what causes this?

[Doctor Xero]

from http://www.indie-rpgs.com/posting.php?mode=quote&p=130414

Now, what happened was that I played the Exalted game once. I thought that the game was very much like a HERO/MERP game we'd tried before. There was almost no input allowed from players as to how the story was to move, the GM repeatedly told us how we did things, etc. And the game's premise left me flat. I was basically just taking up some space at a table, and not having much fun. I told the GM and everyone else "Hey, look, this game isn't for me. I'll sit out until you guys finish it, or you want to do something esle. In the meantime, game on!"

Of course, they haven't played since.

When my friend made this comment I looked up and asked "So, what, when I don't show up, you guys don't play?"

And, guess what. They don't.

I've encountered this to some degree or another in almost every gaming group about which I've read or with which I've interacted.

I wonder why?

Do RPGs naturally attract individuals more tied into the hierarchial mode of interaction common to European-based cultures?

Does the hierarchial structure inherent in the historically traditional game-master/player dichotomy encourage this social approach? (I know from other threads that some of you would love discussing that possibility {grin}!)

Are RPGs one of those hobbies which tend to attract primarily moths who need candles and candles who need moths (i.e. both people like the real life Native American storytellers who must[/i] talkstory, such as Thomas Builds-the-Fire in Sherman Alexie's novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and people who need to hear/participate in the stories told), so to speak?

Is charisma simply one of those factors we must accept as endemic to human beings or at least to the sort of human beings who would enjoy an imagination-based hobby?

Or other reasons?

I'm curious.

Doctor Xero

P.S. James, I hope you were at least flattered that they valued you so highly, although like you I have come to understand the old feminist truism, "a pedestal is a prison."

[Bartmoss]

It is difficult to say really but the last few years experiences allow me to make a stab at the following question.

Do RPGs naturally attract individuals more tied into the hierarchial mode of interaction common to European-based cultures?

In the case for my group Yes. And our recent problems stem from the fact that we no longer have our leader. Oddly we ousted him because to be quite blunt he got more time, was a control freak and constantly made each other player believe they were unimportant. But we did follow. And it did make for some good gaming moments to be honest.

Since we got rid of him our games have constantly ended after shorter and shorter runs. They went from 8 weeks...to 6 weeks...to the worst 1 session.

Because we have no leader we do not settle on a style. One of our GMs burst out with a classic. He stated the "Group dynamic does not work", and I agree with him. There is no group dynamic. We all want different things.

We need a leader. And none of us are up to the task. We are not leaders. And with out that focus our games will limp from one week to the next. And either die out with a wimper. Or go with an argument.

[Bill Cook]

Oddly we ousted him because to be quite blunt he got more time, was a control freak and constantly made each other player believe they were unimportant. But we did follow. And it did make for some good gaming moments to be honest.

This exact thing happened to me at the end of my time with my high school gamer group. I don't know that I would say I was their leader, but I was easily the person most agitated to create excitement in the storyline and move things along. Toward the end, I became obsessed with house rules to address perceived limitations of the system (i.e. 1st ed. AD&D).

And after they kicked me out, which I deserved it, one of my former friends told me during class, a few months later: "I don't get you. You screw everything up, you leave and everything falls apart."

[contracycle]

Do RPGs naturally attract individuals more tied into the hierarchial mode of interaction common to European-based cultures?

Eh?  Europe has a long tradition of individual law anf Germanic individualism, while China for example has a large corpus of work lionising the state; I donlt think European cultures can really be described as commonly heirarchical, especially.  But anyway...

Is charisma simply one of those factors we must accept as endemic to human beings or at least to the sort of human beings who would enjoy an imagination-based hobby?

Yes, or indeed any hobby or social endeavour.

My position on this leadership issue is as follows: leadership happens, even if you do not want to lead.  Part of good leadership is recognising this; that, like it or not, you have been chosen to be the tip of the wedge.

I'm not actually terribly sympathetic to the position that hey, I didn't want to do this, they coulda done it themselves, they have only themselves to blame.  Admittedly, I find it hard to say the unwilling leader is to blame in any meaningful sense. I just consider the blame issue unimportant.  Either there was a game, or there was not.  If there was not because you declined to fill your leadership role - whether borm, become, or thrust upon - then that is that, IMO.  Part of leradership includes an obligation to act on the part of the followers, not only on the whims and interests of the leader.

[Callan S.]

This reminds me of a thread about making descisions that was here, which gave a link to an article about a guy who got an award at work for making descisions. He protested, saying some of the descisions didn't end up well. But they said he still made them, instead of being frozen by a massive number of options into impotence.

If you take RP as a group creativity thing.

And if you take it that group creativity needs descisions made.

And if you take it that there are plenty of people who are good at making a descision, but just not good at making a good descision...

Then you have most of the first post answered.

(Edit...I linked to the thread the quote was from without realising...gah!)

[Doctor Xero]

This exact thing happened to me at the end of my time with my high school gamer group. I don't know that I would say I was their leader, but I was easily the person most agitated to create excitement in the storyline and move things along.

In Shared Fantasies, Gary Alan Fine discusses the considerable importance of the "agitative" player in group dynamics in classic AD-&-D gaming.

We need a leader. And none of us are up to the task. We are not leaders. And with out that focus our games will limp from one week to the next. And either die out with a wimper. Or go with an argument.

I have seen this occur with a number of groups, most often with my being recruited as leader.  I even had one gaming group specifically ask me to join because they needed a leader figure, giving me a significantly more powerful character and in-game character authority.  It was both flattering and weird.

To be honest, I think that this may be a factor of American enculturated nature if not of human nature.

Eh?  Europe has a long tradition of individual law anf Germanic individualism, while China for example has a large corpus of work lionising the state

I was referring to hierarchial interaction within small groups, such as the German tradition of two men fighting before friendship to determine who is the "hero" and who is the "sidekick", so to speak (write).  My apologies for being non-specific.

What other ideas?  What about the social phenomenon of "moths who need candles and candles who need moths" (i.e. both people like the real life Native American storytellers who must talkstory, such as Thomas Builds-the-Fire in Sherman Alexie's novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and people who need to hear/participate in the stories told)?

Doctor Xero

[Callan S.]

I think this overuse of the term 'leader', as I suggested before, is the reason why the quoted incident happens.

People see the requirements of this role and think 'Hey, I get to be in charge...I get to lead, or I'm even their master!'

I'm sure someone will argue the idea people could see themselves as the players master, but really the enduring terms DM and GM should imply that it is seen this way enough to maintain these terms as is.

But back to the requirements. It's kind of easy to see how it looks as if your required to be totally leading and in charge. And thus how adventures get handed down without player contribution getting negotiated into them (like in the quote).

However, it's more like an accountants role. Accountants can handle vast amounts of money...that doesn't mean they own it or are the master of it. In roleplay, I'd say there's a position for a sort of 'lumpley accountant'.

[jdagna]

I think enthusiasm for a project (any project, including RPGs) follows a bell curve, just like everything in human nature.  At one of the bell curve are people strongly motivated to game and at the other end are people strongly not motivated.

An RPG group generally consists of people who like gaming (representing the more motivated half to begin with), but only one or two people in a typical group are going to be really motivated - the others enjoy it as a past time.  Some groups may have stricter standards for membership, requiring more motivated people than average (for example, tournaments), while other groups may be so weakly motivated that they don't actually game all that much.

I'm not sure it says anything about leadership per se, except that the most motivated person in the group is going to ensure that the group gets playing (and the others, who still want to play, are happy to do this).  Without that most motivated person (or people), the group may be fine doing something else.  I certainly don't think it's a Western thing - the most motivated people always direct the less motivated.  It's the trend you see in political revolutions throughout the world and throughout history - a motivated minority agitates for change and the supportive, but less-interested majority goes along.  Remove the key leaders and there's no revolution (at least not then).

There might be a component of moth to flame going on, though.  After all, we've all known people who made our own gaming much more enjoyable.  In my group during college, I used to cancel games only if certain players couldn't show, because I knew that the other players weren't into it enough to make things interesting.  James' group may have said something very similar to this - without him, they just didn't have as much fun. (We don't really know what their reasons were for not playing when he wasn't present).

[Mulciber]

Hello all,

In my groups we have all been moths variously and flames as well. I think there are humans that are on the far ends of the normal curve for being/not-being moths and flames alike at any one time. If groups endure enough time, who is the moth and who the flame will tend to shift.

Interestingly, my local group's role-playing time has become extremely sporadic in the past several months. Instead we eat together, play board or card games, watch movies or otherwise entertain ourselves outside the home, or simply talk (mein Gott, how we talk). These are all things that we did while role-playing more actively, but we do them much more now. I suppose it is because at the moment no one is flame enough with respect to role-playing. No one wants it badly enough to suffer the slings and arrows of being the administrator and leader.

I think charisma (or mojo, or mana, or life-force, if you will) is present in all community life. People in an elevator establish a pecking order within seconds. Will anyone contest this? I think we take it as a social axiom.

Doctor Xero, if you find the tangent worthy of attention, could you publicly or privately provide counter-examples to your claim of a specifically European hierarchy in small groups--I ask as one who has traveled only in North America whilst of age, and that not extensively.

Best regard,
Will

[Ben O'Neal]

One possibility that occurs to me, which may not be at all correct, but is interesting to consider nonetheless, is that perhaps gaming individuals who leave aren't really identified as "The Leader" until they leave. Consider:

5 people are in a gaming group, each contributing 20% to the overall gaming experience. One of them leaves. The remaining 4 notice that the gaming experience is now only 80% of what it used to be (which is still true even if they all contribute an extra 5% effort). They notice this new lack, and also the correlation with the time of the player leaving, and assume that the player that left was the source of an important chunk of the whole experience. Now each reamaining player is less interested in gaming, because the experience is now lessened, and so it's easy to see how it could all break down from there, and how the other players can attribute the first player's leaving as the catalyst, and thus make the leap to assume that he/she was the "Leader" (because they assume that groups can't function without a leader).

Anyways, just thought I'd throw this possibility out there.

-Ben

[John Kim]

Do RPGs naturally attract individuals more tied into the hierarchial mode of interaction common to European-based cultures?

Does the hierarchial structure inherent in the historically traditional game-master/player dichotomy encourage this social approach? (I know from other threads that some of you would love discussing that possibility {grin}!)

As opposed to what?  

It seems to me that talk about "leader" and "charisma" are a rather narrow subtopic.  A group can be doomed just as easily by lacking followers as by lacking leaders.  For example, if you have several strong-minded people without the glue of more easy-going diplomatic types, then if the glue leaves the leaders may fly apart -- i.e. they are unable to agree on a game to play or otherwise compromise.  

The more basic issue is this: group dynamics exist.  If you have a set of 5 people, then an arbitrary subset of 3 or 4 won't necessarily work.  I see this in clubs or other small organizations all the time.  i.e. Some people have to volunteer their time to do the organizational work necessary for the club.  It is never true that all the club members participate an equal amount.  Some members are casual members, while others are the officers/organizers/volunteers.  The more active members generally receive acclaim and control for their efforts.  I don't see this as inherently heirarchical.  It's just part of how group dynamics work.

[Bill Cook]

They notice this new lack, and also the correlation with the time of the player leaving, and assume that the player that left was the source of an important chunk of the whole experience. Now each reamaining player is less interested in gaming, because the experience is now lessened, and so it's easy to see how it could all break down from there, . . .

This reminds me of how my college band fell apart after our drummer got married. I unquestionably led that group, but he was, I guess, the heart of it. (cf. John Bonham dies and even with Jimmy and Robert, the group cannot go on.)

One of Dallas' local bands gone national, The Toadies, threw in the towel after their chick bass player left to do an art thing. And they just couldn't continue. An observer might comment, "Well, how was she integral?" but I relate to the feeling of devestation, however functionally irrational, from the standpoint of musical production.

Some people have to volunteer their time to do the organizational work necessary for the club. It is never true that all the club members participate an equal amount. Some members are casual members, while others are the officers/organizers/volunteers. The more active members generally receive acclaim and control for their efforts.

This reminds me of the frustration a small business owner boss of mine used to express, trying to manage her staff; she couldn't understand why they wouldn't invest in their work or share her level of concern. I got hardened to this reality in organizing a slingshot paintball league composed primarily of my younger brother's friends: when you hold the reins, your effort sets the pace, and you don't count the cost. The risk is that demands exceed your limits, and you commit overuse. The payoff is a quality of satisfaction that members who are unwilling to suffer can't share in.

** ** **

As for RPG's, I think traditionally, the role of GM carries a certain weight (cf. The Silmaril in Melkor's crown), though that duty does not necessarily stamp linchpin status. As with any community endeavor, I think there's an initial mixing of forces that establishes roles (OOG) and you hit a critical mass. When the group suffers a loss, it re-orients to survive; this is  not always manageable.

[contracycle]

I'm not sure it says anything about leadership per se, except that the most motivated person in the group is going to ensure that the group gets playing (and the others, who still want to play, are happy to do this).  Without that most motivated person (or people), the group may be fine doing something else.  I certainly don't think it's a Western thing - the most motivated people always direct the less motivated.  It's the trend you see in political revolutions throughout the world and throughout history - a motivated minority agitates for change and the supportive, but less-interested majority goes along.  Remove the key leaders and there's no revolution (at least not then).

Eh.  Firstly, I think the identification of motivation here is mistaken.  You can be motivated, but uncharismatic; such individuals often constitute the cadre of a formal organisation rather than its leadership.

Secondly, I think that view of revolutions, escpcially over the historical long haul, is grossly mistaken.  The wedge has to want to be a wedge before it needs a tip and selects someone to be such.  That is exactly why people can find themselves elevated to a leadership role against their will or even without their knowledge.

I would suggest rather that the residual effect of the Heroic tradition touched on by Dr X is seen in this analysis; the presumption that without the leadership, and the divine spark it provides, the movement is nothing.  Leaders are symptoms of mass movements, mass movements are not symptoms of leaders.

[Ben O'Neal]

The wedge has to want to be a wedge before it needs a tip and selects someone to be such. That is exactly why people can find themselves elevated to a leadership role against their will or even without their knowledge.
...
Leaders are symptoms of mass movements, mass movements are not symptoms of leaders.

Really? What about Hitler and the Nazis?

I see leaders in groups as being far more dynamic and variable than simply "leaders come first" or "leaders come last". Sometimes it might swing one way, others it might swing the other way, but most of the time, the leader and group emerge together.

I also agree with jdagna's proposition:

It's the trend you see in political revolutions throughout the world and throughout history - a motivated minority agitates for change and the supportive, but less-interested majority goes along.

for many instances, but not all, because as I said, groups and leaders aren't so black and white. It is, though, a well known social psychology phenomenon that minorities, whilst being least empowered to make immediate change, are more empowered to sway the opinions of majorities (who almost certainly hold less strong opinions about the relevant topic), and thus more empowered to initiate future change or become a majority by converting people.

Also, I think it might be important to consider that in every culture on earth for all of recorded history, there has always been a heirachical power structure in nearly every level of the civilization. I think it's only natural and expectable that the same thing would be the norm within playing groups. For the most part, people just really like to defer responsibility to whoever is willing to bear it (or who seems like a convenient bearer for whatever reason). The "moths and candles" idea is perhaps overly simplistic, but if we assume that quantum physics are in play and whether anyone is being either a moth or a candle isn't decided until one person becomes either one, then maybe we might be getting a little more accurate. This is largely why when you throw a bunch of people together to form a group, there is nearly always a few moments (or minutes, even) of awkardness, and once someone starts to speak, a clear heirachy appears almost instantly. But like all things human, even a clear heirachy can change at a moments notice due to new information (like someone who was previously quiet speaking up and becoming dominant).

And by mere virtue of being a leader, one is carrying the responsibilities and expectations of the other group members. Saying "I don't want to be your damn leader" can challenge them, and also insult them. Why don't you want to be our leader? As silly as it may sound, it actually has quite a bit to do with Attachment Theory (the non-Fruedian version). You are, quite literally, abandoning them within a context. But perhaps I better stop here, I've rambled enough and there's many fundamental concepts that need to be known to understand the full implications of what I could say.

-Ben

[Doctor Xero]

could you publicly or privately provide counter-examples to your claim of a specifically European hierarchy in small groups--I ask as one who has traveled only in North America whilst of age, and that not extensively.

Erm, I hadn't meant to imply that hierarchy is exclusively European.  I had restricted my statement to European cultures because I don't know enough about most African cultures or Asian cultures (with the possible exception of Japan) to comment competently on them.  I also should have pointed out that there have been far more studies of male leadership in social groups than of female leadership in social groups.  Sorry for the confusion!

A classic cliche' of heroic first meetings is that the two heroes fight before becoming friends.  You will find this in the beginnings of the best friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.  You will find this in the beginnings of the best friendship between Arthur and Lancelot or between Robin of Loxley and Little John and Friar Tuck (in some tales).  You will find this in many modern American films about the beginnings of best friendships between two characters whether male or female, such as Braveheart.  You will also find this in the beginnings of famous screen romances, such as those involving characters played by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.  In such cases, the two individuals test each other out and determine who is superior in what area.  Sometimes one will become the constant "sidekick" to the other, as with Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and sometimes each will have his/her own field of supremacy, such as Arthur as the greatest strategist but Lancelot as the greatest swordsman.

Studies have found that, in the United States, when all-male groups are artificially formed, the first bit of business involves individuals jostling for their place within the structure (i.e. the hierarchy) of the group.  The leader is most often the individual who coordinates the group and who has the vision for the group, so if he is removed, the group either flounders for a lack of vision or someone else rises up to replace or sustain that vision.  Studies have found that United States all-female groups operate slightly differently, with jostling occuring as the group evolves rather than during the beginning formation of the group.  The studies I have read have tried to uncover a definitive cause behind this gender difference, but none I have read so far have managed more than speculation.

Does that help?

Oh, and Will : I love your Forge handle!

Doctor Xero