Con-Game Phenomenon or Actual Play Style?

[Blankshield]

Part of the appeal to this style of play is, basically, "get the in-joke."  It's about the exact same thing as all our high-brow bleeding edge stuff:  social interaction.  What these games offer is the very very basic social dynamic of "in or out?"  Being in one of these games, if you're an outsider, is entirely unfun.  Like being a nerd at the football rally or a jock at the chessclub.  There's all kinds of references and jokes and stuff going on that completely passes you by.  But other folks are nodding, or laughing, or whatever.  They're included, you're excluded.  If you have the patience and social needs to stick around for a long, long time, you'll start to "get it" too.  The shrinking weirdo will make sense.  You'll stop trying to do things that aren't "how we play".  You'll start having "fun".

Clique formation and doing things because "that's how it's done" and because we'll get it when you won't isn't exactly advanced or intense social interaction, but it is.  And that's how they play.

James

[Judd]

If you have the patience and social needs to stick around for a long, long time, you'll start to "get it" too.  The shrinking weirdo will make sense.  You'll stop trying to do things that aren't "how we play".  You'll start having "fun".

Clique formation and doing things because "that's how it's done" and because we'll get it when you won't isn't exactly advanced or intense social interaction, but it is.  And that's how they play.

I disagree.  The shrinking wierdo was not an in-joke, that was a GM teaching the players a lesson, just like the named NPC freezing Rob's character in our In Nomine Hot Sauce Fiasco with no rolls and a warning from the NPC/GM was all about power.

These games are about social interaction but it isn't healthy interaction.  It is an hour long power-play, being lorded over by a GM without any real ability to pull anything from the players or put them in a compelling situation and then a punch-line.  Maybe the joke is funny and maybe it isn't but the set-up was hours from my life.

I find the hippie-dippy, let's hold hands and say that all play is good play tone to be hogwash.

There is such a thing as a game that isn't fun and isn't functional.

Some of the games in those threads are good examples.

The Forge really cured me of my snobbery.  I used to think that story focused games were the only authentic way to play.  Now I see dungeon crawls and competition and all ranges across the gaming spectrum to be rockin' but these games are not that.  It is a slur against good gaming, not my style of gaming but fun gaming where people are connecting and having fun to include the two games that I know of in these threads as functional play.

[Andrew Morris]

Judd, I agree with everything you've said. Thanks for saying it.

[Blankshield]

If you have the patience and social needs to stick around for a long, long time, you'll start to "get it" too.  The shrinking weirdo will make sense.  You'll stop trying to do things that aren't "how we play".  You'll start having "fun".

Clique formation and doing things because "that's how it's done" and because we'll get it when you won't isn't exactly advanced or intense social interaction, but it is.  And that's how they play.

I disagree.  The shrinking wierdo was not an in-joke, that was a GM teaching the players a lesson, just like the named NPC freezing Rob's character in our In Nomine Hot Sauce Fiasco with no rolls and a warning from the NPC/GM was all about power.

These games are about social interaction but it isn't healthy interaction.  It is an hour long power-play, being lorded over by a GM without any real ability to pull anything from the players or put them in a compelling situation and then a punch-line.  Maybe the joke is funny and maybe it isn't but the set-up was hours from my life.

I find the hippie-dippy, let's hold hands and say that all play is good play tone to be hogwash.

There is such a thing as a game that isn't fun and isn't functional.

Some of the games in those threads are good examples.

The Forge really cured me of my snobbery.  I used to think that story focused games were the only authentic way to play.  Now I see dungeon crawls and competition and all ranges across the gaming spectrum to be rockin' but these games are not that.  It is a slur against good gaming, not my style of gaming but fun gaming where people are connecting and having fun to include the two games that I know of in these threads as functional play.

Sigh.  I need to learn to be less obtuse.  You're talkin, and this is me nodding my head.  All I was trying to do was put some perspective towards "how does this happen?" because this thread has talked a lot about this kind of play, and given lots of examples, but it's like we're all watching a car crash and nobody's said "the guy was drunk."

Cliques and all that crap is seriously juvenile social interaction (I'll leave the healthy diagnosis to someone more qualified) but it's still social interaction; to abuse a quote: "Demented and sad, but social."  These guys are trying to do what good play does; they're just still stuck in junior high.

There was a reason I put fun in quotes.

James

[Judd]

I've re-read your post and I apologize for mis-reading it to begin with.  I've got it.

I think of many people hung around with those kinds of players for long enough we wouldn't get it or "get it" or have fun nor "fun" but we would stop gaming with them, many would stop gaming all together.

We agree.  Let's not do that forum thing where we argue about our agreement.

[Sean]

Also, though, Jesse did ask something like 'how can we take this playstyle and understand it as functional and/or find the functional part of it and write games for that', or something like that.

Is your answer to that 'you can't', Judd?

I wonder a little. It does sort of seem like the point of play here is just to 'celebrate color' in the sense of making in-jokes about shared imaginary content.

Maybe the trick then would be to write a system that still gives the GM iron control over what happens but give the players more control over what in-jokes get told and what color gets celebrated somehow. (I have this weird idea that there already are such systems...Call of Cthulhu in some people's hands, not in the form Jesse described (GMs story unfolds but there are set-piece scenes that can at least make some minimal difference and the GMs good enough so that you're sort of interested in 'what happens next' even though you don't have much control over it), but more in the form where everyone knows Lovecraft well and most of the game is just chuckling about bad mythos puns and/or seriously wondering how x might work in the world of the dread elder gods.)

It seems like you'd have to use non-GM generated settings. Because GMs who run this sort of play probably won't tolerate collaboratively generated ones, that probably means you have to mine pop culture and lit.

I admit that from a gaming point of view I have no interest in this question.

[GB Steve]

In my experience of conventions, the RPGA and gaming clubs, this kind of what you might like to call dysfunctional gaming is actually the norm. Not only is it common, it is celebrated. The person who comes up with the best "hot sauce" gag is held up as a paragon of what roleplaying is all about. And rightly so.

It's not something I want to do, but plenty of people seem happy to do, and they're not killing puppies far as I can tell. And I don't think preaching is going to change that. On the other hand, the Forge Gen Con sales are up for a third year in a row. The best that can be hoped for is to present a serious alternative and let the market chose. I think the Forge does that, does it well and is being noticed. I don't think "dysfunctional" con games are a challenge to this, I think they're an opportunity.

[contracycle]

It strikes me that GMs of such scenarios might have an incredibly rigid definition of "role-playing"  Not just "talking in character" but "talking in character amongst each other."  So the idea is for the GM to present things that will prompt in character discussion of said thing.  Hence the anoying shrinking dude in the L5R game.  The wave after wave of wanna-be vampire hunters and absurd weaponry in the In Nomine game.

Well, I've been known to remark that:
- the coolest part of Mage was the in-character philosophical discussions
- the coolest part about GMing is when the players are discussing the solution to some problem and I get to observe

None of this is an apologia for games that run with no reference tio their players, far from it.  Nor does it deny the observable fact that this can be counterproductive, in that you can get so lost you don't know what to do next.  But IMO, "XYZ Now" is not what everyone necessarily wants out of the experience.  In fact, too much pace can obviate or prevent legitimate Exploration, I think.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey folks,

Instead of getting more specific and staying rooted in actual play, this thread topic seems to be floating upward and outward. Let's get it back down to earth ... and conceivably, consider whether you'd be meeting our shared goals better by starting related, specific actual play threads of your own.

Best,
Ron