game design and psychology

[Emily Care]

I've been thinking about this since I started poking around for examples of psychological examination type role-playing.  My search lead me to think about psychological aspects of roleplaying all together, and gave me some good grist I thought I'd share.

In the thread Trust and Communication:

Many Indie games (Sorceror, Inspectres, MLwM, presumably others I haven't yet investigated) share a common feature: The opening of the first session (or the entire first session) is composed of out of character discussion where nothing "in-game" is at stake. In short, people have a chance to acclimate to each other socially before being called upon to live up to most responsibilities of the social contract. Good gaming wisdom there.

Good gaming wisdom=Good gaming design
What Tony cites is an example of paying attention to the social or psychological aspects of the experience of role-playing.  Design elements like this can help create cohesion in game groups, which may allow more harmonious and synergistic play to arise.  Techniques like this are used in theatre, dramatherapy and LARPing.  They support and take advantage of patterns of the human psyche.  The following diagram outlines a pattern much like the three-act structure of drama: introduction-engagement-resolution.  This pattern underlies not just human involvement in narrative, but also how all puzzles or problems are tackled.  It's also like the flow of sex.  Not surprisingly, if an activity follows this pattern, it is also likely to be experienced as satisfying.  Some gears that get ground in trpg may be due to a lack of attention to  normal desires and expectations on the part of participants based on anticipation of this flow.



source: http://www.therapeuticspiral.org/references/pdterms.html

Check out that "Act-Completion, Catharsis" bit. In psychodrama or dramatherapy(specifically therepeutic roleplaying and drama), this is a moment where the personal issues that are being addressed see some release or transformation. In fiction, this is the climax--when all the forces put in motion for the plot come to a head and become resolved.  The intensity builds over time, then diminishes. Also note that in fiction, too little resistance=an unsatisfying climax.  GNS-Narrativism uses this flow in a big way.  Gamism as well. The question of how Sim does might be a good question for another thread.

What can be lacking in trpg design is conciousness of the Warm-up and Integration phases.  Warm-up is team-building, allowing the players to get used to one another, learn what the boundaries are with respect to task allocation and proprietaryship of in-game elements, and just to relax enough to be able to enjoy themselves.  System explanations, and especially character generation generally occupy this role in game-play, but this means it is generally only done at the very begining of a campaign and then informally, without the purpose of creating group cohesion.  In troupe-style play a "check-in" with all characters could function this way--helping the players orient themselves to remember what has gone before and also to get back into their characters.  More standard introduction type activities could also be done--imagine a check in about what people are interested in getting out of play, or what their take on their own or eachothers' characters are... Silly or serious there is a lot of room for activities to initiate play that would bring the players more fully into engagement with the game and eachother up front.

The first example of Integration I thought of is, of course, cashing in XP's for character advancement. The outcomes for characters in My Life with Master also formalize integration.  The trust setting phases in The Mountain Witch allow players to reflect and integrate scenes during the course of play. Informal after-game discussion most likely often fulfills this role.

Examples of Techniques used in other Fields:

Old School New Wave
Back in the dark ages of 1992, the Australians free-form community had incorporated certain social-dynamic principles into their free-form (LARP) play.  John Hughes' essay New Directions in Oztralian Roleplaying gives examples of games and techniques used.  A lot of emphasis is put on the Warm-up stage:
(My paraphrase of structure and techniques employed)
i. prior prep: module worked out fully with playtest, gm fully prepared, etc.
ii. make sure players are prepared/will match with module.
iii. physical setting, secure, appropriate, supportive etc.
1. briefing (warm-up): introduce module, intent, parameters.
Share players/characters names--write on blackboard.  
Establish boundaries: physical contact ok? etc.
Have players introduce themselves in character.
2. start slowly: bring players in gradually. Allow players to "find" characters and get into groove.
3. Establish atmosphere: sight, sound, noise, movement. play and describe in 3-d.
balance elements:
"Action--gesture and movement, the prose and poetry of action
Visualisation--all that comes before the eye, costume, props images.
Voice--the spoken word and what it tells us about each other. "

Dramatherapy

As discussed in this Dramatherapy site another important element of the Warm-up period not noted on this diagram is Boundary Setting. Boundaries are set in trpg in explicit or implicit phases of social contract establishment.  They are especially important in a therapeutic context, but clear boundaries help everyone relax regardless of the situation. At least IME.  

Warm-up techniques used in Dramatherapy include free association, physical tension relievers (ie chain back-rubs), mirroring movements, symbolic play (improving use of an object for various imaginary tasks) and "monster" roleplays (in pairs people pretend to walk down an empty hallway, encounter a monster and run away from it).  These have varying goals from group bonding, to breaking self-consciousness  to beginning to identify the issues to be addressed by the participants.  I've incorporated Free Association into the character development phase of my game, Breaking the Ice,  because of the subconscious possiblities it presents. As the players "freely" associate, things are given the chance to arise organically from their subconsciousness that their conscious mind might not yield so quickly.  Character generation in narrativist supporting games could seek out the "monsters", or questions, the players are interested in engaging.  

Integration techniques used in dramatherapy include Role Reversal, Behavioural Practice, Sharing and Discussion.  The last two are most likely a natural part of a gaming evening but could be incorporated mechanically.  Role reversal is where a person steps into the role of their antagonist, to help them integrate all sides of an issue they've had strong feelings about, and hopefully release it.  Behavioural practice is roleplaying similar situations to the initial problem to help the person have a sense of how to do things differently next time--to embody the change. These techniques might not mesh with all groups' intentions, but they could be used to good effect if personal exploration was part of the goal.  

Then there are a gaggle of other techniques used to accomplish the action phase/engaging with the resistance and coming to completion: doubling (having someone provide support, explanation and suggestions for a protagonist), surplus reality (acting out daydreams or fears), chorus (other participants repeat words or actions done by a protagonist to emphasize them), mirroring actions (having someone else play out your actions), replaying (re-enacting actions with better/different outcomes), and others found at this site.

This may relate to Chris Lehrich's work looking at rpg as ritual, but it also offers concrete techniques and perspectives that offer us ways to design more effective and fun games.

best,
Emily Care

[Christopher Weeks]

Neat!  I read this last night and was hoping a big conversation would have started by this morning.

I'm still digesting, but an annecdote came to me in the night while thinking about this.  In 1989-90 I was assistant managing a really small comic and game shop.  The owner was a popular GM.  He did all kinds of "weird" stuff (and sometimes charged cash money for running his games!).  

One of his popular events while I was in contact with him was to run a horror  game set in the middle of the woods.  He and the players boarded a bus at our store with hiking and camping equipment.  They drove out into the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest (this was in Missouri) and hiked into the woods.  Each day they hiked for six or eight hours, helping each other as needed to get along.  Then after setting up camp, he'd run the game around the camp fire untill late into the night.  I'm sure the game itself wasn't anything special, but the environment, the activities, the bonding, really changed the way they played.  I think it ran for three days like that.

I wonder how the warm-up -> action -> integration curve worked for them.  I'm thinking it was repeated each day and had more to do with their whole situation-activity then with the game play per se.  But I'm not sure where the climax falls in their daily routine.  Or maybe the whole trip was really one big curve.  Or both.

I'm going to keep thinking about warm-up and integration in the more typical RPG setting.  It seems like there are any number of things we can implement for warm-up, but integration beyond just hanging out to chat seems like a tougher nut to crack.  I wonder what value the working through: activities have for our recreational gaming.

Chris

[ADGBoss]

After reading through this twice I was pretty sure it was well above me in terms of things I had personally experienced or could intelligently add to the topic.  Then I settled down and let my supper digest and this morning took a fresh look.

It occurred to me that I do have something that MIGHT be relevant to the conversation.  So here goes.

The first thing is something I will call the Faux Doom Speech.  Prior to many of the games that I run, I assure the players that their characters and indeed their fun is doomed, so they may as well give up now.  On occasion as a player I will assure the judge that their best laid plans and terrifying encounters are doomed to fail and they may as well give me my experience so we can all go have a beer.

Now I have done this with friends and strangers and even though I can dead-pan with the best of them, I always manage to give them a smile that says "nah, just kidding, we are going to have a good game." I do it for myself and for the others so that they are aware that I know its just a game and they can count on me to be a good player / gm.  I am not exactly sure HOW this works but its part of almost every initial game session and has served me well over the years.  I have noticed many people do the very same thing but for some its not a Faux Doom Speech so much as a Doom Speech, letting everyone know that, yes they intend to break the game so sit back and watch.  You can view the above behaviors quite a bit in "Living" campaign conventions where often your playing with / gming for strangers.

Breaking off from Role Playing, I think similar warm ups happen in sports and more then likely on military / paramilitary operations.  I know when I played organized sports we had practice of course but before every game there was a period of warm up / psych up / and getting into the Zone as it were.

Now organized sprts and military / paramilitary activites have built in prep (practice and traning) but Role playing mental prep technicues tend to be ad-hoc.  A game like Sorcerer (I use Sorcerer cause I have run it and am somewhat familiar with it) suggest that first session prepatory step.  Yet most designs are not enabling for people getting psyched up or getting into that Zone.

What techniques might be useful and how can they be implemented INTO design?

Hope I am not going into left field here, taking the thread in a wrong direction.


Sean

[Emily Care]

Thanks guys!

Chris--I bet the trip was one big curve.  That's an advantage of doing something as a retreat--you take the participants out of their normal routine and the separate space creates a deeper immersion into the activities.  You don't get distracted by the phone ringing or housemates coming home.  The main transitions would happen when you enter and leave that liminal space.

Sean--You're completely on the money.  Sounds like your "Faux Doom" speech puts people at ease by getting rid of self-consciousness or expectations about the game.  Humor is probably one of the best ways to break the ice.

What techniques might be useful and how can they be implemented INTO design?

Warm-ups could fall into one of two groups: 1) social ice-breakers and 2) player investment in the game.  

For social ice breakers, a simple go-around of peoples names and some simple facts about themselves could get a lot of mileage. It matters if you feel like you know who you are playing with. Is this something that's done as a matter of course?  It hasn't been in my experience.  I can see it being helpful especially in  convention situations where the players don't know one another.  Playing a short silly game prior to a longer one gives people a chance to loosen up and be likely to open up more in the meatier game.  At Tom's gathering we played Great Ork Gods prior to RuneQuest, and I thought this worked great.  

Sorcerer is a game that pays a lot of attention to the warm-up/intro phase with respect to getting players invested.  The incorporation of player input into setting gives everyone a chance to contribute and have their preferences incorporated into the campaign.  The way that characters are constructed as a group, playing off of one another, creates an atmosphere of collaboration from the get-go.

What other techniques would work? And, as Sean asked, how can these things be included in design rather than simply added on in play? (Though consciousness of them in running a game is a good thing too.) Do you see this as already adequately accounted for or as lacking in current games?

yrs,
Emily Care

[TonyLB]

Emily, I like your two categories, largely because they break things across different lines than I would have done.

I would think that there are warm-ups that work toward skills (limbering up the imagination, building social coherence) and those that work toward (re)constructing the imagined space (recaps of the previous game, chatting in-character).

I think that there is room to promote warm-up and integration in each session, as well as in stories or campaigns as a whole.  I sometimes feel that my face-to-face group jumps into play too abruptly, switching directly from socializing to "You're in a graveyard, there's a vampire, go!"  It would be nice to have some time at the beginning to put the fourth wall back in place, and some time at the end to take it down.

I'm building a game based off of comic books, and I have stolen the device of the Lettercol (letters column).  Comics have a long tradition of filling pages at the end of the book by having the writers and editors respond to questions that eager fans send in.  Since these fans are often young and obsessed, their ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is hazy at best, so that lettercols occupy a strange limbo between fiction and reality, where the writers often speak as the confidants of the characters, not as their creators.  I'm going to encourage people to field a few questions (maybe one for each player) from the other players in that mode, as a way of depressurizing in gradual steps.  Have to see how it works out.

[ADGBoss]

What other techniques would work? And, as Sean asked, how can these things be included in design rather than simply added on in play? (snip)  Do you see this as already adequately accounted for or as lacking in current games?

Emily

Again hope I am not going in a different direction here. Pondering the idea of getting this warm up stage into the design of a game I was thinking of how we approach our language when talking to a person who is reading our game. Language and tone are important and maybe overlooked elements of design. Especially for Non-Mechanic, Mechanics like the Warm Up Stage.

Two Approaches:

Academic: "On page 31, Chapter 4, subset 9, you will notice that to engage the cerebellum to jog the brain into producing hormones that..."

Barroom: "Hey buddy.... Who me? Yeah you... I'm talking to you, so like when you are all sitting around the table see..."

I think ethan_greer may have touched the point in his http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11751&highlight=>rant. We need to remember to not assume anything about the person reading the book or PDF, what have you.  Engaging the reader and thereby helping them to pass enthusiasm onto others, through things like the Warm-Up stage that stand outside of mechanical consideration.

However, maybe subtle manipulation of learned behaviors is the answer. If Warm Up is written into the system in a way that suggests that is a mandatory part of the process, people will likely start to add it into their game preparation.



Sean

[Emily Care]

I would think that there are warm-ups that work toward skills (limbering up the imagination, building social coherence) and those that work toward (re)constructing the imagined space (recaps of the previous game, chatting in-character).

Hmm. We might be getting at the same things in different ways. And activities in one category could also accomplish goals in the other depending on how they are done. For example, recapping what "has gone before" can be a boring non-socially binding activity if it is a dry-reading back of notes or a recitation of events by one person (ie the gm). However, if each person is asked to say what the most important thing that happened last session from the perspective of one of their characters, or what they personally found most gripping it's a whole new world because each person gets asked something that actually matters to them and everyone else gets to hear a mix of different takes on what they also experienced.  

However, maybe subtle manipulation of learned behaviors is the answer. If Warm Up is written into the system in a way that suggests that is a mandatory part of the process, people will likely start to add it into their game preparation.

Exactly. That's what I'm getting at. We don't have to get all touchy-feely and turn an rpg session into a love-fest and a what's-your-sign-athon, but when you want to bring hearts and minds together it helps to get everyone both out of their shell and grooving on the same page.  I'm not sure how the suggestion of "have a pre-game check-in of how people's week went" would go over with the role-playing audience, but if activities that relate to the game are part of the process I bet it won't feel intrusive.  Your point about language used and assumptions about the target audience are well-taken too. Warm-ups etc should match the tone of the game, and presumably, the taste of potential players.

More examples: I just read through the current draft of Dogs in the Vineyard and am reminded that this is another game that incorporates aspects of this stuff into the mechanics.  At the start of play, each player has a solo conflict that happens during the character's training--pre-play.  This lets the gm establish trust and boundaries with each player, it introduces the players to how the mechanics are going to work (would that be a bloody brilliant thing to have in any game!) and it allows the player to get a taste of what the game is going to be like before being thrown into the situation whole hog.  Character generation in general is ripe for this kind of thing.

Another bit I dig that Vincent does in Dogs is the following:

GMing Between Towns
Remember how, at the end of character creation, you went "mmhmm" like the good doctor? Here's where you angle the game to hit those issues. In the town just past, what were the characters about? What positions did they take? Which sinners did they judge harshly, and which did they show mercy? What did they say, I mean really say, about themselves and others?

Your goal in the next town is to take the characters' judgements and push them a little bit further. Say that in this past town, one of the characters came down clearly on the side of "every sinner deserves another chance." In the next town, you'll want to reply with "even this one? Even this sinner?" Or say that another character demonstrated the position that "love is worth breaking the rules for." You can reply with "is this love worth breaking the rules for too? Is love worth breaking this rule for?"

So check this out--the gm is being asked to reflect on the harvest of each session, and then incorporate it into the next leg of the narrative. Integration big time, feeding right into the next cycle of problem-action-resolution. Also in Dogs the characters generate "fallout" from conflicts--to pay up for the fallout you have to add traits or change levels to your character. At least when I've done this, it has always lead me to reflect on what has changed about the character.  Mechanically incorporating what I've learned into hard, palpable mechanical bits that can then be used by myself or the gm to come up with new nasty or interesting issues to deal with in the future.  

Who wouldn't want to do this?

--Em

[TonyLB]

Emily, I totally agree that we're getting at the same things in different ways.  It's the same pie, we just cut it on different lines.  Which is why your comments were so helpful for me.  They let me have another tool with which to examine the issue.

Personally, I'm sadly lacking in per-session warm-up drills.  I agree that something hard-wired into the game is best.  I'll be watching this thread carefully to see what sort of things people recommend!

[JackBauer]

That "Dogs in the Vinyard" game sounds very cool. Is there an online draft of it somehere?

[lumpley]

Dogs in the Vineyard isn't yet fit for human consumption.  Anyone happens to be the playtesting type, you can PM me though.

-Vincent

[JackBauer]

I could be a playtester, as long as it can be played online, preferably on an AOL Private chatroom, but if you want I could go on mIRC. If it can be, PM me with any info I'll need.

[Emily Care]

Jack,
Please take this to pm. Thanks.

Tony,
Thanks for your input. I'll be curious to see how your lettercol idea works. And your continuing input on the topic.

Survey questions for all:
What techniques are in written systems you know of that warm-up or cool-down the players? Are there any?

What do you in your game group that functions this way? How do you deal with new people?  Con games really seem like they could use warm-ups.

yrs,
Emily Care

[ADGBoss]

Emily

In Con play specirfic to RPGA / Living games one that arises ad hoc is a sort of round table about what battles a player has been in.  Players discuss with the GM and / or each other what modules they have played, how they liked them, what region are they from, what Meta-Orgs etc... In that sense I think an unintentional Warm Up has cropped up.

As a GM my best advice is to show attention and interest in each player. Its not easy thats for sure.  The larger the group the more difficult it becomes. GM's in longer play situations tend to become Den mothers I think sometimes.  Maybe thats a whole other topic.

Beyond the Ad Hoc I think it would be useful to build in a Warm Up that keeps with the Creative Agenda of the game (Speaking in GNS terms) or the point of the game.

A very simple technique might be, before every session, ask the players 1 new thing that they learned about their own character and maybe even about 1 other character. (Not sure if this was mentioned yet or not, sorry if it was).

Wish I had something more concrete but I don't. :) Maybe tomorrow.....


Sean

[Emily Care]

Hi Sean,

In Con play specirfic to RPGA / Living games one that arises ad hoc is a sort of round table about what battles a player has been in.  Players discuss with the GM and / or each other what modules they have played, how they liked them, what region are they from, what Meta-Orgs etc... In that sense I think an unintentional Warm Up has cropped up.

What kind of effects does this have? Do the gms incorporate the info into their preparations? Do the players bond?

--Em

[ADGBoss]

Hi Sean,

What kind of effects does this have? Do the gms incorporate the info into their preparations? Do the players bond?

--Em

Yes that can be the effect.  In a sense there is a great deal of "Hey I was at Omaha too, what unit were you with?" Especially if a module is notorious for being difficult or easy.

I also does help the GM (some anyway) kind of expand the Color a little bit and aid in some preparations.

Example

GM with no Character background: "You are in the Duchy of Geoff, where their army just had a big battle against Giants."

vs.

GM with Character background:"You are back in Geoff, probably have not even left yet since you participated in the Battle of Gorna late last winter..."

So yes a GM with open eyes and ears can make connections with characters and players by the use of previous experiences. Now as I said this is not a part of the LG / RPGA System but it is a failry common technqiue used by DM's and GM's running RPGA events.

Also, something that IS somewhat institutionalized is the Cert System.  A player may have an object with history and / or a Favor or Disfavor with an NPC that could have re-purcussions for the module.

One can learn a great deal from RPGA / Persistent campaigns but thats a topic for another time and place :)



Sean