Charmed and Harry-Potter online free-form roleplayers

[Brennan Taylor]

"A large degree of cooperation can still emerge, through a convention in which newcomers 'pay their dues' by accepting poor treatment from players who have established positive reputations."

Brendan, are you suggesting this is a good thing, or just a noted convention?

I read the beginning of the paper cited above, and what these theorists are describing is actual tests of behavior using anonymity in a game theory experiment. The strategy above is one that consistently worked when building trust in a community where players were anonymous and able to change identity at will. Not that this strikes me as a particularly efficient or necessarily beneficial model for online roleplaying games, but it is obviously one that has been adopted organically.

I played these online games for a while, and I eventually lost interest because I was not willing to go through the hazing period. They seemed like a waste of time to me, and I had other creative outlets (tabletop gaming) that allowed me to perform a similar activity without the pain.

[Brendan]

"A large degree of cooperation can still emerge, through a convention in which newcomers 'pay their dues' by accepting poor treatment from players who have established positive reputations."

Brendan, are you suggesting this is a good thing, or just a noted convention?

Heh.  Definitely the latter--an almost universal convention in free games, in my experience.  (Pay MMORPGs also involve hazing, but usually less of it, since their cost is already at a level above zero.)

[Danny_K]

RPG.Net is an interesting example of this gaming-theory principle, too, although it works a bit more like eBay -- anybody can create a new handle for themselves at any time, but it's a long-lived RPG community and there are many members who've already established a minimum level of credibility by posting intelligently and politely in the discussion forums or by playing in other online games.

[Librisia]

RPG.Net is an interesting example of this gaming-theory principle, too ...

Also just like the Forge.  It seems to be a characteristic of most of the online communities I've encountered that take themselves seriously.

And taking yourself seriously isn't always a good thing.  :-)

[David Bapst]

My first and only RPG experiences for four years were FRPGs, until I came to college.

I would note that not all FFRPGs are based on some canon-settings. Prodigy (http://prodigy.mysteryandmagic.com/entrance.htm) and several other M&M games when I frequented them three or so years ago were generic genre settings, relatively free of particularly powerful characters... Prodigy regularly had events created just by a bunch of villain PCs meeting up, and PC heroes deciding to show up (all PCs, all not particularly more powerful than the others). These combats never went really well for good guys... unless a bad guy's player was leaving, there was little chance of these conflicts ever successfully coming to a conclusion that didn't involve "run away! run away!" for one side. There were also social-esque events, where non-masked characters would meet up and have fun (normally ending in a fight). Other events were the sort of cooperative fanfic described previously in this thread... a few players would talk outside of game, and then play out some event they had already half-planned out, like a skit almost.

There were (and probably still are) problems involved, but there was no waiting period to get started: however, you had to submit a bio to get the character accepted (which created incredible problems I don't even want to go into), and then new players could play... although they were generally timid and not really knowing what to do (they tended to show up in places where people already were and just sort of join the "social" event.

There is a reason why character emotions tend to become important: it's the only thing a player has any real control over, unless they're a veteran (ie accepted player) or a mod, in which case they are assumed to have some authority of the actual setting. If I shoot at a villain, the villain will dodge, somehow. If I try to rob a bank, the heroes will show up and I will run away. If a mod describes me getting killed, I have little to argue about. Playing in an unused part of the forum gives the player more control (I've seen players go months without posting an interaction with another player, just leaving posts in various locations that haven't been visited in months, as their character "lives their life.").

Also, there is some disagreement over what the game is supposed to be about, with a general feeling that "numbers and stats" are wrong and should not exist. DnD and it's ilk are no more than brainless nonsense, like playing Diablo (to paraphrase myself, five years ago).

When I came to college, I found tabletop RPGs more stable and more enjoyable because of the face-to-face interaction. Online RPGs are prone to sudden social dysfunctions (one game I was in got shut down cause the server owner broke up with his girlfriend, another game almost got wripped to shreds when we all decided we disliked one assistant mod's "heavy handed practises" (he wouldn't accept our friend's character bio) and decided to ask the head mod to kick him off the site). Also, they lack the roundtable jokes that help make tabletop really enjoyable.

[Mike Holmes]

Fascinating stuff, people.

First, could I get a couple of definitions. We've skirted close to one for Mary Sue, but I still don't know what it means. Second somebody mentioned "slash fiction?"

Anyhow,

An RPG is a game, and you don't deny people game time just because they haven't been part of the group for a while.

No, but how often do you sit down with strangers to play a TT RPG? At the very least, usually the new player knows somebody and is "vouched" for by the player bringing them. Essentially.

Basically in TTRPGs we've done the social selection process already. In the Big Model, at the top is the Social Contract level over all. In a FFRPG that allows anyone to join, basically this level is created, if at all, during play. With the players not even present with each other, and possibly not even communicating much out of play. So it's no surprise to me that there is a period in some games where the person is evaluated. In TT we simply do this before play begins.

Note that one example of TT where you do play with total strangers is the convention game. What's different, is that it's hard to be antisocial with somebody's mug in your face. Oh, that doesn't mean that you'll get along with every player in a convention game, far from it. But it does mean that there's the same onus to allow everyone instant and full participation as though they'd met to play a chess match.

In any case, the additional structures of most TTRPGs mean that this is easier to accomplish, because you can rely on the lingua franca of the system in question laying to rest any disputes on how to create the action in the game. In FFRPGs, even the best ones that I've seen, there are often little disputes about where the lines lay as to what you are allowed to do and what not. These are often established arbitrarily when they occur by people with authority. Instead of having he neutral athority of, say, a text.

This is, of course, the usual trade-off cited, however. TTRPGs have more structure to rely on, and with which to create off of, but have those rules as overhead to play - you have to learn them, employ them, and abide by their results even when they're not optimal (or risk dysfunction as you cast them aside). Indeed, the FFRPGers have a point when a TTer says, "Well, you can always ingnore the rules when they're inconvenient." The response is, "Well, then why use these rules at all?"

Anyhow, as to "merging" the forms, well, I think that they each exist for a reason. That is, lots of FFRPGers are TTers who went that way becuase they never found a ruleset that didn't seem to just be in the way. Some FFRPGers come to TT because they find the lack of systemic support to be a problem.

If there is an advantage to getting both sides together, it's so that each can sort themselves out. That is, if there are frustrated players on each side of the fence who don't know about the other side, then perhaps they could have their gaming improved by being exposed to good versions of the other style.

Mike

[Danny_K]

From my good buddy Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction

Slash fiction is fan fiction, describing gay pairings between media characters, often in explicit detail, and very frequently outside the canon of the source. The name arises from the use of the slash character in phrases such as 'Kirk/Spock' to describe the stories. ('Kirk/Spock' is widely thought to be the first type of slash fiction, first appearing in the 1970s in Star Trek fanzines.)

And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

Mary Sue (or simply Sue) is a usually derogatory expression for a fictional character who is an idealized stand-in for the author, or for a story with such a character. A Mary Sue therefore goes beyond a conventional author surrogate character. The term originates in fan fiction but is spreading into general use.

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks. Now why is a Mary Sue a bad thing?

Mike

[Brendan]

Given the canon setting of the Enterprise, an Ensign Mary Sue might solve a crisis in Engineering, be the only one who can translate the writings of Ancient Alien Race X, seduce Riker and beat the Romulans in a climactic final battle; this entire story would be replete with the crew commenting about how awesome this new Ensign is, and how she's really become a part of the Enterprise family.

Mary Sue fiction is an exercise in self-validation by manipulation of characters the author admires into a positive relationship with his or her idealized self.  This rarely makes for interesting reading.  (It also occurs in many other forms than fanfic; fanfic was just the first to recognize the symptoms and make a diagnosis.)

Because players of fandom RPGs want their work to be interesting, and because they are familiar with the fact that Mary Sues make for boring fiction, they reject what they identify as Mary Sues out of hand.  There are a number of conceptual mismatches in this situation, though.

First, Mary Sues are an outgrowth of the worst parts of single-author fiction.  But gaming is not single-author fiction--in fact, even freeform roleplaying is not multiauthor fiction.  It just isn't.  It's a medium in itself, because it's generated in a different way.

Second, when you don't know the player, any character can be identified as a Mary Sue.  Any positive aspects of the character ("I'm a good shot," "Karen knows lots of hexes") can be seized as self-aggrandization; self-aggrandization is a telltale symptom of a Mary Sue.  This makes "That's a Mary Sue" the unblockable accusation.

As we've accepted, I think, established players who have endured the initial hazing carry a great deal more weight than any given nonestablished player.  This means that any established player can reject any new player with impunity.

[Andrew Norris]

Thanks. Now why is a Mary Sue a bad thing?

Wow, where to start. Loosely speaking, Mary Sue is fanfiction as to "munchkin" is to D&D. This means that it's both a real issue and a bogeyman invoked to mean "someone who plays in a way I dislike".

I had a friend who, back in junior high, dated her DM. Her character was a half-demon seductress with a flaming whip and a cart full of magic items. Now take that character and put her into D&D fanfiction, and have her run roughshod over all the established characters, showing she's head and shoulders better than all of them. That's pretty much what a Mary Sue is.

Brendon hit the point that I really wanted to emphasize, though, which is that these kinds of environments are often paranoid about the issue, to the extent of turning away reasonable content. I'd compare it to someone who tried to use Director Stance at a D&D game and was shouted down as a "munchkin".

[Mike Holmes]

So, would it be true to say that the phenomenon is really more about the player in question not respecting the value of the overall narrative as a joint venture, and sacrificing it for their own personal use?

Yes, this is just an abusive player, and, as always, it's a result of a lack of social contract. Seems pretty straightforward.

The wikipedia doesn't make this clear at all, BTW. It makes it sound like any time the character has any trait that's reminiscent of the player that the phenomenon is occuring. Or is it that the original term was broad, but has come to mean only the abusive player?

Mike

[James Holloway]

The wikipedia doesn't make this clear at all, BTW. It makes it sound like any time the character has any trait that's reminiscent of the player that the phenomenon is occuring. Or is it that the original term was broad, but has come to mean only the abusive player?

Mike

The term didn't initially refer to players at all -- it was used to identify characters in fan fiction rather than in games. So if I wrote a piece of fiction set in the Harry Potter universe about this student called, I dunno, Bames Bolloway, and all the stories were about how great Bames Bolloway was and how much Harry Potter liked him and wanted to be his friend, it would be identified as Mary Sue, seen as contravening unwritten(?) principles of fan fiction. Or something.

The term in games appears to apply to:
a) any character who is sufficiently powerful or cool that they disrupt the canon, as well as
b) any character who is clearly an idealized representation of the player, particularly an un-self-reflectively glowing portrait of that person or obvious power fantasy.

The list of traits given to Librisia, linked above, includes both these things to varying degrees, as well as examples of pet characters from other media forced into an inappropriate setting. At this point, it has become a catch-all term for "any character concept I dislike," much, as Andrew pointed out, like "munchking."

In this case, the GMs appear to be trying to transform a particular set of aesthetic preferences (which I share in many ways, actually) into the One True Way, which is approximately the million billionth time this behavior has taken place in an RPG context.

[John Burdick]

Mike,

My understanding of Mary Sue was that the story lacks conflict because the point is to daydream rather than make a strong story.

John

[Librisia]

Mike and David, you've pretty much summed up what I said in my essay.

I don't disagree with the inherent problems, but I think that the two types of RPing - at least in the HP and Charmed universes - are never going to come together.  

The FFRPGers call their games RPGs, but they are really interactive fiction communities.  They have their idiosyncracies for reasons, but they happen to grate on the social contract that a lot of tt gamers are used to.  Me in particular.  

Some people are willing to go through the initiatory process to "prove" that they aren't Mary Sues.  I'm not willing to do that (see my "Monopoly" scenario above), because for me, an RPG is a GAME, and I don't feel that I should have to go to great lengths to prove that I can play a game.  I'm a grownup, and I don't want to spend my time reading along for months and not get play time.

Mike, I agree that much of the screening process is done beforehand in TTRPGs.  But only most of it.  Ron's whole GNS conflict paradigm occurs quite often when someone invites a gaming friend who is primarily gamist into a group where the focus of the games is simulationist (or any combination thereof).  People feel like they can't ask the new friend to leave because he's a friend of a player they don't want to piss off ... we all know the story.

Unfortunately, the immediacy of ttrpgs leaves some people (like myself) unwilling to go through the lengthy process of the ffrpg proving ground.  

As Andrew and Brendan point out, the online ffrpg communities unfamiliar with tabletop games are paranoid about characteristics they think are "Mary Sue" characteristics.  What I created was a good character for a tabletop game that uses canon characters as NPCs.  What ffrpg players see is someone who is self-aggrandizing and not able to play well with others.

Also, a point I have yet to discuss is that in the ffrpgs that base themselves in a fandom, what happens is that the mods and their friends all play the canon characters.  I hate to break it to them, but canon characters ARE MARY SUES.  Which is a blind spot that most people who play ffrpgs in a fandom setting seem to have.  The people running the game get to play all the interesting characters who get all the play time and plot attention, while folks who haven't proven themselves get to sit around and watch them play.

[komradebob]

The people running the game get to play all the interesting characters who get all the play time and plot attention, while folks who haven't proven themselves get to sit around and watch them play.

You've just described everything I hated about the Vampire LARPs I tried.