Device for Gamism

[Calithena]

This is just an aside to Mike's Standard Rant #7.

I noticed Drifter Bob there talking about a hypothetical spell 'Goodnight', which is basically a device allowing the party to make a safe camp, as they often do in dungeon adventures and elsewhere where it's less sensible anyway. (When they tried that in the Tomb of Horrors I just gated in a Type IV Demon on them while they were sleeping in their skivvies. When they did it again I switched to a Type VI. But I digress).

Drifter Bob followed up by making the good point that good gamist play doesn't involve just casting Goodnight (making safe camp, etc.) after every fight, but rather getting as far as you can into the resource allocation challenge and fighting as far as you can without casting it. ("Dude, we didn't have to burn a Raise Dead until we got to the room with the sleep gas and the juggernaut." That kind of thing.)

Anyway, it's primarily real-world social enforcement that makes this (one form of) 'good gamist play' - it's balancing the tactics against the bragging rights, with the GM trying to lure the party on into making just that one more foray, where they get smacked, and the party trying to just stop at the last possible minute, just before they get smacked. Notice how there's no similar stigma associated with saving your computer adventure game every time you overcome an obstacle, or making a 'safe camp' if the game allows you that resource - that's just common sense. It's only the social context of the game that changes that.

So anyway, here's my proposal: GMs who want to enforce gamist-style competition in games where 'making camp' is a regular choice (D&D, etc.) should STOP THE SESSION when the PCs camp. That's right: no more gaming once you wuss out for the night. Got to wait 'til we meet next week. But this is only 8:30 pm and the wife only lets you out one night a week? Sorry, bud. Should have managed your resources better. Your character lives, but you lose. Whereas, if they're doing hot, stay up until 11, 12 pm, 1 am with them, until everyone's tired.

I mean, if you're a good GM who players want to play with, this should be a great incentive. And then you can finally open up a can of whoop-ass on that drow ranger because they just didn't know when to stop playing...ahh...

[Mike Holmes]

Might not be practical. What if things get goofed up on the first encounter, and they have to retreat then. So Mack drove 45 miles just to play for 20 minutes? That might be too strong.

Mike

[Calithena]

Heh. Yeah, well, you'd have to make a few allowances for stuff like that - say if there's a bust in the first hour or two (depending on play length expectations) they get off easy and are allowed a chance to regroup. But only a few.

[contracycle]

Hmm, yeah, I think a common loss condition in games is to have to stop playing, but it is so severe I can't see it being used lightly.  While I appreaciate the sentiment, and do see the 'fairness' in it, it would still ask us all to stop playing - even the GM, who has done no wrong.

[Calithena]

OK, this is schematic and incomplete, and I don't have time to finish it properly. But the original post actually came out as part of a brew of broader questions about gamist RPG play. Particularly D&D, I suppose, though Paranoia produced a similar phenomenon in our high school group at least.

These threads on gamism have brought up a bunch of great issues about improving the 'game' side of RPGs, where 'improving' means 'creating a situation with complex, variegated, and non-obvious tactical and strategic choices'.

But I think of them in relation to Scripty's nasty experience with the D&D group that basically turned the session into a game of 'kill the pill' where Scripty had no way to pass the ball to someone else.

Some gamist RPGs turn into dominance exercises. This is true e.g. of many chess clubs as well. A group of people, usually men, choose to engage in an open-ended renegotiation of their local social hierarchy by repeatedly playing a game with one another. The political dimension of this tends to be much stronger in RPGs than in chess except at the highest level. There's a way in which group participation in 'game' tactical exercises both allows an outlet for and rewards social-dominance behavior. This is connected to Step On Up, which was the first GNS term I understood precisely, I think.

But here's the question that the 'send everyone home early' device, as well as Scripty's experience, raises for me: at what point is your participation in this dominance exercise 'fair' and/or 'in game' and at what point not?

An example from my life of 'not': in high school one of my friends had mental problems, being prone to delusions and so forth. A DM in our group killed his character IG in a nasty human sacrifice scene. Then, that night, that DM and a friend went to the first fellow's house who's character had gotten killed, made a giant pentagram in the yard, filled it with entrails obtained from the local butcher, and chanted until the first friend woke up in the middle of the night and came out to a yard full of blood and incense.

On the other hand, when 3e came out, I did quick and dirty conversions of Tomb of Horrors and Caverns of Thracia and ran them at the local hobby store. In both cases I killed more than half the party, and during the crucial battle scenes was standing up behind my DM shield, howling with laughter as the fireball-throwing minotaur king was devastating PC's, cackling with glee as their characters died.

I was being sort of a dick to kill people's characters and then laugh derisively at them in public, no question. On the other hand, I don't really see that as 'unfair' in the absolute sense, because this is an accepted mode of D&D play - though of course not the only one - with which most of the players were comfortable. People understood what was going on, and I think that while I freaked a couple of them out in the big battles, things were basically OK.

But I'd be lying to say all the joy was just 'the joy of the game'. I was playing Dominant Ape. I'm regarded by some as a 'good DM' for this kind of game partly because I don't do that all the time  - I beat my chest for a while, and then I give my players a chance to do some chest-beating, and I'm pretty good about getting most of the party a turn, if they'll take it, which some won't. I suppose using the 'bass player' metaphor a good DM for this kind of game would let the players do all the chest-beating. I'm not sure, actually: I have to just think about that more.

In your typical high school gaming club, what you do IG affects your status and prestige OOG, and vice versa. The game becomes part of a constantly renegotiated social contract that has repercussions in your lives far outside of gaming; and changes in your lives outside of gaming has an effect on the game.

I actually don't have a position on this question at this point. We hear about lots of examples of behavior in gaming that seems 'over the line' to us. And I think a lot of it is - but that seems to be true only because there are implicit social contracts that support that interpretation. And if a group wanted to change that social contract - ideally consciously, but unconscious behavior reaches a point where it constitutes agreement as well - it seems hard to provide a decisive negative judgment of that.

I can imagine a group of people - why I don't know - consciously agreeing to reevaluate their real-life dominance order through a game. And you can use the game to facilitate this in all kinds of strange ways, if you want. Maybe when the thief robs the sleeping fighter the fighter's player has to give the thief's player money out of his bank account, or something like that. Maybe when your character gets killed you get taken out to the woodshed and worked over for a while. Maybe a GM decides he or she will have sex with whichever player knocks the succubus/incubus to negative hit points without killing it, allowing the character to act out a rape or whatever.

These things seem horrible to me when I first consider them, like a violation of the 'game' vs. 'reality' distinction. On the other hand, reading Ron's bit about 'screw safe' in Sex and Sorcery made a lot of sense to me. I guess the liberal in me would want to say, 'well, make sure everyone understands and accepts the social contract of the game, and that everyone understands where everyone else's boundaries are, and then it will all be OK'. Consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes and all of that. But then part of me feels like - the same way I feel like some gamers should stop gaming and get into creative writing classes instead (or at least in additon), because they're taking the wrong vehicle for what they really want to do - why not join a Fight Club or play poker or get into the swingers' scene if these are really the places you want your gaming to take you?

Well, maybe because you'd rather get there a different way. And if that's the answer, I'm not sure what ground I have for complaint. Well, actually, that's not quite true - I would have whatever ground for complaint I already have for _real life_ behaviors I found objectionable. But the point is, I'm not sure the words 'its a game' create any _additional_ grounds for complaint beyond those negotiated in the game's social contract, which is itself a real life social contract, and not 'part of the game', even where play is entirely 'safe'.

Okay, I have an actual game to go prepare for - thanks for listening.

[Calithena]

One more thing though, pertaining both to the first post and the second. The gimmick where the GM tries to get the players to keep going for a little more 'carrot' until they can't and then hurts them for it is classic S&M. In fact, a lot of traditional roleplaying is just straight up sadomasochism. The 'good DM' provides something - usually cool setting, gamist-interesting fights, and enough treasure to whet people's appetites, though other kinds of cookies that would be more naturally associated with Sim or Nar play also show up here - that makes people want to keep coming back for more, and then the GM hurts them in order to gain pleasure, but not so badly that they decide to stop playing. The GM is the 'top'.

Following this out, the player who makes camp too soon is violating the (implicit) social contract by not creating the tense situation in which pain and pleasure are to be distributed in the first place.

[Umberhulk]

I've been playing a lot of Living Greyhawk campaign lately.  Many of the modules that are available for LG are written with this problem in mind; usually there is some sort of story based time constraint, so that the players only have a few days to accomplish the mission or they get no reward or something else bad happens.  A lot of times, it can be that the villian is discovered but will flee if the PCs take time to camp, so the PCs are forced into one last encounter without all their resources.

I would recommend this approach over stopping play (since I'm one of those guys that drives 40 miles and only gets to play once a week because I have a wife and kid.)

[M. J. Young]

Umberhulk's advice is solid.

Now, if you've got the sort of group where stopping the session is appropriate, that's fine--but it would never work for us. We've had single adventures spread across half a dozen game sessions, and we've had game sessions in which we've done half a dozen adventures in a single session.

I'm of the camp that hates any mechanic that says you can use it so many times per game session. I know that the variety in what a "game session" is is just too great to be used that way. I know groups that play two hours a night three nights a week; others that get together for one weekend every three months. We tended to do six to fourteen hour sessions, depending on group and what was happening, every week or two, but I know of one group that started play after dinner on Friday and ended it in time to get dinner on Sunday (and they played weekly).

To say that there's a mechanic that will end the session--well, that's worse than the Quidditch idea that when the guy catches the 150 point ball the game ends. At least that makes you think about stopping the other team from catching it.

If it works, go for it. It would never work for us.

--M. J. Young

[Calithena]

Yeah, this mechanic - and any relations of a game to OOG life - are going to depend somewhat heavily on the nature of the group. I think of the game "Killer" (which existed as an 'informal' gaming practice long before SJG published the rules - people were playing this as long as I can remember, and I remember Watergate) - it works fine for students but would not really be functional, I think, for adults, except maybe on vacation at a retreat for somesuch. RL issues get in the way.

I think the proposed mechanic would probably work best for the 'once a week' after-work or after-school type game, with people living in reasonable proximity and some schedule flex, with players who are excited to go late (dinner - x? for workers, after school-dinner or beyond for students, any schedule whatever for college students). Then it's not a game-crusher if there are occasional early busts and people will enjoy the reward of going all night when it's appropriate.

But what I'm really interested in here is how broader life rewards and punishments tie into RPGing more generally. If I have any more thoughts on that perhaps I'll start a new thread...

[Mike Holmes]

It's a good topic. Good feedback so far, too.

The one thing that I always bring up regarding this is that we have this scorekeeping device that we use in every day real life that serves as a really potent driver for player behavior. In fact, it's used as the "score" in most of the sample games from Game Theory. We call it money.

Ever note how M:tG and other CCGs drove player behavior and Gamism? I've just never been able to figure out how to use this in a RPG. :-)

Mike

[Umberhulk]

A rule of thumb for me would be that it has to add to the enjoyment for all the players in the group.  I would say that it is okay to break a game session based on the story of the current adventure.  For example, Cliffhangers recommends ending your sessions on a cliffhanger, instead of after the big fight.  This would add to the anticipation for the next session for the group, so I am fine with it.

Some other real life rewards can be added by the participants, such as winning the money pot or contributing to game products.  This is more easily done with miniature or wargames, but you could create a RPG equivalent mechanism (such as voting a MVP for each session, or some such).