Forking the Build

[jeffd]

Hey James,

I'm sort of in the same situation as you.  Lots of unsatisfying gaming, playing anyway cuz its better than nothing.  I found the Forge last year and since then have slowly been able to more fully elucidate why I'm not satisfied in my various games.

One thing I think that gets discounted in the switchover from more "traditional" RPGs for a group is inertia.  My gaming group is all friends (and not friends in the gaming only sense) but when I bring up the idea of trying new games to them - they're pretty meh.  

I can't explain why, and it'd be cool if someone with more insight could shed some light on the problem.  Inertia is a big one - we're all in our mid to late twenties (or older), lots of people have been playing for so long that they know what they like and they like what they know.  

So how much luck do you think you'll have in overcoming the intertia, for lack of a better term, in your group?

JD

[JamesDJIII]

I can't explain why, and it'd be cool if someone with more insight could shed some light on the problem. Inertia is a big one - we're all in our mid to late twenties (or older), lots of people have been playing for so long that they know what they like and they like what they know.

So how much luck do you think you'll have in overcoming the intertia, for lack of a better term, in your group?

I've found that I knew/know more about what's happening than I allow myself  to admit. I've asked for advice several times and the best I've seen is this: move on.

Simply figure out what you want to play, figure out who might be interested, make a list, make some phone calls, and be done with it. Those who want to play will accept the invitiation, and those who won't, won't.

I'm still struggling with fears that my friends will take this personally.  <calm, deep breaths> But, we are friends, and as long as that doesn't change, then I should have nothing to worry about.

I wouldn't get into trying to convince people to give up what they like. Seek out the disatisfied.

[M. J. Young]

My gaming group is all friends (and not friends in the gaming only sense) but when I bring up the idea of trying new games to them - they're pretty meh.  

I can't explain why, and it'd be cool if someone with more insight could shed some light on the problem.

One of my favorite players did not want to join a new game that was starting because he wanted to continue playing his old characters, and didn't want to start any new stories because he had started enough.

If your people are playing in long-term campaigns, they may be thinking that their characters are parts of an established world, and they don't want to lose that continuity.

--M. J. Young

[jeffd]

My gaming group is all friends (and not friends in the gaming only sense) but when I bring up the idea of trying new games to them - they're pretty meh.  

I can't explain why, and it'd be cool if someone with more insight could shed some light on the problem.

One of my favorite players did not want to join a new game that was starting because he wanted to continue playing his old characters, and didn't want to start any new stories because he had started enough.

If your people are playing in long-term campaigns, they may be thinking that their characters are parts of an established world, and they don't want to lose that continuity.

--M. J. Young

M.J.,

In this case it really is just a matter of inertia, as far as I can tell.  They're more than willing to game, so long as we use White Wolf/D&D/Warhammer Fantasy/Fading Suns/[insert system we've played before here].  

There's probably something interesting to be said about that kind of inertia.  Unfortunately I'm not insightful enough to come up with anything other than "oh well their loss."  :)

JD

[xiombarg]

There's probably something interesting to be said about that kind of inertia.  Unfortunately I'm not insightful enough to come up with anything other than "oh well their loss."  :)

To take a devil's advocate position, what a lot of people here on the Forge don't understand that while me might be dealing with otherwise interesting, even creative, people, that it's a documented fact that learning something new is more difficult for adults than it was when they were younger, and that they learn new things differently than kids -- there's a reason there's an entire sub-field of "adult learning".

So, if you have something you're comfortable with and you like, there's this gigantic hump to get over to learn something new -- and there's no guarantee you'll like it. So unwillingness to try something new is understandable in those circumstances.

At the Forge, we sometimes forget this, as most of the people here are the sort of people who enjoy learning new systems, so we don't mind going over that hump, because it's fun for us. But it isn't fun for everyone.

[simon_hibbs]

So, if you have something you're comfortable with and you like, there's this gigantic hump to get over to learn something new -- and there's no guarantee you'll like it. So unwillingness to try something new is understandable in those circumstances.

The time it takes to learn a new system, create new characters and establish a new setting is I think a valid concern for many people. I've got one kid and another on the way, and in the last 9 months I've played one roleplaying session (a few weeks ago). Last year I ran a mini campaign and played most thursday nights, but even then I often had to miss sessions due to family events or work commitments. For years I've focused on lightweight game systems and generating characters with pre-established possitions in the setting because I just don't have the time to build up a campaign from '1st level', either as GM or as a player.

One approach might be to take existing characters and settings from your current game and use them as the basis for a new one. Want to play Call ofCthulhu but your current game is AD&D? Why not have a cult of Ghatanothoa (or an unreasonable facsimile thereof) start up in the local seaport. Fancy trying out Sorcerer? The party raid a dungeon that is the prison for a tribe of ancient demons that posess the characters. Multiverser should be a cinch too.

Of course there are rules compatibility problems, but you can often work around them using a hybridization process. Most games could suffer the addition of a SAN stat for example. It's worth considering anyway.


Simon Hibbs

[JamesDJIII]

Would we, speaking as people who seem to be struggling with this issue, be so unsure about how to proceed if:

- We'd been eating at a restaurant (say, McFishy's), and then get tired of ALWAYS eating that and want to try the Ethiopian place on 2nd street?
- Water skied every day we could, then decided we wanted to try parasailing?
- Watched only action flicks with Vin Deisel, then decided to try and go see a movie, still action oriented, that starred Jackie Chan?

In each of these examples, imagine if your friends moaned or just limply sat there. Would you still feel reluctant to head out and try the new stuff? Why is that the gaming makes it *feel* different? Why would it be any different?

[Andrew Norris]

I think it's the perceived buy-in, James. Often, people think of involvement in role-playing as a long-term investment (the "never-ending campaign" model) and if they get it in their head that they can only handle one of these big committments at a time, they're going to balk at change.

So while I agree that gaming can be more like choosing which restaurant to eat at this week (or maybe for the next four Sundays), a lot of people think about it as making a contract to give up anything but Ethiopian when they haven't even been to the restaurant yet.

My personal experience was that I got a lot of 'meh' responses until I explicitly set things up as a one-shot session (with the option or more if player interest suggested) on a non-conflicting date and time. People gave a lot of caveats as to being unsure how often they could play even though I'd said it was a one-shot. The idea that you're signing your name in blood when you join a gaming group can sometimes be a difficult one to get past.

[JamesDJIII]

Andrew,

I see where you are coming from - but can see where I'm standing?

<crickets>

Ok, what I mean to ask is this: Forgetting about the OTHER people, why is that we find ourselves reluctant to just out and out try these new things without the fear that such an action will alienate our friends to the point they they will no longer be our friends.

There's really no other activity I can think of that conjurs up this sort of fear about making that kind of change. (And, like I said, it's not rational . It shouldn't be this way.)

[jeffd]

...why is that we find ourselves reluctant to just out and out try these new things without the fear that such an action will alienate our friends to the point they they will no longer be our friends.

I'm not Andrew, but I'll take a crack at this one:

If we're actually afraid of alienating our friends by trying something new - well, in that case I'm of the opinion that our friends aren't friends so much as people I game with.  

I think Kurt was on to something wrt adult learning.  Also Andrew's advice of "make it a one shot" is probably a good one - I've been meaning to try this with stuff like MLWM, Donjon, and Universalis.

JD

[John Kim]

In this case it really is just a matter of inertia, as far as I can tell.  They're more than willing to game, so long as we use White Wolf/D&D/Warhammer Fantasy/Fading Suns/[insert system we've played before here].  

There's probably something interesting to be said about that kind of inertia.  Unfortunately I'm not insightful enough to come up with anything other than "oh well their loss."  :)

OK, I just wanted to throw in two cents concerning this, because I'm one of the oddballs who discuss at the Forge but don't generally design or play the typical Forge games.  For example, I'm currently in three campaigns: a James Bond 007 campaign I'm GMing, a Buffy campaign I'm playing in (wrapping up now), and an Aberrant game I'm playing in (just starting up).  I've run one-shots of the Conan RPG and a HERO System game at a convention recently.  In the past, I've played Amber and Fudge and Theatrix and Baron Munchausen and various other systems.  

Now, I've bought and read Sorcerer, Soap, Trollbabe, My Life With Master, and The Riddle of Steel.  However, none of those has grabbed me personally.  I've talked about getting people together for a few-session game of MLWM, but with the various other stuff going on it hasn't happened yet.  I don't think I'm particularly close-minded, but rather I think my tastes are different than some other Forgites'.  

It can be hard to understand if someone else isn't intrigued and excited by something which is fascinating to your tastes; but I don't think it means that they are close-minded or ignorant.  Sure, there is inertia.  There is also neophilia: getting all excited about a game simply because it is so different and weird-sounding.

[JamesDJIII]

This is derailing, fast, off topic.

The point of the thread was: positive rebirthing of a gaming group. It's become... well something else. Perhaps it's time to kill this one, and start a new one.

[Blankshield]

Our gaming group, which consists largely of friends, rebirthed with decent success.

A long-running Pendragon campaign was wrapped up, and we found ourselves at loose ends.  A couple of us (Harlequin and myself), acquainted with forge-speak and RPG theory talked off-board about social contract and explicitly started a discussion about what we (as a group) wanted to do with Friday gaming.  Basically, renegotiated the social contract.  We had a couple people wanting to try some fairly new games like MLWM, a desire expressed by Harlequin to playtest system designs from time-to-time, some people who wanted 'good old-fashioned gaming' and a couple people who explicitely said "I'm here mostly for social reasons.  Gaming is fun, but secondary."

What we ended up with was a split group, with gaming happening downstairs, and boardgames/movie night/vegging with friends happening upstairs.  Gaming downstairs has rotated through several different games now (a old-school AD&D module converted to 3.0, MLWM, and it's currently a Riddle of Steel campaign-style game) and people pick up or drop off as that game appeals to them.  If they aren't in the current game, they stay upstairs.

This has worked really quite well for us, with a couple major factors helping the shift:
1: We game at a house with distinct "social" areas on two different floors which lets us accomplish it at all.
2: We explicitly did not reopen the floor to "let's do something else" until there was a break - we'd just wrapped up a long-term game and were casting about for "what next?" already.

Hope this helps, and is inline with your original desire for the thread.

James