft if not from boredom, waiting for everyone to finish so we could play M:TG.  On the flip side, I still refuse to play Axis & Allies, having no interest in WWII.  My buddy Donny will not play Warcraft III, no matter how many hours we're at it, though he loves Diablo.  Go figure.

An influence to shift game play preference may also arise purely from system, though this is off topic to your thread.

[jdagna]

I would say that influences from other people tend to fit  accomodation and revelation (just to give them names).  Rejecting the influence of other people often results in conflict that may cause people to leave the group in search of more like-minded players.

Accomodation is basically where you recognize how everyone else is playing and adapt your style to fit theirs in order to avoid conflict.  You may even like the style you've adopted - I know of people who play in two groups because they can play one way (strongly Gamist) with one and anothe way (Sim) with the other, thus utilizing both of their preferred play styles.  On the other hand, you may not like the style, but want to preserve the social factors.  Accomodation may also be subconscious to some degree.

Revelation would be the case where someone's play makes you think "Wow, I never realized a game could be done that way" or "I never knew it, but this is how I always wanted to play."  Thomas, it sounds like you had that sort of experience with Narrativist play.  In this case, there would be an actual change in the person's view on role-playing and shift in their description of their preferred play style.

However, you shouldn't overlook the importance of system. In fact, both of your examples of RPG play sound to me more like narrativist games producing narrativist play out of normally gamist players.  Lo5R is, if my friend's description is accurate, primarily Nar or Sim, so I'd expect a d20 supplement to try and preserve that feel by downlplaying the Gamism that d20 supports by default.  The other system was a narrativist homebrew to begin with.

So it would be fair to say that the conflict/accomodation/revelation process can take place with reference to a game system as well as players themselves.

[M. J. Young]

Back in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8105">the parent thread to this one I made some comments about this that seem to have been entirely overlooked here.

I think that groups will encourage a play preference by positive and negative reinforcement, but do so completely unintentionally.

As I said there, I don't like to play games where I'm constantly losing; I also don't like to play games where I feel like there's no challenge at all. Thus if I'm playing gamist games in which the challenge is challenging but not impossible, I'm going to enjoy that kind of play and want more of it. Meanwhile, if I'm playing games in which either I have no hope of winning or no chance of losing, I don't want to play anymore.

With roleplaying games, I think this can be extrapolated to an entire style. In the same way that some card players don't like trick-based games or Whist family or Gin family games because they've had bad experiences with one game in the group, so too some roleplayers don't like gamist games because their gamist experience was all negative.

That feeling of overcoming challenge is only one of several potential sources for reward in roleplaying. The other two major ones posited by GNS are engaging in theme (moral or personal issues) and discovering the unknown.

Thus if you played in Narrativist games in which you were a real part of making the story come alive and exploring the theme, you're probably going to like narrativist play; conversely, if you played in games in which either no story ever emerged and no one ever had a clue what to do with the theme, or in which one or two other players dominated play and you mostly sat and listened to them create the story, you're probably not going to enjoy narrativist play.

Similarly if you were in a game in which you were discovering a world that was completely boring, or completely unfathomable, your experiences with simulationism are going to be negative, and you're going to think that all games need something more than just exploration. On the other hand, if you've explored worlds that are truly fascinating, this is going to be something you'll think well of.

Perhaps I'm fortunate; I've had good experiences in all three areas, and although I've had bad experiences as well, the good ones have taught me that I can find enjoyment in many ways. Thus I like all three forms of play.

Is this more what you mean?

--M. J. Young

[LordSmerf]

That's not exactly what i'm talking about here.  Though you do have a valid point, i'm really kind of stuck up on the idea of gradual change over time at the moment.  Of course puncuated change is also valid, and perhaps i should have been considering it from the beginning.  I'll give that a few days to sift and see if anything interesting comes up.  Thanks, i hadn't really picked up on all the nuances of what you were saying before anyway.

Thomas