One turtle puzzle solved

[Kerstin Schmidt]

About half a year ago I posted in this thread asking for advice regarding a player who was causing some grief in our group by playing turtle.  Much interesting advice was given, and I was planning to post an update after talking to him and playing some more;  but shortly afterwards the turtle left our group.  

I talked to him after he decided to leave and understood some of the issues he had had in my game – some would have been fixable, some not (because they were interpersonal in nature).  Yet I still didn’t succeed in working out what style of play he thought he’d like.  I came away from our discussion still assuming that as intense as he gets with rules and tactics and planning, he was simply a Gamist who had suffered from too many adversarial GMs in the past.  

But last week I had a revelation talking to him again.  I still meet him now and then on a social basis and we usually swap news of the various games we're playing.  He was telling me about one ongoing campaign really enthusiastically – there was much happy chatter about the rules of that game system and how crazily and wonderfully unbalanced and over the top they were;  but the best thing, he went on to say, was that the game was so incredibly detailed.  So immersive.  

Unbalanced rules?  Immersive?  That didn’t fit my picture.   And then it hit me.  Play isn’t about challenges for him at all, which is what I had assumed all along.  He’d do happily without the challenges - in fact now I look back, his play in my game was aimed entirely at avoiding challenges.  He likes to be immersed in a world, he loves the experience of being in a game world.  (I asked.  He confirmed.)  

He doesn’t really play for challenges, although he likes to experiment with magic and see what it can do in a world.  He also doesn’t respond to the idea of having stories in a game (although he loves reading).  He doesn’t want to be a protagonist.  He wants to be free to observe and experience the world, and being in the spotlight and having tricky choices put before him detracts from that.  He doesn’t like to be framed into scenes, not so much because he’s distrustful of the GM’s motives (although that is part of it) but because fast-forwarding is jarring to him.  He needs the (briefest) moment of walking over from the tower to the temple to speak to his friend the priest, he can’t simply – pouff – turn up in the vestry unless he has teleported there;  much less start play in mid-conversation.  

Here’s how I described my game at the time:  

As a group we have found a strange hybrid style with tactical, wargame-flavoured DnD combat alternating with scenes involving difficult decisions, heroic melodrama and character growth - it's almost like I'm running the game on two levels, heavy-Gamist and kinda-Narr.

And I went on to wonder why the turtle player wasn’t keen to get involved at either of those two levels.  D’oh.  

The answer was all there for me, in my own description of the game at that.  If I’d been able to see it.  He’s simply a player with strong simulationist preferences, and wasn’t ever going to be happy in a game that fluctuated between gamist and narrativist.  That combined with the fact that he isn't interesting in thinking about different groups' styles or identifying his own preferences (he just wants to play), but was keen to keep socialising with us - turtle voilà.

[Ron Edwards]

Yay! This is why I ever wrote those damned System essays in the first place.

Best,
Ron

[Frank T]

it's almost like I'm running the game on two levels, heavy-Gamist and kinda-Narr.

Quick (slightly off-topic) question for better understanding of Forge-Speak: What would that style of play be called, supposed it were functional? Is that Drift from scene to scene? Congruency? Or what?

Thanks,
Frank

[Callan S.]

Hi StalkingBlue,

I think you really nailed it. I think it's interesting how the apparent 'tell', where he was really interested in sticking to the gamist rules, was actually indicitative of how he was actually "Wow! This is how the game world works...I embrace these rules so as to further embrace and explore tha game world" rather than any gamist bent.

Thanks for posting after your talk with him. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Frank, it's "Incoherent" play by the jargon. Incoherence doesn't have to be non-fun. However, as this case illustrates perfectly, it is intrinsically a miscommunication among the participants, and therefore may lead to not having as much fun.

Solution #1: reduce emphasis of any Creative Agenda, sticking to Social Contract and the baseline interest in the Exploration material (which without Agenda cannot be developed much). This is the solution more-or-less advocated by most folks.

Solution #2: hunt for Creative Agendas explicitly, which has two possible outcomes, or some combination of them -

a) a shared nascent Creative Agenda emerges and the game "takes off"

b) the group membership gets rearranged, usually to everyone's satisfaction and, properly handled, with no danger to the Social Contract (or friendships out of play) [that's what happened here]

Solution #3: do nothing, which results in either of the other two solutions by default, over time.

Best,
Ron