Play Contract "checklist"?

[Adam Dray]

Everything I write is 'according to Adam.' People can take what they like and use it and toss the rest. I don't presume to tell people what they need. The topic subject is Play Contract "Checklist"? and no one has attempted to post a checklist yet so I gave it a try. That's all. =)

My own play contracts evolved out of necessity. When I started my game several years ago, the verbal contract was something like, "Let's play once a month at Adam's house. He will run some D&D 3E and we can learn the rules as we go. We'll make up 1st level characters any way we want and Adam will come up with some kind of world to play in -- whatever he wants."

It was years later that the problems caused by the lack of a more formal contract caused me to start spelling out some things.

The play contracts for my own games don't even cover all that stuff in the checklist. A lot of it wasn't necessary for my group.

I thought the idea of the checklist was to enumerate some things that everyone should consider (not necessarily include) when making a play contract. I expect that people will interpret the various subjects differently and handle them in numerous ways. Great!

Adam

[Ron Edwards]

Makes sense!

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

See, all the evidence here points to why I object to the idea of a list.

Michael*, "The GM", I agree that the social stuff that I listed is, in a way, too easy to actually need a list. That is, we're all used to performing social interaction to the extent that that end tends to take care of itself. So we don't need that, I guess.

I just have to take a moment here to say that I think that the tradition of GM being host is not a good one. IME, play goes much better if one of the players hosts. Leaving the GM free from extraneous concern while play occurs. Especially if, like me, you're not the greatest host to begin with. :-)

Anyhow, once we're past that, however, I think that you're starting to get into more GNS sorts of things. The one that I suppose that I'd accept as social, but pertaining directly to RPGs is questioning what subjects are uncomfortable for players.

Outside of that, however, I think that the non-social stuff (given that we've already discounted the purely social stuff) Adam's list or one like it, while well thought out, isn't going to help. That's because this sort of list just gives the players a chance to disagree before hand. You're giving over to the players the authority to try to decide these things individually.

I was in the military. I believe that, while trying to cater to people isn't a bad thing, that having a central authority is more important in executing team plans. So, what I'd do, is to fill out Adams' list with my own single vision for how to play, and then go out and find players who want to play that game. This makes the process much shorter and much more effective, IMO. Basically I'm saying what Ron has said above about the band metaphor.

What about the players that you'll lose (I hear a cry and hue already)? I posit that you lose more by trying to compromise. Further, if you make a well stated set of goals and objectives for play, I posit that players will see that as a positive thing and want in. Coherency of vision is attractive. In any case, assuming that you're the GM, most players want to be led anyhow, IMO, at least on this level of issues.

Think of it this way. If I say, "Hey, I'm playing Monopoly, wanna play?" players don't worry too much about what game is being played, they just join in under the assumption that it's fun to play a coherent game with their friends. You don't say, "Hey, let's play Monopoly, but before we get started, let's try to agree on whether we want to play competitively with all the rules, or more casually."

Now, that sounds like I'm contradicting what I said above to The GM. But it's not. GNS is not about setting up a game that only some players will like. IMO, there are no Gamists, meaning that there are really very few players who really dislike the Sim and Nar modes. What there are, IMO, are players who, confronted with games that don't have a coherent mode of play indicated, default to the Gamist mode. That is, if presented with a coherent Narrativist game, the "Gamist" player becomes a Narrativist while playing it, most often.

As I see it, GNS is not about selecting players at all. It's about presenting how to play the game in a clear way such that, in play, expectations will be met. Incoherence is play where expectations aren't being met.

So, you don't need a checklist. You need a clear vision. Give that to your players, and they'll either self select, or play contentedly. It's only the complexity of RPGs that make them more susceptible to this sort of problem than other activities. Understand the complexities, and you'll have no problems creating the clear vision. Some people do this intuitively. Hence why they don't need to understand GNS.

Mike

*Sorry about the Mike thing, but you're the first Michael that I've met that prefers that. When people call me that, I look over my shoulder for my mother or my wife, expecting a chore. :-)

[xiombarg]

I have to agree with Mike here -- experience has shown me that if you lay down the law, people will hew to it, and this goes for everything. The trick is not to be shy about laying down the law, but without sounding like a fascist.

Of course, the fear of sounding like a bastard is, in my experience, greatly exaggerated... Knowing what the rules are is sometimes off-putting, but it gives a firm foundation to start from even if you don't agree with all of them.

[Adam Dray]

There's laying down the law and then there's leadership. Leadership involves building concensus.

The idea that players will "self select" themselves out of the game isn't practical. More likely, they will join the game and then try to change things and complain about things they don't like. If you have mature players, you'll have fewer problems like these, but you'll still have some.

Yeah, you can write out a play contract and say, "This is my game and this is how I am running it. If you want to play, you can play by the rules. If not, sod off." All you do is set up opportunities for resentment.

If you write a play contract as a group, then you have buy-in. The ideal situation is that everyone playing the game takes ownership of the game's success.

We talk about sharing authorial and directorial power within the game. I think there's value in sharing metagame power, as well. After all, it's a social contract, not a set of commandments handed down to the players. Or at least, I think it ought not to be a set of commandments.

All IMO, of course.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm with Adam on this one ... but with Mike and Kirt as well.

The reason that's possible is that I think we all agree that it's not a dichotomous situation. The choice is not between "My way, my game, and I say so" and "Let's all airy-fairily agree on everything while predicating nothing." Rejecting the one extreme doesn't mean adopting the other.

The key lies in the term "leadership," and that can work in a variety of ways. The one point that seems common to the above three posts is that it has to work in some way for a given group of people, rather than be set aside or ramped up to dictatorship.

Differences between, say, my actual application for a particular group of people, and, say, Adam's are not going to matter much (for purposes of discussion) in comparison to our agreement about the basic point.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

I was in the military. I believe that, while trying to cater to people isn't a bad thing, that having a central authority is more important in executing team plans. So, what I'd do, is to fill out Adams' list with my own single vision for how to play, and then go out and find players who want to play that game. This makes the process much shorter and much more effective, IMO.  

Hmm.  In terms of role-playing, I don't think I'm interested in effectively executing a team plan.  In other words, I'm fine with going in and being surprised by what turns out, even in a broad sense.  I suppose I get more enjoyment from finding a vision rather than from executing one.  For example, I had originally pitched one campaign as an action-y four-color superhero game, but which the players decided to make a more dramatic private-investigators-of-the-supernatural game.  However, it turned out great, and I actually liked it better than a similar superhero game I ran a few years later that turned out closer to plan.  

While coherency of vision among the participants is attractive, to me there is also an attraction in seeing varied points of view.  It often interests me to see someone with a very different take on the material.

[Adam Dray]

I think, John, that you can have both coherence of vision and varied points of view. Why can't people express varied viewpoints during the contract agreement phase?

And a social contract is a living document, not a stone tablet. As viewpoints vary over the course of gameplay, your group can adjust the social contract to fit.

[Mike Holmes]

What Adam said. I'm not saying that things can't change (I shouldn't have used the term "execute"). In fact, I tend to believe that it can't happen that things won't change. I'm just saying that the best way to start is to have a coherent plan at that point. Once play starts, it will no doubt adjust to suit all better. But if you don't start with that coherent vision, it will take longer to get there, and that may be too long. Players may have left by then.

I don't think it's impossible to come up with a coherent vision by committee. I just think it's more difficult, more susceptible to problems, and unneccessary. It's just easier to start with a single vision that makes sense, and change as neccessary.

Mike

[John Kim]

I'm just saying that the best way to start is to have a coherent plan at that point. Once play starts, it will no doubt adjust to suit all better. But if you don't start with that coherent vision, it will take longer to get there, and that may be too long. Players may have left by then.

I don't think it's impossible to come up with a coherent vision by committee. I just think it's more difficult, more susceptible to problems, and unneccessary. It's just easier to start with a single vision that makes sense, and change as neccessary.  

Well, that might be the best way for you.  However, based on my experience I don't find that this is true for me.  You talk as if coherency of vision is a primary thing for you -- that you don't enjoy yourself and may leave if it isn't present or doesn't appear soon enough.  As I said, I don't think it is as important to me.  

You seem to be picturing a game which starts out lacking coherent vision and then struggles to gain it.  I am picturing a more laid-back approach where it doesn't struggle with coherency and stays roughly as coherent/incoherent as when it started.  

A good example would be the Immortal Tales game I played in.  We had four participants and we strictly rotated who was GMing.  Each session was set in a different time period with a different GM.  There were definitely similarities, but it definitely changed dynamics with each change of GM.  Yet it ranks among my favorite campaigns.

[Mike Holmes]

Again, John, I'm not saying it can't work that way. I'm just saying, as you point out, that IME having a single vision is a more stable way to start. But, no doubt milage will vary on this one.

Still, that doesn't mean that I can imagine a single checklist that will work for each group to establish things democratically (the topic here, after all). That is, I think it would suffice to have a discussion on the subject, or to modify as you go. Which you suggest works. So, even if you're not going with the single vision, I still doubt that a list is going to help. I'd guess that in such a case where this will work, the list will be redundant.

Basically, either the group has enough cohesion that it'll work democratically, and the central vision and list are both unneccessary, or the group needs a little help, in which case I'd say that the central vision is the way to go. The list method I see as breeding lots of potential problems.

Mike