My Group

[Mark Causey]

I'm extremely new to this group, and this is my first post.
I started roleplaying at a technical magnet school a long time ago and both the technical school and those events have shaped how I've roleplayed and gamemastered ever since.

Recently, after running into frustration after frustration (being the only willing GM) with my 3.5 DnD game (which is a very gamist group) and with trying to make myself and my gamers happy, I began a search for GMing tools.

The Forge turned out to be better than I expected, it mixes the technical school aspect and brings to the forefront things I've never thought about, like Social Contracts and GNS. :)

Originally here I wanted to comment on Andrew Norris' [d20] The Comfort Zone post, but have found that this is more about my somewhat dysfunctional group. I don't know if this should be it's own post or not, but I'll let moderators decide in the end, I guess.

I currently run d20 games (so far only fantasy) because it so far has the right level of Simulationism and Gamism for my group and myself (not too many rules but enough rules on how to explain things in the world and how to reward the players). I've run the particular Dark*Matter game that Andrew Norris did myself (as Alternity) and that was the first game for this group. It basically set the pace as I let the players usually worry more about the rules and I about trying to tie the scenes together to make a decent story.

We've sinced moved on to d20 and meet weekly to satisy our gamist desires.

I've run into way too many of your "Wait, this isn't what I planned!" moments that Andrew Norris did also, but I don't think I've ever managed to continue the adventure as well as he did. I've basically learned that the players are actually looking for cues from me as to where they interpret I want them to go. In that since they have quite an Author stance, I think. So when they do something that I didn't plan and they realize it, they either try to 'fix it' or wait for me to do so, hoping that I'll keep them on track. What I want, though, is for a story I never imagined happening, within the framework of what has happened and some situations I create (a mix of Bang-driven and Relationship mapping from what I can gather). I continue to have conversations where I ask an individual if they're having fun still and get a response of "I'm still not sure where you're leading us, but it's fun so far!"

To further demonstrate how the group is, let me refer to the part of the adventure Andrew Norris had wherein he introduced the drugs. My players would have wanted to know exactly what stat changes would have occurred before they would have roleplayed it, which may have had very little effect to their actions. I can imagine one of the players stating how they would just stay off to the side until it wore off. They would have imagined it as more of a hindrance to the action than something to Simulate or roleplay. They would then consider why I wanted them to be encountering these drug experiences and trying to figure out how they should act in the future. Basically, "Oh, I screwed up, now I'm out of the fight/scene! God, what did he want me to do? I'll try and stave off the worst of it so I can get back in the action/fray."

I've *never* been able to do split action and make the other players interested because of self-stated Actor stances on their characters (basically an excuse to read more rulesbooks). "Oh, I wasn't paying attention because my character wouldn't know. That way I won't be using OOC knowledge. This variance in stances can be very frustrating.

I'm interested in one day finally switching them onto something different, mainly because I'm creating a fantasy setting and don't want it pigeonholed into the current DnD product. As such, I'm very interested into Andrew Norris' use of Plot Points (or if from some other product, that product's use) and how they work. I would like to have a group that would push the rules aside for the fun of it and not have a comment half an hour later about how it couldn't have happened anyway.

My players are almost always "Must be prompted to speak" as you said. They await my cues or the dead-horse statement of "What do you do?"

I hope I haven't rambled too much, but it feels good to get it off of my chest. If anyone has any comment whatsoever, please please reply or email me :)

Yours Faithfully,

Aman the Rejected

[Andrew Norris]

Wow, someone read my campaign post! I was afraid it was far too long-winded. And you can just call me Andrew. :)

I have some followup information from my game (in terms of discussing Narrativism with the group) that I'll post later. I'll also talk some to where plot points came from and how they work (you might look at posts about Donjon and The Pool's Monologue of Victory to get you started; that was where I started).

Specifically, I had the experience in later games of seeing our quietest player yell "No! How could you do this to me!" in character while he was grinning ear to ear. It surprised the hell out of me, but man was I pleased.

Because I'm already late for this dinner party, I'm going to put a few points in here to remind me what I want to talk about.

First, I admit I still had the sense that I had no idea where things were going for a few more sessions, but I covered it with Illusionism along the "Keep the sense of mystery high" angle. Things were confusing enough that the players were blurting out their own theories, and then I started feeding their own ideas back on them later. This is a sneaky way to get someone into Author stance, but early on I would take what I could get.

Second, in a flashback that involved only one character I cast the other players as supporting NPCs, and let them decide what they'd be like. (It was a scene straight from _Three Kings_, basically -- one of our military PCs had been on patrol with three of his significantly less competent fellows.) I found that letting the 'supporting cast' just focus on a broadly-painted characterization with generic stats really brought out what I was looking for. One player in particular (who when playing his main character showed a lot of that "I'm not optimally effective in this scene so I'll step aside") came up with "The worst private ever", taken from Spud in _Trainspotting_, and spent the entire scene rolling joints on the group's NSA-issued laptop, dropping ammunition belts, and falling onto claymores. How exactly that led to him having higher satisfaction with his main PC is something I'm still hashing out, but I have some ideas.

Finally, I took the "My PC shouldn't know that" issue and pushed it to 11 until the dial broke. Events in the other flashbacks were so vital to the mystery that even though the players knew their characters wouldn't know these things the players themselves dropped into Audience mode. Comments like "Damn, I was afraid of that" would echo around the table.

I'll comment further later. I'm glad to discuss these issues with you because I think my success has partially been due to luck, and if I talk about what's working I'll have a better chance to repeat it. :)

[John Burdick]

Aman,

From 1986 (high school) to recently I didn't play rpgs. Now that I'm back in, I've been buying some of the books I missed. Including a good portion of the Alternity line. The the scripted adventures are very different from the modules I knew from basic/expert D&D, Gamma World 1ed, Boot Hill, and Top Secret. Even the time table driven Top Secret ones weren't as tightly scripted as Alternity adventures seem to be.

I've read here about the transition of published adventures moving from map based through situation based to the 90s plot scripted extreme. Having skipped the transition, I can see interesting aspects in scripted adventures, but I find them alien. After having difficulty running a game dynamically with player driven situation, I'm about to run an old school map based module.(Little Keep on the Borderlands, a Kenzer rewrite of the one I knew from Basic D&D) I'm hoping to build my confidence as a GM.

John

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Aman,

I think it's brave of you to post about this game. I have a string of questions for you, and a minor theory-observation.

You mentioned you were new to this group. Have they been playing prior to you becoming GM? Did you know them as friends or acquaintances before joining the group? How many people are involved, and what ages and sexes do they represent?

Now for the theory-point. You suggest that the act of waiting for the GM to guide character-decisions is an Author Stance event. I suggest, however, that it represents no Stance, but rather a "stop." Stance requires that the character be doing something, or have something be happening that concerns him or her. If the players are doing what I've sometimes observed, then they are stepping away from Stance entirely, and handing it, bluntly, over to you.

Again, thanks for posting. I'm looking forward to some more dialogue about your game.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Norris]

Aman, I'd like to comment more on your game as well, but my feeling is that I should post about my ongoing game in parallel, and link you over there if I think something's relevant. (My antennae were tingling that I was probably talking too much about my game in your thread, even though you were making a parallel.) I'd like to hear any other thoughts you have about how your session ran, and perhaps some more examples of where you ran into "stops".

(I'm going to create a new thread about my particular issues with my campaign, even though the original post didn't have any replies at the time. That's my understanding of how we do it at the Forge. Ron, please feel free to correct me if that would mean I'd be fragmenting the conversation too much.)

[Mark Causey]

Hi Aman,
You mentioned you were new to this group. Have they been playing prior to you becoming GM? Did you know them as friends or acquaintances before joining the group? How many people are involved, and what ages and sexes do they represent?

I had actually intended to state that I was new to [the Forge]. However, your statement is correct; I am new to this group. I had been friends with these guys for about a year prior to the idea of roleplaying came about. These guys helped me with my self-confidence after dropping out of college, and I in turn eventually found that they weren't roleplaying anymore because no one wanted to GM anymore. So yes, they are the best of friends.

Well, we don't necessarily represent a balanced politically correct group. We are all white and male. We do represent a slightly higher intelligence level requirement than some white males might (read: we're only snobbish about people when they act ignorant or refuse to learn or value learning). Four of the individuals are those friends from my college days, and there are two more that were added when the group determined that we 'needed more people'. That's a total of seven, and within the last month, my threshold has been hit ... we added another gamer for a total of eight, since you asked :) I don't keep people around because I feel bad about telling them they aren't welcome or that it is too much for me (because I have in the past). I welcome each of the players for their unique perspectives. Our games at heart are a social event: food is always prepared for the group, we 'give up' game nights to watch the Oscars, for instance.

You suggest that the act of waiting for the GM to guide character-decisions is an Author Stance event. I suggest, however, that it represents no Stance, but rather a "stop." ... If the players are doing what I've sometimes observed, then they are stepping away from Stance entirely, and handing it, bluntly, over to you.

That's an interesting point. I had thought that all player actions short of not showing up fell into the Stances, but it is possible that Stop represents the lack of activity better.

To give an example of a Stopped player turned dualist duelistic Actor: One player, I thought for the longest time, was simply there to roll some dice and (in his case) miss the creatures. He chose to take the slow path of two weapon fighting and has been slowly getting better but has a reputation of rolling bad. He always had fun, however, in interview after interview with him. I almost considered him a henchman for a while as he only ever talked into his character's beer mug with short quips about the other characters. However, his shell seemed to be destroyed recently when out of nowhere he exclaimed to the Treant that had appeared in front of our scared, running away, weakened group, "Halt! I am long time friends with [name of famous treant]!" and stated he was making a bluff roll. I knew that he knew this only from reading the books, but I made a secret roll and determined that the name had filtered in from stories he must have listen to whilst talking to his mug. He made his bluff roll and I made a symbolic sense motive roll. I was willing to change many levels of game reality to get him to converse and have more fun with the group. When said famous Treat slowly 'realized' that he was his good friend, he bounded forward, eager to greet a long time unseen friend. This amazed the entire group and almost amazed him but he ran with it. This was used against them later when this Treant needed help, but I found it more rewarding than any fight could have been. Thus, he became our king of bluffers (which he developed into a sword style: he'll miss as a feint on purpose to get advantages to the next strike.)

This longwinded description was also to show you how good our group can be in terms of obvious GM retooling of the world (in a non-combat scene). But I've broken up near fights when I 'dropped out of initiative' without consulting the entire group and same player above decided to kill the final remaining mercenary that another player had silently decided to interrogate! By the time I could get into it, Player A had killed the mercenary and Player B had charmed Player A. But they were very civil, if a bit miffed, when I flatly said no to both of them and started narrated what happened and then continued with initiative (which allowed Player B to stop Player A, but that's irrelevant.) Changing the world then was viewed as me versus them, but I think that that might have been misplaced agression.

But to return to the issue of ultra-pervasive Actor stance, now when the king of bluffers makes a player-obvious lie to anyone within the group, they want to roll a Sense Motive check to see if they believed him. Aggravating, extremely aggravating -- don't use rules to back up those roleplaying actions! I guess they fear a reprisal of 'You don't know he was lying!" and so want to reinforce their actions ... as if they couldn't do what they were going to do even if it was only doubt in their minds. Many a grumble comes from the group when someone does something that others perceive as an Author Stance action for personal gain and is kindly overlooked if it benefits the entire group.

I hope I haven't rambled on too long and I do hope I've answered some questions. I'll try and pay more attention to Player Stops and see if it results from Player Dissatisifaction or from some other motive/reason.

Yours Faithfully,

Aman the Rejected

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Aman,

This is very interesting, actually. I think I'll surprise you with a comment about the players' desire to use rolls to determine whether their characters believe the one character's bluff.

I think it's excellent, and that you should reconsider your frustration about it.

What?? Isn't "role-playing" over here, without dice, and "roll-playing" over there, with them?

No. A thousand times no. What your players are doing is showing willingness to accept a constraint, and then run with being creative within that constraint. It's the strongest sign of their active, engaged creativity that you've reported so far. For you to perceive this as an unwillingness to role-play is real misconception on your part.

You see, some folks really hate personality/behavior mechanics. John Kim, for instance, has described his position in this matter very clearly here at the Forge, and I respect that outlook. But others embrace them; in fact, they dislike "playing my character" without some kind of mechanics-based springboard. I suggest that you recognize this desire on their part and introduce any amount of further interaction, bluffing, mis-communications, and other opportunities for them to enjoy this technique.

On the other hand, what does ring my alarm bell very seriously is the initiative/announcement/action issue. What you describe, when one guy says "I kill him," and the other guy says, "No, I interrogate him," is a big deal in role-playing. And most rules-sets offer very very little framework to deal with it, and an authority-person must be extremely arbitrary to resolve it, just as you describe. In essence, that person simply becomes dictator.

Fortunately, a number of game systems offer excellent solutions, and we can talk about them at some point, later.

Regarding your group, I'm now going to ask you some very severe, uncomfortable questions. Do you consider your presence in the group, especially as GM, to be a concession from them to you, or related in any way to your self-confidence? Do you "owe" them anything because they "let" you into the group?

Do you think your friendship with them is contingent, in any way, on your performance as GM?

I'm curious about the emotional underpinning of your presence there.

Best,
Ron

[Mark Causey]

Wow, no pulled punches here, huh? :)

Just the way I like it. Let's dive in.

What your players are doing is showing willingness to accept a constraint, and then run with being creative within that constraint. It's the strongest sign of their active, engaged creativity that you've reported so far.  ... I suggest that you recognize this desire on their part and introduce any amount of further interaction, bluffing, mis-communications, and other opportunities for them to enjoy this technique.

I may have done so without realizing it this very last set of sessions. Tired of having Big Baddies appearing and subsequently dying (a reoccurring situation I'll discuss later), I decided to completely retool my ongoing sessions completely by doing a mystery, instead of these conflict driven sessions. I decided that I would make the players value what ranks they had in social skills (or envy them for others) and thus make those who had these things feel rewarded for having these stats and ranks. I think I had subconsciously intended this to be for PC to NPC interaction only. It did end up working well. They enjoyed investigating things and interviewing people and having the criminal weep at their feet with confession. But what you're saying is is that I may have picked up on their desire to use these constraints from their interactions with each other. Thus, as I had tried to show them the 'true use', I had not realized that this allows them to not just be talking to each other and pretending to kill things but Simulating what it would be like for this normally quiet individual to be a Great Bluffer, and allow a female frustated player to Simulate being his pimp persona.

Damn, thank you Ron. That is extremeley helpful. I hope I don't sound sycophantic, as I am sincere.

On the other hand, what does ring my alarm bell very seriously is the initiative/announcement/action issue. What you describe, when one guy says "I kill him," and the other guy says, "No, I interrogate him," is a big deal in role-playing. And most rules-sets offer very very little framework to deal with it, and an authority-person must be extremely arbitrary to resolve it, just as you describe. In essence, that person simply becomes dictator.

Fortunately, they both allowed the initiative to be reinstated where it was, and Player B's more vocal personality didn't become a forefront issue.

Do you consider your presence in the group, especially as GM, to be a concession from them to you, or related in any way to your self-confidence? Do you "owe" them anything because they "let" you into the group? Do you think your friendship with them is contingent, in any way, on your performance as GM?

I began typing up a post to describe my roleplaying history when I realized you posted and read the post. I wonder if I would have thought about those things when I made it to that stage? I actually was going to comment on your post about going 'bat-shit', and I will, but it makes me wonder.

Anywho, I had been friends with these guys for a while on a seperate basis. That is, I was friends with A, B, C, and D on different terms and at different times and new them all through the clique but not very often together as a clique.

In the beginning, I'd say almost everything I did was as emotional gratitude for these guys; when B mentioned that he missed gaming due to a lack of GM, I jumped at the opportunity (and as you will see from my information below, blindly and without any real preparation). And I would say at first that the organization of a social setting to feed, entertain, and house my friends could very well have been fueled by these things.

I have since that time run games for my fiance and friends not involved with these people. As these flashes in the pan failed of their own reasons (geez, what stories you might want to hear?!) and I resumed my currently one and only game with these guys, I found that I'd moved past this need to play FOR them and a desire to play WITH them. I enjoy the creative process, I enjoy crunchy bits sometimes, and power plays, and one day I hope to get lots of interesting interactions out of them. Heck, I just got the biggest fighter of the group to hesitate on attacking an enemy! The game, now, is without need to please them or pay them back. I've actually moved beyond that :) If you want to discuss things about when I did feel I owed them something, I'd be more than glad to do so.

So, here is some more relevant information about my past. I decided to add this after reading some of Ron Edwards' post on learning the interface and I realized that I had gone bat-shit once myself, and nearly 3 years after beginning roleplaying.

I guess I'll start with my playing history. I started at S&M, my alma mater, with a simple assignment: make an AD&D character. Here are the books, we'll play later. Hmm, what should I play? It didn't really matter at the time, I actually made more up about the character buying gear: ooh, a fishing pole! I can afford that! After reading Donjon recently, I know what the Clinton Nixon meant ... I could be *anything*!

Never played that rogue, but let's move on.

We then started playing Marvel Superheroes. Here is where I began my first roleplaying desire: to make sure my character and his actions made people laugh and make him kick ass as often as possible. We moved on, then, to a game of Vampire: The Masquerade wherein the rules were available for us to simply be Vampire super heroes, and that was just as fun then too. I even tried to run a game of Marvel myself, and those games ended up pleasing myself and one other individual .... I basically had a story with the characters in it ... they didn't have much choice in what was going on .. I started a lot of things back then as, "Well, as I had seen it, this is what would happen ...".  The last game, I remember an upset set of friends and the other guy going, "Oh boy, story time!"

The next year, as those seniors graduated, I tried to introduce gaming to other individuals, and it wasn't all that sucessful (rated by numbers of persons having fun or wanting another game.) I do remember, now that I write this, of a group of individuals playing a game that I heard about in hearsay. I snubbed them then because of the origin of the Premise, but now I realize at least they were having fun ...

Then I went to college and never saw most of them again. One however still remained at college with me (not the one I made happy). I tried many horrible attempts at games back then and not one comes to me in my memories as being remarkable. So, with a bad taste in my mouth, roleplaying fell to the wayside.

Then, someone introduced me to LARPing. After a shaky first night, I realized that THIS was mature roleplaying and what I had done before with P&P was amateurish and useless, as those games were too bound to the dice. I excelled at LARPing and found it an enjoyable experience for quite a long time before I left those games too in a sense of disgust over politics and bad blood within. I thought then that both P&P and LARPing, and thus probably all the rest of roleplaying, was just a gathering of socially inept individuals and that I should move on with my life.

It has taken a while to come to my current conclusions: I have a need to be creative and that the only way I get satisfaction for this need is via group storytelling. No matter how fun it is to create a character, for instance, it just isn't satisfying until I see how that character is treated and acts when in the presence of friends.

I guess that's about all I have to say right now. Thanks for reading this far :)

Yours Faithfully,

Aman the Rejected

[Mark Causey]

Back to my group, I guess.

After concentrating on their Gamist desires over the past two weeks, I figured that not only *knowing* the rules but being *confident* in the rules decisions has helped the game play immensely.

I think I have made some good solid decisions, I believe, with them which I would like to share.

    1. The rules will always apply to them if I use them with an NPC (sometimes giving them new ideas for things to do), and vice versa. I don't know if this is a hard rule for everyone and certainly doesn't facilitate last second escapes very often. As such, they know that if a party of NPCs leaves a non-spellcaster to die, unless said individual finds something clever to do to run away, he isn't going to be given a miraculous teleportaion ability. They know this will apply to them, which has made them work on making sure they keep their group together whenever possible. This provides a cohesion in a group of people that aren't always the most aligned when it comes to, well, alignment.

    2. Being confident in the implementation of a rule, or a rule decision, is just as important as the decision itself. The players, I've found, want to have a certain confidence that what happened should have happened. It helps them to keep their disbelief suspended and works on their mental image. I've found that recently when I introduced a hereto unused tactical option with an NPC (the withdrawal, for those interested), for instance, that when they were unable to make an attack. One player politely stated that they didn't understand why, I explained with confidence, and the player, mostly happy, sat back knowing that they could do the same thing if they wanted. I feel that if I had been struggling to refer to a text or even a lower voice than I usually narrate with that he would have been upset, thinking I was simply finding a way to deny him that attack (even if he logically and subsequently knew that I wasn't deliberately fudging the rules).

    3. With those two factors in play, when I now make a rules decision on how an unlisted thing should work, players are MUCH more willing to accept my answer in the past. This could be somewhat more confidence on their part for being with me for a while, but I think it is more of the recent actions on my part.

Hope this helps someone!

Faithfully Yours,

Aman the Rejected

[Valamir]

Aman, just wanted to note that your discoveries of point 1 & 2 above are entirely consistant with a good foundation for gamist play.  I think you are clearly on the right track in the ongoing process of identifying your player's agendas and then identifying the combination of techniques necessary to facilitate those agendas.  

I'll just caveat that here by saying that often it is an ongoing iterative, trial and error kind of thing and you're likely to experience a few set backs and false trails along the way, so don't be discouraged when you do.


Perhaps you should change your name to "Aman the formerly Rejected, but I'm better now" ;-)

[Mark Causey]

Ralph, as you may have guessed, Aman the Rejected is a character's name I used to play :)

My group, now more verbose than ever (thanks guys!), states that most of them wants to start going to a more spy/espionage type game. I have some ideas on how to do that and am willing, what do you guys think? After what I've presented so far, will that work? What pitfalls should I avoid?

If you want, I can send current gameplay info and my plans.

Faithfully Yours,

Aman