Incoherence

[xenopulse]

This is one of those posts about an "a-ha" moment that I think people will be able to relate to, and I understand the sticky to say that those kind of points are best placed in the AP forum.

In my current AD&D 2e group, one of the player characters was captured and tortured. They cut off his ears. Basically, he would have been dead, but the GM decided to give the group a chance to rescue him, and he wanted the character to pay a price for that.

Now, the characters are in league with a temple. This is a self-designed world of the GM. The temple is based on a religion of healers.

The player wanted the temple people to heal his ears. NPCs who can cast Restoration are obviously part of the temple personnel. They refused. Why? They gave some nonsense excuse that they couldn't just give their services away for free. But in actuality, the characters are working for them. So now the temple people are not only ungrateful, they don't seem to fit their image of benevolent people at all. (Note that the question was not whether the spell would actually do the deed; that did not even come up.)

I was wondering why the GM would do this. He is a Simulationist. He built the whole world with an eye for coherehce and exploration. Not healing the character went against the temple cleric's religion as he had created it. It felt like a tear in the Dream, if you know what I mean, an OOC action borne from the GM's idea that the character needs to keep those scars as a matter of consistency. They were a price paid, and healing that should be a huge reward, not a simple boon from an NPC.

I realized just now what the problem is. The AD&D 2e system is incoherent with the GM's CA. AD&D 2e does not lend itself to Sim. In this case, there is absolutely no cost associated for the temple clerics with casting Restoration. If they don't cast it, then it's actually wasted for that day. Hence, the system along with our situation does not conform to the idea that some scars are permanent and/or have a price associated with them.

Now, obviously, the GM is envisioning a world where scars matter and consequences last longer. Wanting the ears to stay off is in his eyes a result consistent with his expectations on how his world is supposed to run.

I've noticed several other such moments where the GM makes arbitrary decisions that contradict logic as it pertains to setting vs. system (see my example of raising crossbow damage in the recent thread on applied bricolage).

Why is he running AD&D 2e? It's all he's ever known. And the main player refuses to learn any new system at all, unless it's for a different genre. But the GM wants to use his world, which is a fantasy one.

The point is, I wholeheartedly agree that System Does Matter. And AD&D 2e turns out to be horrible for just about anything. It frustrates my Nar leanings, it does not allow the main player to fully use his Gam inclinations (as there's little tactical stuff to do), and the Sim Dream is constantly breaking up when the system is used at all.

[John Burdick]

The player wanted the temple people to heal his ears. NPCs who can cast Restoration are obviously part of the temple personnel. They refused. Why? They gave some nonsense excuse that they couldn't just give their services away for free. But in actuality, the characters are working for them. So now the temple people are not only ungrateful, they don't seem to fit their image of benevolent people at all. (Note that the question was not whether the spell would actually do the deed; that did not even come up.)

I've got an example of drift:

Usually when a party needs to have a fallen comrade raised from the dead, or is simply of need of healing, the party members seek out an appropriate temple and beseech the clergy there to cast the needed spells. Not only does this involve a lot of hefty fees or donations to the temple but the characters must endure endless lectures, and be sermonized to and pressured to lend additional support to various  functions and pet projects. The party is viewed as a never-ending source of disposable income so who can blame a temple strapped for cash and short of resources for trying to milk a cash cow for all it is worth?

The section goes on to describe Mobile Infantry Combat Healing And Raising Units, which are hired cleric healers. In HackMaster, peaceful NPCs exist to extract gold from the party. They are also used to burden PCs in other ways, but taking the gold is greatly stressed.

In case you're denser than most and haven't noticed yet, this whole section entitled "treasure" is about how to get cash away from your player's characters. It is very important to take excess loot away from player characters...

So by this text, wanting ears back is a gift for the GM. It gives a free chance to hit the party for money and favors. Players should expect the temple to be another challenge if the GM has been playing by the book. If the player is stoic and doesn't seek healing, the GM uses that against him. Lasting injuries are there to be exploited.

John

[eef]

My current thinking about D&D:

There are roughly reasons people play RGPs*:
  -- interactive story-telling
  -- competative character building.

D&D, especially 3*, excells at the latter at the cost of the former.  The baroqueness of the rules means that that knowing the rules becomes a substantial player differentiator, especialy if the player knows the rules better than the GM.

All the things that make it so good at competative character building cause real problems for story-telling.  The mechanical magic system, for instance.  Clear, distinct, easy to manipulate.  But no sense of the magic of magic and the spirituality of religion.

* Yes, I know about GNS.  No, this isn't a take on GNS.  Work with me here, people :-).

==Ed

[Vaxalon]

How would a ruleset put "magic" in magic and "spirituality" in religion?

I'm curious how that would happen.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

Let's make sure to stay on topic for this thread. I'll see if I can consolidate some of the points so far.

Ears - does or does not the character get them back easily? And also, what is the value of the ears to the player? "Here, you get to keep playing your character, but he's mutilated ..." That's a big deal, it seems to me.

Low on hit points = strategic consideration

Scar or missing fingers = no change in capabilities, cool Color, usually.

Missing limb or eye = permanent reduction in capabilities

Disfigurement (premature aging, cut-off ears) = no change in capabilities, but severe blow to character's coolness - frankly the most damaging

My experiences with GM-decreed disfigurements lead me to think that they represent among the most severe indicators of some kind of "lesson" or message at the Social Contract level in D&D play - especially of the story-heavy, argument-heavy flavor that seems most common for 2nd edition play.

A while ago, we were discussing how a great deal of D&D strategizing from the old days (late 1970s) was about the "cracks in the rules," or basically, using logic to relate disconnected rules-statements to one another to achieve a desired goal in play.

It seems to me that the DM is doing that here. There are no rules for magic growing one's ears back, beyond the existence of a spell or prayer that "can" do it. What's the context for applying this magic? Can a player count on it for his character? Et cetera. Therefore what interests me is not finding "what the rules say" but rather "what the DM is accomplishing socially."

To be absolutely clear: no one is going to resolve this by looking at the rulebook; all arguments or "it would be" statements based on the rules are automatically spurious. Discussing what magic "can" do or "would be like" is especially unhelpful.

I think, xenopulse (name? I thought I knew it ...), that you're getting partway to the issue by bringing in CA, but that it's not far enough. You're stating, perhaps, the CA-related reason that the DM might cite for his decision, which is good because it gets our noses out of the rulebook, but CA on its own is not going to do it. Step out to the bigger box, and look for the social interaction.

Is the DM punishing the player? Is the player saying, "OK, I get it, lesson's over, give me my ears back"? Or is he saying, "Screw you, I'm not accepting the punishment"? That sort of thing.

Best,
Ron

[TonyLB]

EDIT:  Sorry... crossposted with Ron before I thought seriously about whether my post was on-topic.  I'm going to post something in RPG Theory instead.

[xenopulse]

Ron,

The name's Christian. It's in my sig :)

I do think you're right that the GM is enforcing a "lesson," as you call it--I called it a "price." Because the GM decided to let the character live, even though he was captured in battle at negative HP (with house rules on bleeding etc.), he apparently thinks there has to be some loss associated with it. Since we didn't do anything "wrong" in the battle to deserve this (aside from being a bunch of first level characters getting into any sort of conflict), I don't think it's a punishment of wrongdoing so much as "cost of GM mercy."

There's both the aspect of mutilation as well as reduction in capabilities, as a CHA penalty is connected to it.

It really seems to me that the player is unhappy with it. The player is actually the teenage brother of the main player (we others are late twenties to early thirties), and I don't think this aspect of the game is enjoyable for him. I can see him being not openly upset, but still only grudgingly accepting the punishment. He has a certain vision for his character, and now that vision is forcefully frustrated by the GM.

So yes, the GM is doing something socially here, and the social contract allows him to do whatever he wants (absolute GM fiat). He is enforcing a preconceived notion he has on the fact that the character should pay a price, and that he shouldn't get off easy. But that social motivation creates a clash with the typical mode of play that we have and that the GM usually strives for, and with the way the world and system are made.

Now, I don't know if there's a way to resolve this. We could all "have a talk," but I don't feel comfortable enough in this group to initiate that, and I don't know if the fallout from that would be worth the hassle.

More and more, I am thinking I need to find a different way of socializing with these people and find a new group to play with. This one's just all too dysfunctional.

[Ron Edwards]

Wow.

First: Um, sig, yes - thanks Christian, I'm sometimes a bit slow.

Now on to the meat - I was going to say "You guys gotta talk about this openly," but given the age issue (wow! that is important!) and your general comments about socializing/talking with this group, apparently that's not happening. And if it's not happening, then yeah - I can see no reason to play with them.

I can't imagine this ears-thing as being anything but social abuse of the younger fellow. Especially since the "main player" as you call him is his older brother. Actually, I'm sort of curious - is the older brother openly supporting the DM in his decisions about this, or is he trying to tell his little brother that it'll turn out OK so don't worry ("it's a role-playing challenge!"), or is he trying to get the DM to lighten up, or is he pulling the neutral leave-me-out-of-it face?

Best,
Ron

[xenopulse]

Well. The basics first.

The older brother is the main player in the group. He's very vocal. He drives play. He frequently argues with the GM, one of his best friends, about in-game events, mostly to gain advantages. He's  heavy Gamist with a good dose of Sim; he asked us other players (there's three of us, all multiclass with some thief in it) to arrange our recent leveling so that we maximize our skills for in-game use (i.e., one focuses on picking locks, one on traps, one on stealth). I told him that I was going to level my character as I saw him developing, which disturbed him.

He's also my coworker and someone I really enjoy hanging out with. He has said before that to him, RPing is simply a way of socializing with friends.

He and the GM both have been playing together for a long time, with changing other players. They have a lot of ideas on how roleplaying is supposed to go. For example, our previous party was almost completely wiped out by a purple worm. We were levels 5-8. My new character, which I had spent some work on regarding background and integration, made it through three sessions before he got killed. The GM's answer was, "I didn't think you guys would really go and fight this thing." How about that.

So, the possibility of character death is one of the things the main player believes to be at the core of his enjoyment of RPing. He lamented a little at losing a character he had played for ten years, but hey, that's the game. No attachment there.

They also both believe that the GM does whatever he wants to in order to run the game. The GM created the world. He has the vision.

So yes, the decision is supported by the older brother, because of their agreement on how play should be. I haven't heard them talk in detail about it, so I don't know if he's consoling the player behind closed doors. But someone who has little attachment to his characters (dare I call them pawns) feels little sympathy. I think his brother is more invested.

So. The reason I feel uncomfortable about talking about basic social contract issues is this long-standing history, and the fact that I'm the newest player of the group. I don't want to come in there and be like, "Okay people, let's sit down and talk about what you've been doing wrong for the past 10 years."

How DO you initiate such talks?

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Technically, they're doing nothing wrong. I suggest that they're pretty good at the long-term strategy - from shorter-term stuff like whether you do or don't fight the purple worm, to longer-term stuff like how to plan your levelling-up. I bet you anything that the EP exchange rate has been homebrewed into a finely-tuned system for improvement relative to risk for this exact range of strategy.

What interests me is that the DM seems to be "teaching" the lesson that it's better to be killed than to be permitted to live. I speak, I think, for literally dozens of AD&D players I've known when I say that they'd prefer their character "just die" than walk around adventuring with no ears. Playing such a character is like being forced to play with a dunce cap on.

If you were to talk with the group, and bear in mind that I don't know these people, I suggest that the discussion be fully within the parameters of this sort of Gamism, particularly the idea that a character is primarily a strategic investment. Perhaps it's time to lobby for the character to die and get it over with, so the poor kid can make up another character with ears. Again, though, I don't know.

Oh yeah, back to CA - I submit to you the possibility that we are not discussing Simulationism of any stripe. It seems more like Gamism with a very strong commitment to the Explorative underpinning - as long as that underpinning facilitates the rules and lessons of the Gamism, and if it takes spurious and quick-and-dirty justification for that, then well, it does. Based on your posts, I see no Sim here at all.

Best,
Ron

[xenopulse]

Ed,

At least 3rd ed does that right--it's far more Gamist-friendly than 2nd, which I've come to believe is no good for anything at all. Maybe, however,because of that feature, 2nd lends itself more to drift, for example in the way John mentions above. People always make lots of house rules, from what I've seen.

---

Ron,

Interesting. I thought the Explorative aspect was exactly what Sim was all about. To me, the GM is a Sim-leaning guy because he spends hours and hours preparing, not in order to give the greatest (or most appropriate) challenge, but to make things consistent, give every building in the city he made up a specified purpose, etc. Maybe I am still confusing obsessive-compulsive plausibility and detail focus with Sim leanings. I thought those went together, though I now realize they can be used for any CA, really.

And maybe you're right. I need to align myself with this sort of Gamism if I want to be heard. See, I don't mind Gamism at all, it can be great fun. But I expect the mechanics to support it better. Maybe I'm just not all that good at using the cracks that you mentioned to gain an advantage. As you can see from my Power/Evil draft, I am all about Gamist mechanics, for fairness' sake.

Thanks for your thoughts. It helped clear things up for me.

[Larry L.]

Good thread. I can definitely relate to this sort of situation. I've played in a few D&D groups where there was clearly some sort of dysfunctional "lesson teaching" going on, but I'm the new guy where the other players have been playing like this for years, so I'm not comfortable challenging the status quo. (And for some reason I hear a bunch of stories about ex-players who don't come anymore. Huh.)

As Ron has said, gamers are crappy players. Some people are so entrenched in their idea "what role-playing is" to the point of socially alienating players who don't share the same idea.

I'd like to hear that you manage to deal with this in a way other than to just stop playing in this group. But I wouldn't bet on it.

[xenopulse]

Larry,

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'll let you know how (if) we resolve the situation.

And you know, I've been guilty of a similar thing in my early days of GMing. I made some decisions simply because I didn't want my players to get away with something that I didn't agree with. Looking back, that was a horrible thing to do. But I had a different conception on how they were supposed to play than they did.

[contracycle]

On point of entry might be that "mutilations are heavier penalties than death".

I've had an experience in which a players chgaracter was rendered unplayable becuase an NPC cut his hand off.  I didn't comprehend this at the time, but I think that the issue is this: it radically challenges the conception of the character in the players mind.  And that I suspect is even more frustrating in the context of a perpetually escalating challenge scale because you never plateau and enjoy the fruits of your victories.

I agree with the discussion regarding priests in AD&D2; if played according to the apparent rules, they should be our really genuinely, and more importantly, easily healing the sick than the game world can allow in order to maintain the degree of challenge the players are expected to confront.  There should be no cripples, beggars, or amputees in most fantasy cities.  But because these are needed in order to maintain the Colour, they are assumed ratehr than rationalised.  This is because the economic system is mad.  It is quite correct to observe that, like any perishable commodity, it would be better to expend todays heal light wounds and garner the reputation, if nothing else, than to let it go to waste.  What the AD&D2 economy shows is the principle that "value is the price you are willing to pay", and IMO this is badly innapropriate; the result is that the service is withheld on the principle that it is not valued, and thus would not be a "fair" exchange.

[Vaxalon]

The way I explain the existence of such things as disease and disability in a DnD world, is to assume that the number of priests who are capable of casting such spells (level 5+) in any city is far smaller than the number of people who need the spells in any given day, so they reserve the spells for the faithful.

If I want to do a story that involves plague, in a DnD world I make the disease something magical and resistant to ordinary spells, something that requires a mcguffin of some kind to cure.