Why we come to the 'table'

[dragongrace]

More than likely this has been discussed here but I'll bring it up again.  GNS seems more or less how we play the game, or what kind of game we are looking for, but what about why we come to the table in the first place.

Social reasons, Competitve reasons, Exploratory reasons?

I realize that Exploration is considered part of all RPG experience, all GNS experience, but I propose that perhaps it is a driving force as to why we seek out the RPG (generalized) in the first place.

Would these reasons to come to the table necessarily correlate with GNS principle?  The may be associated more often with a particular type but are not held by it.  example: Competitive Gamist (common) Competitive Narativist (not so common).

thoughts...

JOE--

[Lugaru]

Does the "in the last episode" effect count as exploratory? I mean I loved throwing clifthangers at my players... so much that they try to resolve them on the bus. "Shut up! Wait till saturday!"

Social is the best though... food, drink and new whines from the parties resident munchkin.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey Joe

You're asking a question that I've personally been wrestling with a bit for a while now. The Why. Why do people roleplay? Why do they prefer the mode of play they do? I have not found any answers, really. It's much too easy to turn pop psychologist and try to categorize people's personalities by the color jellybean they prefer.

[Paganini]

* With heroic resolve, Paganini overcomes the urge to make snide comments about Mike's infatuation with Hero system.

I wonder if this question can even be answered. We're all trapped inside our own frames of reference. It's problematic enough trying to identify what we enjoy, let alone why it causes enjoyment. How could we possibly do this to another person?

[Bruce Baugh]

I wonder if this question can even be answered. We're all trapped inside our own frames of reference. It's problematic enough trying to identify what we enjoy, let alone why it causes enjoyment. How could we possibly do this to another person?

Sure, within limits. These aren't laws of nature so much as practical observations.

1. Limited explanations. Very seldom, I think, does anyone game for just one reason. Maybe not for even just a very short list. If we allow room for new insights, by saying things like "this is a contributing factor" rather than "this is the whole truth", we avoid embarrassing ourselves in the face of later realizations. And in my experience, folks are more likely to respond constructively to "this too" than to "this alone" statements.

2. Good will. If we just can't figure out the appeal of something, we are better off asking or shutting up than working out a taxonomy of base and vile motives. The problem is likely limits in our own perception rather than someone else actually being a blinkered idiot with a taste for wallowing in crap. (That sort of fetish is five doors down and in the basement, I believe.) If we can't grant a reasonable assumption of desire to have a good time, and like that, then we should probably leave the proclamations alone and listen for a while.

We can build up over time a sense of lots of possible motives and sastifactions and see what of them seem to apply, without committing ourselves to the thought that we now have an entirely full understanding. Incremental understanding can be useful.

[Paganini]

Bruce,

Great post! Welcome to the Forge!

Now, a clarification made and requested. :)

GNS already deals with identifying motives - what people want to do when they game. It's very useful in that it helps a designer create games that support those motives. It doesn't try to explain *why* people have those motives.

I think that Joe is asking about the latter. For example, "gamist" is just a handy label that we use to classify a player with certain motives / priorities / goals. Joe is looking a bit deeper: Why do the people we call "gamist" have those goals? Joe, have I read you correctly? If not, can you clarify?

[Bruce Baugh]

Thanks for the welcome. :)

I'd agree that if the question is "Why do we have these motives?", then at some point we hit a singularity. I was reading it more as "What elements contribute?", which is answerable with some decomposition.

[dragongrace]

Why do the people we call "gamist" have those goals? Joe, have I read you correctly? If not, can you clarify?

Yes and no.  Why do people have a specific GNS goal is a minor point I feel as that refers, IMHO, to the observational 'how', rather than a 'why'.  I think the 'why' we come to the table is another layer like GNS.  But it is to be determined not just on keen observations but maybe on a collective opinion grouped over time.

As someone hinted at I think in another post, there are a grand multiplicity of reasons why we can come to the table, but I would wager that many of those reasons can be tossed into broad generalizations.  And to this end like GNS we can design games appeal to a specific group of people.  Also we can ask appropriate questions of our gamers as to what they want to get out of a session/campaign/group.

For example, the social gamer, may not have a particular preference as to what kind of game they are playing, GNS, so long as they are having fun with their friends.  The same can be said of Explorers and of Competitors so long as the particular 'how' of the game suitably satisfies this other need that they have.

Granted these reason of why we come to the table can apply to any kind of game, Monopoly, Go, Poker.  But I wonder specifically in reference to RPGs since the people who play RPGs have a preference for one reason or another as to the type of game play that is produced/experienced from an RPG.

JOE--

[Mike Holmes]

First, Ron has said that GNS does not discuss motives at all. I'd agree with this. It discussed behaviors, specifically how pepopla make decisions in RPGs. The only thing that anyone has been able to say definitively about the motives that may be behind a particular GNS peference is that they have motives that are satisfied by using a particular GNS mode. Which is a circular reference. Yes, whatever motives are behind why a player likes a particular GNS mode, are the motives for why that player likes that GNS mode.

Thing is that they may be so wide ranging that I doubt that there's nothing we could say with any usefulness. One player likes Gamism because as a child he was taught by his father to always compete with whatebver challenges are thrown at him. Another player likes Narratvism because he has had experienced in the other modes where he was railroaded.

Whatever. There are so many motives that it's probably not useful to know why. What is important is to see that they player wants somethig common amongst players. Like Gamism, Simulationism, or Narrativism. If you can then select rules to support one of these, then you can make a game that supports the preference of some large group of players.

Until someone can show me that there is a large contingent of roleplayers who play simulationist because of their military background, I'm not going to work on ensuring that my game caters to that particular motive. Besides which catering to Simulationism seems like it will be suficient.

So why are we asking? Is there some motive other than social, exploration, GNS, or the like that we need to know about? Wouldn't we already know? I mean we do have the whole realism and Immersion debates. People have told us their common motives, and we can work from that, can we not?

Joe, I think that the whole point of putting Exploration above GNS is to say that it's the primary reason. Basically, you socialize with people. Then if you want to explore, you move on to playing RPGs. If you don't have that motive, you converse, or play parchesee.

Mike

[Jason Lee]

I don't think it is logically possible for GNS modes to be nicely mapped to reasons why people choose to game.

The reason why someone games is going to sit in a box above GNS somewhere.  The reason why someone might choose to play a particular game is the basic Premise, nestled in the Exploration layer (Exploration Premise? Premise as defined in chapter 1 of the GNS essay).  As you step down the model, and dial up the behavior microscopic, the basic Premise become refined into a Gamist Premise, Narrativist Premise, or Simulationist Premise.  Each GNS mode doesn't conveniently sit underneath an Exploration category. Trying to map a GNS mode to something above the Exploration layer means stepping right over Exploration as if it didn't exist.  Because there is no tunnel straight from Gamist through Exploration, you'll be trying to discern a motive using the Gamist Premise while ignoring the motives you used to discern the Gamist Premise in the first place.

I'm normally not a huge fan of analogies, but this delicious pizza pie thing I'm eating is controlling my mind and compels me to include it in one.

I must eat dinner (reason for gaming).
I like Italian food (basic Premise).
I shall conquer the pizza (Gamist Premise)!

So, you're kinda trying to figure out why someone ate dinner based on the fact that they like pizza.

Now, I admit to having a tendency to view things in mathematical structures.  So, to put it another way:  I don't think the model is even set up in a fashion that would support 'why's'.  Trying to pack 'em in there makes the whole thing fall apart - as can be clearly seen every time someone tries to use GNS as a player classification system ('Hey, I've got a Gamist who won't do blah because he's a Gamist'.)

[M. J. Young]

O.K., once again either I'm not  understanding the original question or no one else is.

Well, maybe not no one--I did see at least one answer in there that seemed to address the question as I understood it. But most seem to be getting tied up in GNS, when that seemed to me to be the question's afterthought.

That is, the question as I understood it, was something like, "Why do people come to play role playing games at all?" Secondary to that was the question, "Does this relate at all to GNS preferences?" I'm going to attempt to address that; if I misunderstood completely, you can continue with your regularly scheduled thread and ignore me.

First, I think that the question may be hiding two questions within it, and that may be important to finding the answer, viz., [list=1][*]Why do people ever begin to play role playing games initially?[*]Why do they come back to play them again and again once they've started?[/list:o]

Now that I've isolated the questions, I'm going to attempt to offer my answers.

On the first, my own experience is probably not terribly useful (at least, I don't think it's normative). I was really into heroic fantasy adventure stories. I'd read Tolkien, Lewis, Charles Williams, a bunch of sci-fi (not as appealing), and a handful of also-rans. In college I started not one but two aborted fantasy novels. I owned a copy of SPI's Lord of the Rings bookcase game, and one of the Dune bookcase game, both of which were disappointing. I heard about Dungeons & Dragons when my wife brought home a Psychology Today article about the use of the game in teenage group therapy, and since we were already active game players with our own little gaming group, we sought and bought the basic set and went from there. So for me, the primary attraction was the possibility that we might be able to create heroic fantasy adventures in which we were the heroes.

There was certainly some social aspect; but this was really minor. We already got together with Bob and Margaret almost every weekend to play something. We liked playing games.  One year we played a hundred twenty-three games of Pinochle, and kept score through the year whether the guys or the girls won more games (I will with some embarrassment admit that a few minutes before midnight on New Years Eve the girls won the last hand of the last game, breaking the tie and putting them as the winners for the year.) So we already had that social element that brought us together to play games; role playing games were just another medium for that interaction.

As to the others who have come to play with us, for a lot of them it was that they'd heard of this game and wondered what it was about, so they decided to join. For some, certainly, it was that all their friends had a place to go on Friday night (my house), so they came to be together with friends. A few--mostly my kids and younger siblings of the teenagers I hosted--wanted to play because it was something they had to be old enough to do. Those seem to me to be the primary initial draws that I've seen.

The other question is why do we keep playing. I think whoever mentioned the cliffhanger probably has me pegged. Even without that cliffhanger aspect, I always want to know what's going to happen to my character--or the player characters in the game I'm running--next. Our game group was within a couple months running three role playing games, and rarely playing board games or war games or bookcase games or parlor games (we still played pinochle, usually one game to warm up before we took out the RPGs), and always trying to decide which game we'd play this week. We all wanted to know what would happen next to our people. That drove us forward.

I suspect that in the younger group, a lot of people kept coming back because they got to socialize with their friends and eat pizza and snacks with soda (they were supposed to chip in, and generally their contributions did cover the costs to feed everyone, but I know that some of them never had any money so others made up for it). That begs the question, though, to some degree. I think the main players kept coming back because they wanted to know what would happen next. Probably if I called three or four of them tomorrow, and said, "remember that game we were playing that broke up around 1992? I'm going to continue it tomorrow"--I'd probably have at least ten or fifteen players at my house for it. What's going to happen next is a compelling force, I think.

Now, if this isn't the question, forget I said anything.

As to whether it tracks to GNS, I don't think so. I think that everyone wants to know what happens next. They may be interested in different aspects of it, such as

[*]Will my character survive?[*]Did we win the war?[*]Does the girl love me?[*]What's down that fifth corridor on the right?[*]Is this the real villain, or is someone pulling his strings behind the scenes?[*]How did the poison wind up in the coffee in the first place?[/list:u]--which might relate to their GNS preferences more or less, but in every case it's about wanting to know what happens next, whatever that may be.

--M. J. Young

[dragongrace]

Why do people ever begin to play role playing games initially?
Why do they come back to play them again and again once they've started?

This is a better phrasing of my question.  And to add to the idea, How do we market a particular game to a particular Why?  

Why would I ask these questions?  For practical reasons of relating to various people and delving into what makes them tick, call it the psychologist in me.  If someone comes to the table and expects a CliffHanger, or I know that it will bring them back I can quickly say, "Let's stop here for the night," admidst the groans.

Perhaps we shouldn't even be relating the 'why' to GNS at all.  Maybe referring to the 'why' of gaming should be addressed as a matter of marketing, communication, recruitment, and explanation.  So that if someone comes up and says, 'Why do you play that stuff?'  Rather than say, "Because I like it," one can say "Because I like to get together with my friends and laugh all evening," "I like to explore possibilities," I like the kind of friendly competition it promotes."

On a personal note, I do RPG almost purely for Social reasons.  I find that I enjoy the company that a game of this manner brings to the table.  Fun ideas and continued discussion after leaving the table add to the effect.  Depending on the group I gamed with in the past, I didn't get a whole lot of exploring done, and working together to accomplish a goal entered into the game more often than competition.  However after meeting with a couple of the groups for several sessions, I can honestly say that if we all decided to get together to play Board games every weekend I would have still been there because I enjoyed the social aspect of talking over a game.

While I prefer the stories and drama that a Narrative game promotes over the other two modes, there are times when I'd rather build a character, exploit the rules like every one else and kick some monster behind.  Reap my rewards and be on with it.  Usually to satisfy this urge I spend an hour in front of Diablo however.

Why I prefer to RPG traditionally is Social.  How I would prefer to play is Narrative.  The atmosphere I prefer is fantasy.

JOE--

[Dr. Velocity]

Hmm I wish I could add some high-brow intellectual postulation about GNS and various other acronyms, but I can only give my observations on myself and the gaming groups I've been with.

First off, I started, like millions, with D&D. I bought a basic edition boxed set when I was 17 or so, understood part of it but had a hard time with "prerequisites" and some of the other conventions, and it collected dust in my closet for at least a year while I played Lone Wolf adventure books. One day I got D&D out, determined to understand it, turned to the pages I had trouble with, tense and gritting my teeth in anticipating, and for some reason, totally understood it. I was shocked and immediately sucked a close cirlcle of school friends and neighbors into trying it out with me. Here I will just list various reasons for 'coming to the table' ie playing an rpg, that I think are pretty universal, in no particular order:

1 - its different, its not a video game, its not tv, its not a board game, its not cards, its something "unique" which only your very small group understands or even knows about

2 - its "forbidden" - part 1. Not so much by my time, but I had definitely heard all the D&D propoganda from its earlier years, so buying that boxed edition in the bookstore made me keep my eyes lowered and I was very noncommental to any adults who asked if I'd bought anything neat lately. Its like I had bought some giant blinking neon trunk of gay kimono lizard porn or something that you wouldn't EVER want to be caught dead with and could never in a million years explain to someone else why you did it without sounding like a total pervert or weirdo. Kinda like buying your first ouija board I suppose (which, heh, I've heard clueless regurgitators assure me used to be included in the original editions of D&D).

3 - "its forbidden" - part 2. Rebellion, open-mindedness, conspiracy theories about "THEM" keeping things from "US"...  I thought, "there must be something to this, its probably really fun and these other morons are so close-minded they have no clue". RPGs were unheard of, except when whispered about or written about in an expose, etc. I wanted to play because I *could*. Honestly, the social thing with friends is good, but... if there were someway to play an entertaining round by myself... I probably would do that once in a while.

4 - NOW Social, as I mentioned, you get your friends together, you all read through the game, you look up info, you help each other create characters and understand vague rules, etc. You can come up with things tailor made to your friends' likes, or they can let you have some fun and agree to play in some wacky, probably b-grade adventure you've come up with, because you're all friends and 'its all good' more or less. Gaming, initially especially, seems to be a very good way to build and strengthen social relationships with people who you might not really have warmed up to - but once you've spent a day side by side with them looking up encumbrance rules and marvelling at their unique approach they take to find and interpret answers, you actually develop a very real basis of respect - so its very much a good 'icebreaker' for even a large group of people, to introduce themselves to each other, not just 'hi, I'm Joe' but 'Hi, I'm Joe, I just found the Thac0 formula' - they become a valuable member of your team in your war on unclear rules and so a comeraderie develops.

5 - Elitist - Its a cooperative, constructive effort of deduction and research which basically elevates all of you to varying levels of hierarchy in your gaming group, even the LOWEST of which still outranks the "normals" who ask what that "funny looking dice" is for. Your gaming group hides their chuckles and smiles directed at the buffoons who "don't get it", and spend hours, even on the phone, interspersing current affairs or other everyday gossip with "yah, and so remember that troll? Man it was a good thing Jeff had a torch..." I think maybe its a collective identity thing.

6 - Fantasy/Immersion - Talked about many times, this is important for a number of psychological reasons, but one UNDERLYING reason is that NOTHING else gives you this. The TV is passive, some computer things are sort of realtime but you cant see the other people, video games have finite and strict can-do-this-can't-do-that rules... RPGS allow you to transcend ALL that, with the other players validating your own desire to play a certain way, its an outlet for ...

7 - CREATIVITY - Probably my real "main" attraction, I LOVE making characters. I do *ok* at playing them, some I really get a feel for and are just a BLAST, some I sort of "mail in" if I'm not in the mood, but the fact I can come up with a new idea no one else has, like the Blind Elven Pacifist Monk Fiddle Player, allows me to "show off" I guess, for lack of a better word, to the other players and partially to throw in some REALLY weird possible hooks for the current scenario. When I'm the referee, I encourage creativity, and try to be creative how I run the game, but sometimes people are TOO creative, so while thats an in-game hurdle sometimes, its GREAT to see such wild imaginations basically going full throttle.

Those I feel are some good examples of "why"... as for helping you market a game toward one... I wouldn't know if you can "bottle lightning"