Plain English Explanation of Social Contracts

[mindwanders]

Hi folks,

Has anyone writen/seen a good description of the Social Contract that does not require a previous knowledge of the Big Model? I'd prefer something that is not too jargon heavy as well, if possible.

I want to try and get accross to my players how important I think it is and make sure the players understand that it's there and can be changed without having to write up a description myself.

[jdagna]

Social contract is just the agreements between players about what they're going to do and how they will delegate control about what goes into the shared imagined space (in the jargonless definition, that's deciding who gets to say what happens).

It can include:
- who buys pizza
- what rules to use
- what to do if someone can't attend
- how to create characters (i.e. group design vs. show up with your finished character sheet).
- who the GM is

Hell, even the decision to play at all is part of the social contract.  In the Big Model terms, it's the largest and outermost box because every single component of gaming is included in the social contract, whether spoken or otherwise.

[clehrich]

- who buys pizza
- what rules to use
- what to do if someone can't attend
- how to create characters (i.e. group design vs. show up with your finished character sheet).
- who the GM is

- what "feel" the game should have
- what to do if we really disagree about something
- what role the GM plays vis-a-vis other players
- what we want to get out of an evening's play

This last is the most important and the least readily definable.  In many respects, the entire point of the Big Model is to try to come up with ways of saying, "Alfred wants X but Bob wants Y, so maybe they shouldn't play together."

[TonyLB]

I'm going to attempt (and likely fail) to give a definition that doesn't rely on examples.  Wish me luck!

"Social Contract consists of the rights and responsibilities of each person in the activity.  No activity occurs where people don't believe they have rights and responsibilities.  Many activities occur where people believe they don't need to state these rules, because everyone will share the same assumptions, perhaps by telepathy.  In reality, not talking about social contract just assures that everybody has a different idea of what they're supposed to do and what they can expect in return."

Close?

[Alan]

I just want to add that social contract also includes all exploration, creative agendas, techniques and ephemera - what might be called the the rules of play as well.  It's every agreement that's made by a group in order to play, from where and when to how.


Ron has a diagram that shows this:
http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/bigmodelpic.pdf

[clehrich]

As you know, I'm almost always the guy pulling hardest for abstract definitions and so forth, but in this case I'm on the opposite side.  I do have a rough notional definition of social contract in mind, but to make it really work it's so abstract as to be totally unhelpful to anyone not already deeply involved in the academic study of culture and society.

For my money, a definition of social contract most of all must be useful to the people who need it.  And the people who need such a definition need something practical.  So I'd really pull for as many examples of the kinds of things that are part of social contract as possible.

Gordon, basically everything everyone's said here is dead-on, but this is going to be easiest to understand and explain by sitting around talking about it.  The point of social contract is that every part of gaming happens because there is a social contract that says, "Here's basically how things are going to work among us, as people sitting around a table talking about stuff."  The value of a clear and explicit contract is not that it's comprehensive; it's that when problems come up, you have a baseline for discussing how to fix them.

In the Age of Paranoia game Jere is running, an espionage cold war thing, we have discussed this stuff pretty explicitly.  Here's an example.

At the end of 1971, all our characters reach the end of a story-arc, and Jere announced that next session we would skip ahead to October, 1974.  So he asked us all to figure out what we'd done since, and where we were in 1974.

Now a game like this necessarily runs into alternate history sometimes.  And Tom decided that his character had been grappling with the fallout (in both senses) of the Yom Kippur War, which had gone rather differently than in real history.  In fact, it had gone nuclear; I think Israel fired nukes at Egypt.

Of course, this makes the whole Middle East situation a frighteningly different thing.  I mean, it's bad anyway, but this is the nightmare.  Tom's point was that it's alternate history, and grappling with a radically changed situation would liberate the players somewhat from the grip of history.  That is, there wouldn't be so much concern about "getting it right," because clearly significant things had changed.

Jere, however, felt that this historical change altered everything so drastically that he just couldn't see how the cold war would run -- that is, it wouldn't really be a cold war any more, having gone very hot indeed.

So what Jere did was to go back to social contract and discuss it with the whole group.  He felt that this would be playing a radically different game than the one he'd said he wanted to run.  I think he was willing to be convinced otherwise, but actually not everyone was enthusiastic about this change, and Tom was certainly amenable to a different solution.  So we worked it out, the Yom Kippur war didn't go nuclear, and the game went forward on a firm foundation.

That's what social contract is all about: it's who gets to decide what, and what to do when there's disagreement, at every possible level from a single die-roll to a big campaign shift to who buys the pizza.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi,

One point off of Chris' two posts:

In the first, Chris, you wrote: 'In many respects, the entire point of the Big Model is to try to come up with ways of saying, "Alfred wants X but Bob wants Y, so maybe they shouldn't play together." '

Certainly this is one aspect and use of the Big Model and Social Contract. (Certainly, its how many people obsess on the matters Ron has brought up in general.)

However, Chris' second post point out that by being aware that all this stuff a) exists (see bullet points above), and b) is negotiable lots of people can find ground to continue playing with each other, aware of what agreements and lines need to be drawn and respected.  

The "not playing together thing" comes about when people, being AWARE of what they want and don't want, discussing these matters openly -- come to realize they have no business playing with each other.  But that's simply one possible result of Social Contract awareness.

Christopher

[clehrich]

Yes, thanks Christopher -- good clarification.  What I meant by "Alfred wants X and Bob wants Y" would be better put, "Alfred wants X and not Y, and Bob wants Y and not X."

[neelk]

Has anyone writen/seen a good description of the Social Contract that does not require a previous knowledge of the Big Model? I'd prefer something that is not too jargon heavy as well, if possible. I want to try and get accross to my players how important I think it is and make sure the players understand that it's there and can be changed without having to write up a description myself.

1. Write down what you think the game contract is for your current group and current game. Don't use any universals or jargon if you can help it; concrete things about how this particular game with this particular group works are better.
1a. Keep it short -- at absolute maximum one side of one printed page.
2. Print it out on paper.
3. Annotate the hardcopy with a little commentary about what you like and don't like, and suggest a few (two or three) additions, changes or removals you want to make, in pencil.
4. Pass the paper copy around to each player privately, and talk to each player while he or she marks it up.
4a. Note what they say while looking at it, and if they don't make any changes, suggest they write down what they told you while talking.
4b. Don't write things down for a player; make sure that each person has his or her own handwriting on the page.
5. When all the players are present, put the page on the table and talk.

[contracycle]

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons formerly took the name of city, and now takes that of Republic or body politic; it is called by its members State when passive, Sovereign when active, and Power when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State.

from THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
OR, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT
by Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762


It bugs me that the term social contract causes so much confusion, because it really should be part of the basic equipment of every person engaged in any modern social democracy.

Social contract is a term for the agreement, explicit or implicit, that necessarily exists among large groups of people as to what can legitimmately be done, and who is to do it.  While mostly its articulation occurred in the political sphere, its easy to see that a sports team must also have a social contract that governs its members and subordinates them to, for example, the national or international ruling bodies and referees.[/i]

[Christopher Kubasik]

Gareth,

I would offer the disconnection between what you assume to be "basic equipment" of social engagement is often not presumed between people.  I offer that many folks in my country (the U.S.) apparently DON'T want a modern social democracy after all.  (If you read Ron Suskind's piece in last week's New York Times Magazine you'll be amazed -- as I was -- to discover who's in that group.)

And by extension -- Gamers.

Think of how much RPG baggage and tradition actively PRECLUDES any discussion of how things are supposed to be done. How much "training" in RPG groups invovles the supression of spontinaity, impulse and even pleasure in sacrfice to the presumed rules and traditions.

Think of how much the power distribution between the GM and Players is usually nothing like a modern social democracy at all.  ("You want to play," says the GM. "Well, I'll make up the world, the story, and the little free range areas you can run around in.  Stick with what I'm giving you, and you can play."  "Okay," say the players... cause, you know, they do want to play.)

In both the social/political sphere as well as RPG hobby sphere there are elements of tradition and habit that actively work against even questioning whether there's anything to discuss.

While I share your desire everyone would respect the need for such social agreement -- I'm not quite stunend, as I see the desire to retreat from full engagement on this matter all around me all the time.

Christopher

[Roger]

In order to explain the Social Contract, I'd begin with the Contract part.

So, I might say:

"You know what a contract is, right?  It's just an agreement that if I do this, then you will do that.  If you bring me a pizza, then I will give you twenty bucks.  If I give you this book, then you will write a review for me.  If you marry my daughter, then I won't kill you."

"The Social Contract is exactly the same sort of thing, except that a lot of it is assumed and unspoken.  Which means that if we have different assumptions, we can run into problems.  For example, I might assume that part of the Contract is 'If I play my character well, then the DM won't kill him off undeservingly due to some random dice roll.'  You, however, might be under the impression that the Contract is 'If I am the DM, then I won't fudge the dice to protect characters from random happenstance.'"

"You can see how that can result in problems, right?  We both think that the other person is the one breaking the Contract, and so we both get all angry about it.  And we both think 'Well, of course that's in the Contract!'  And that's why the Social Contract is so important."


It's a bit more of a dynamic description (this is how it looks in action) rather than a static description (these are all its bits and pieces.)




Cheers,
Roger

[mindwanders]

Stop!

I don't have a problem with what the social contract is. I understand it just fine. I was asking if there was anything out there already, not for a big discussion on how best to put it accross to my players.

I appreciate all the help, but the answer seems to be "no", and that's all I needed.

I sugest if you want to continue this discussion you start another thread on the subject and we kill this one.

[matthijs]

Gordon, I don't understand just what you're looking for...?

First, you said

I want to try and get accross to my players how important I think it is and make sure the players understand that it's there and can be changed without having to write up a description myself.

Then, you said

I was asking if there was anything out there already, not for a big discussion on how best to put it accross to my players.

It seems to me most people in this thread have tried to provide a plain English explanation of what the social contract is, that you could present to your players. Isn't that what you wanted? Or did you want a specific example of a possible social contract...?

[mindwanders]

The problem is that everyone seems to have latched on to the reson for me asking the question rather than the question it's self.

Has anyone writen/seen a good description of the Social Contract that does not require a previous knowledge of the Big Model?

Was the question I was asking.

I was just looking for an "I've not seen one" or some links where I can find one.

If anyone is going to go to the effort of writting something original for my players then it might as well be me (although the stuff in this thread will be usefull when I do). Since I'm the person who knows my players best.