Space alien in D&D

[John Burdick]

From Incoherence

But if you've ever faced a strongly Gamist-oriented player or GM, and suddenly had that "he's a space alien" feeling, you'll know what I'm talking about. The horrible truth you must face, though, is that "the alien" is already 100% consistent with his goals of play, and that he is right.

I've encountered a space alien and I've not accepted that he was right.

Connected to the the Wizards store in the mall was a game afternoon every other week. I join a game run by a guy named Jack. I think it was 4 men and three boys. Pretty standard D&D game. One of the kids was a little immature, but in a good natured way. I start playing regularly.

After a while, our table meets up with the next table over. That game is run by Mike. He insists I be all visually descriptive and then expects me to make an in character prayer to a god defined as "(name written here) neutral good". I'm not having as much fun anymore.

After a holiday schedule bump, I show up to play. Jack his guys played on the holiday. Mike invites me to make a character to play in a free for all deathmatch game. Since I was already there, I went along. An example of the ensuing rules arguments was whether my character actively engaged in combat was flat-footed when another character stealthily charges 200 feet or so to sneak attack. I don't get a spot check to see the guy charging 200 feet because I'm engaged in combat the other direction. My claim was that I was flanked, but not flat-footed.

I devoted a number of spell slots to summon monster spells. I gave up on using those when I realized how much social effort it took to make anyone imagine the monsters. I'd only played with Mike's group once before; they didn't have an established history of giving my input credibility. I was unhappy about failing a difficulty 24 skill roll with a roll of 1+23.

After the relief of my character dieing, Mike tells me that "We thought this would be fun to see who could make the most effective rogue and beat everyone else." His effort to deal with my obvious frustration didn't help. I feel that secretly predetermining that the winner should be a rogue is just bad.

I wrote Jack an email telling him I'd had a frustrating experience that sunday and wasn't enjoying the merged game and wouldn't continue. Other than saying hi to him a couple times that's the end.

I play a board game Blood Bowl. (I've lost about 40 to 1 playing orcs, high elves, and lizardmen.) There are players online who consider winning with different inputs than they enjoy to be bad play. You shouldn't be able to win by hurting the other team. You shouldn't be able to win by fouling downed players. You shouldn't be able to win by scoring fast touchdowns. You shouldn't be able to delay the game by holding onto the ball.

I put rigging the system for a rogue to win in the same category as those whiners. A game where a person changes the available means and goal to force play to proceed in the desired manner is equivalent to a snipe hunt. The way to win the challenge of a snipe hunt is to not play. That's my space alien experience.

John

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

Not quite the same thing as what I was talking about, I think.

My "space alien" was a serious, rather ruthless Gamist whose expression of his preferences jarred another person who didn't quite grok the Gamist part yet.

His alien-ness is a matter of utterly differing values from what the person (in this case, Christian) would expect. Space-alien is not a pejorative term, but a reference to the utter disconnect, the "lurch" Christian felt when he came face to face with those values.

Your example seems to be a lousy, whiny, skulking, cheating pseudo-Gamist, whom you quite rightly (from a Step On Up real-life Gamist view) are repulsed by, and who wasted your time. It's like having a fellow player in your volleyball game, who you suddenly realize is trying to trip everyone surreptitiously in the interest of a particular player getting the most spikes. Differing values, yes, but not a matter of Functional Values Set A meeting Functional Values Set B. More like Set A realizing there's a saboteur in the group, whose values hardly qualify for the term at all.

Best,
Ron

[John Burdick]

Okay, Ron. Just checking. The guy who always beats me at board games is very much a proper gamist role-player and he's cool.

John

[Ron Edwards]

No! I'm not  done! You have struck a chord in me with this thread and every time I read your initial post, I get all pissed off.

Ooooh! I mean it. This Mike guy - what the hell is going on with this sort of thing, people? Is there absolutely no interest in a group like this actually to have a good time? Do they travel to the session actually verbalizing in their heads, hey, we're getting together, Doh Dee Doh, boy, I bet it's going to suck just as bad as last time - can't wait!

Or to put it better, why does the group that plays regularly with him tolerate this kind of thing? If it were a band, they'd kick him out. If it were a bowling team, they'd kick him out. If it were a theater troupe, they'd kick him out.

Why are gamers so bad at kicking people out? Arrrghhh!

Help me out, John. You met these people. You spent hours of your time socializing with them in a putatively creative manner. (I shudder. Time is very precious to me.) Can you explain or at least describe what in the world the "value added" is, for them, out of role-playing?

Best,
Ron

[Keith Senkowski]

Or to put it better, why does the group that plays regularly with him tolerate this kind of thing? If it were a band, they'd kick him out. If it were a bowling team, they'd kick him out. If it were a theater troupe, they'd kick him out.

Why are gamers so bad at kicking people out? Arrrghhh!

Ron,

Well I would say it is because most game groups have a fear of dying a death because if they fuck up the dynamic they may not find anyone to fill the new holes.  It is the same reason any dysfunctional sticks together, regardless of the situation of the group.  Shit I know people that are still friends and hang out with each other even though all they can ever do is bitch about each other and fight with together.  And god help them if they have been drinnking.

I think another part of it is the whole, "He'll come around some day" syndrome.  People for some reason just keep taking the abuse praying for the day things get better.

I'm with you.  Fuck that guy and kick him out of your group if he is a problem!  Hell, kick his ass while you're at it!

Keith

[JSDiamond]

One wonders also why *the store* tolerates a-holes like that.

This happened to me and I complained to a staff member that their "official store-sanctioned GM" was a mongoloid of the highest caliber.  He was a late twenties GM who acted like a bitter, PvP-ing teenager --and that was the only time he showed personality.

I've never gone back for any reason.  Not to buy, not to browse --not ever.

[Larry L.]

Why are gamers so bad at kicking people out? Arrrghhh!

I tend to go with Geek Social Fallacy #1.

One wonders also why *the store* tolerates a-holes like that.

I've noticed that these guys are often astonishingly good at spending huge portions of their incomes on game supplements. From the retailer's point of view, he's probably a saint. Writing a letter of complaint to the store manager about your experience might get some notice... game store "staff" never strike me as very business-savvy.

[Brennan Taylor]

I think you guys are really missing out on a far more likely explanation. The social issues in this group are relatively unrelated to gaming, gaming is just their tool to pull off behaviors you see in all kinds of group interaction.

Mike is a bully, and the 'new guy' is the victim. The other members of the group help Mike get his power ya-yas off by picking on whomever the goat is in the group, in this case John. When John isn't there, they have some other goat that they jump on. Often I would guess that the goat is someone who wants to hang with these 'cool kids' and is willing to be picked on in order to be included. It's just like the schoolyard.

Mike and his buddies are getting something out of this, they get to be in charge and push people around.

[John Burdick]

No! I'm not  done! You have struck a chord in me with this thread and every time I read your initial post, I get all pissed off.

Sure, I wouldn't have posted the actual play without having a purpose. The thing is I wasn't sure what that purpose was. I didn't write about it at the time, because it would've just been an angry rant. Later that same day I met with my steady group and ranted to them. I only meant to be done with the space alien part.

I asked myself last night why did I feel the urge to post that now. I decided I want to talk about the harmful effects force can have on gamist play. I've had some very good gamist experiences lately.  The Tomb is an example you can read. I think playing Great Ork Gods was the breakthrough for us.

In the same time frame as the successful gamist play, Jason Petrasko mentioned that he liked being able to leave the challenge to the players; he doesn't need to consider how to make the game come out okay. When I am faced with a challenge and expected to meet it in a preformed way, I turtle and disengage. See Choice for Callan talking about the freedom of meeting challenge his own way.  Either establishing that the situation isn't a challenge at all (participationism does this) or allowing free response keeps me into the game.

This is the issue that brought me to the Forge.

When denied reliable tools to form my response, I become argumentative and hostile. This has never happened once with my steady group. The rules change every week, but we really do play by the current rules.

The talk about punishing a player to teach him the proper way to play brought these two issues to mind. My gut reaction was to not grant the GM standing to teach me a lesson. I know my feeling isn't the actual circumstances in that thread, but I feel it strongly. That's why I posted my own play thread.

I said that Jack's game was what I saw as standard D&D. Here's the transcript of events from the first session: The party is being sent on a quest by the king. A new character, mine, is being assigned to add fighting power by the king. While travelling, owlbears attack our camp at night. We fight the owlbears, and backtrack to attack their nest. After getting hurt we move on the our main quest.

On the road we meet some merchants. They offer food to us. Half the party declines the food. My internal justification for not eating the drugged/poisoned food was that I was a disciplined guard and on duty. The cook acted all insulted and much trashtalk ensued. When the characters that ate the food became sick, the merchants attacked. Lots of D&D action followed. Everyone had fun. The players pick the coolest performance to receive bonus XP.

Later sessions we question contacts for clues, are given ominous messages and mysterious tests, and fight a young black dragon. I guess that's the second and third sessions. The third session Jack hands out a list of gods to pick patrons from because we'll need one soon. I pick the neutral good one to match my character.

Fourth session I'm introduced to Mike and his group. I'd met one member casually before. She'd invited a friend of mine to play in her twisted Sailor Moon game. We both declined. I forget who said it, but Jack was identified as the combat enthusiast while Mike was identified as the more roleplay focused. They explained they'd been planning for a merged game for months.

This session was the first time I saw Jack using dirty tricks. If we pray to the god we picked last meeting, we can find out that our mission will open the gates to hell. Since no one makes the spoken in-character prayer required to find out the intended result of today's events, the players proceed in igorance of the plot. Earlier I'd blamed Mike for that bit, but it must've been Jack that did it. I guess I blamed Mike because everything went bad the day I met him. I see it as a fake to distract us after the fact. Jack knew perfectly well we weren't going to do it.

After we open the gates of hell, we play out the meeting with Mike's group. He lectures me on giving a proper description of a person's appearance. I give him the passive aggressive brick wall. Play resumes without waiting for me to comply with his demands on my performance. Mike plays a plot device character with an annoying voice that bullies his players into returning magic items he'd presumably lent them.

Back to the players in the fifth session with the deathmatch idea.

One of the players is a new kid. He doesn't have any clashing views on the game because he's new. Another kid present wasn't playing; he was there to look at another guys Rifts books. The one woman was playing a Psychic Warrior someone else had made. She spent most of her time trying figure out what her character was capable of. The other person was the guy playing another rogue to see who's rogue was the sneakiest.

I had a firm grasp on all the material in the Player's Handbook and what I hoped to be a strong character. I felt a good chance of winning. Other than the two guys that came up with the scenario, I was the only one playing hard.

John

[ADGBoss]

I have a few comments although some of the people may have hit on them before I will try to remain non-repetitive.

My first comment is about bringing Gamism into this at all.  Sure this is bad Gamist behavior but this is just bad behavior in general terms, not just for Gamism.  There is seems to be either no social contract at all or a complete breakdown in the social contract of the group / store. I hear "Jack and Mike wanted to merge games..." but I don't hear if everyone else was ok with that. The same can be said with the Best Rogue contest and then the Deathmatch scenario.  There seems to have been no or very little input from the group in general.  So before Creative Agenda has even been discussed, you have this noxious combination of people trying to play a game.  Well really trying to kill 6 hours away from home is probably more like it for some of them.

Second, John it's clear that you consider D&D a Gamist game and I suppose that it is, but I see your last comments about how you were the only one playing hard.  Well frankly, maybe the other players aren't Gamists? It is possible to use the D&D rules for other creative agendas and since this looks like the only game in town it could be that these people, still unaware of the real choices they have in role-playing, play D&D or this campaign because it is available.  They may have (and probably do have) completely different wants and needs then you do.  So sure, they are not going to play hard at all.

Third, D&D as well as most fantasy RPGs that could be considered in the same Gamist mold seem to sometimes have this reputation as being like auto races.  Each week the peeps suit up and race around the dungeon and the one who hits the finish line first is the "winner". I personally do not see extended play i.e. a campaign as being like that at all. It's more akin to a Baseball team, where everyone plays a role and there is a great deal of wiggle room how the group and individuals handle the tactical challenges.

Final point and this ties into both Social Contract and the Team idea. I would regard that in Gamist play there needs to be a sense of mutual respect as competitors and camaraderie as teammates for Play to be fun and fulfilling for everyone. That does not exist in that group and I personally doubt you will be getting any kind of satisfactory play out them now or in the future.


Sean

[John Burdick]

Sean,

I terminated all contact with the lot of them. The next day in June 03, I sent an email saying I wouldn't be back. I wouldn't have done that if I thought they were behaving like reasonable people.

The 3 kids and 2 other adults playing characters at my table wanted to hit things for XP and find magic items. I'm firmly convinced of that. I don't know what anyone from the other table does at other times. I don't know what Jack would have ideally had us be like.

I suspect that at least some of the player's in Mike's group are marshmellows that don't know what they want. Perhaps Mike stunk because he doesn't understand the idea of fair competition as applied to D&D. I'm confident that I don't like however he plays at other times.

If the final disaster of a game hadn't happened, I would've talked to them about my dissatisfaction with the campaign. If I had liked what Jack was doing at that point, I might've talked to him about my clash with Mike. Given both circustances, I didn't want to waste the effort.

I brought gamism into the topic because in the earlier thread, I mentioned something about dependable world information and rules concerning healing. Ron said that in the context of that thread those are Sim issues. In my thread, reliablity of means and selecting my own challenge are gamist issues. To establish this distinction, I posted an actual play where untrustworthiness and bullying ruined my effort to Step On Up.

John

[John Burdick]

I want to emphasize that the praying to gods bit was a premeditated violation of the existing social contract. That's why it was a safe alternative to following the plot. Unless the parents of the children get worked up over it.

John