Obstructionists in games - is it a creative agenda?

[MatrixGamer]

Okay, I've slept on it and I've noticed that there are some people who play games - who are following "Other social agendas" but who do play as opposed to merely asking for the bowl of chips. This player may be a bored spouse, significant other etc. They are not power playing in game terms so how can it be world wrecking in a gamist sense. They may do some story telling but not to move the story but instead to mess with the players at hand. This could be a creative agenda - but not a game one - it uses the game to push an "Other social agenda" that wrecks games and violates the social contract.

When I ran a game club twenty years ago I called such players barbarians. They needed to be driven out lest they spoil the broth.

In the Big Model such players might be called "Obstructionists."

Can this fit in the model?

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Andrew Cooper]

Could you give some specific examples of what this person might do?  I'm not quite grokking what this type of play/player is about.

[TonyLB]

I'll take a stab, and Chris can correct me if I've misinterpreted.

Mary plays Janet Jones, head adventure-archaeologist of the Frisk Bureau.  She is in an on-again, off-again romance with Thaddeus Crow, a researcher played by her husband, Jeff.

Jeff is playing a subtle diplomacy scene with Chang Li, the Dragon Lady, asian mistress of mystery, to find out where the Jade Buddha has been taken.  They are on the verge of substantially advancing the plot, so long as things are handled very delicately.

Mary narrates that Janet Jones storms into the room when Crow and the Dragon Lady are leaning close.  Jones immediately takes this as a romantic encounter, and elaborates the Stakes of the conflict to include Janet's opinion and the romantic relationship.  This may or may not swamp the original Stakes of "Find the Jade Buddha."  Whether it does so is a matter of supreme irrelevance to Mary.

Chris:  Solid example, or utter mis-step?

[MatrixGamer]

This would be a player who is messing up the story which could be obstructionist. This player is pretty engaged with the story though so they might be seen as gamist(?) since they are trying to use the rules to get what they want.

Here is another example. This time of someone who is playing but is not so involved.

Chris has convinced/browbeatten his wife into playing Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Lets say she is running Willow. This should be fun, the other players are into it but Terri is obviously angry. Maybe Chris left the toilet seat up...again! Terri makes Willow do some real mean stuff to Chris' character (Xander). Chris trys to keep on with the game. Terri then tells the vampires where Xander lives and how to get Uncle Rory to let them in. The game master does not follow up on this obvious opening to kill a major PC. Terri then has Willow pick a fight with Buffy who refrains from killing her. Then Terri makes Willow walk into the vampire lair to get eaten. The others try to save her even thought this is absolutely not what the story was suppose to be about.

Terri is clearly playing a game, but it is not role playing. She has brought her "Other social agenda" namely anger at Chris, into the game. She is using the game as a language to passive-aggressively gig Chris.

I'd call that Obstructionist.

Does that grok?

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

PS: My wife Terri is actually a very good role player, she was one of the original play testers of the first Star Trek RPG and the FASA Dr Who game. But force her into a game, or bore here by the game and expect bad things to start happening! She just doesn't put up with bad game mastering.

[Andrew Cooper]

Okay.  I think I see it now.  

It's like a group of guys getting together to shoot hoops every week but Bob is mad (upset) at Dave over something else.  When the game starts Bob won't pass to Dave or only passes to him when he's sure to get hammered.  Or if they are on opposite teams, Bob is constantly throwing elbows under the basket if Dave guards him.  Bob isn't normally like this but now he's using the game to "make a statement" about something that is outside the game... and generally being an ass at the same time.

I can see Obstructionist as a label for that, as what they are doing is obstructing everyone from playing the game that the group wants to play but consistently forcing their own agenda (not CA) on the group.

Am I on the right wavelength here?

[TonyLB]

Creative Agenda:  The aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-playing.

I'm having a hard time seeing the "socially manipulate Chris" priorities as being aesthetic in nature.  Does that disqualify obstructionist play (at that level of abstraction from the aesthetic task of RPG) from being a CA?  Probably.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Total Social Contract.

Social Contract is defined as any and all social interactions which surround (and include) the "we role-play together" activity.

The role-playing (SIS stuff) is within it, and it includes many other things. There is no set "importance" of the role-playing within the Social Contract; that will vary by person and by group.

Chris, it seems to me as if you're still struggling with this concept a little. Perhaps it would help if you were to set aside role-playing and think of any social leisure activity. Say "bowling."

It's not hard to imagine that any number of folks bowl together within the context of a bunch of interactive/social reasons. And that if anyone (or even everyone) has a specific "bowling agenda," whether to take the league championship or to perfect the right technique or whatever, that will only functionally occur within that set of interactive/social relationships.

That applies to any and all human social leisure activities. There seems to be, however, a historical resistance to this idea applying to role-playing.

Best,
Ron

[MatrixGamer]

I can see Obstructionist as a label for that, as what they are doing is obstructing everyone from playing the game that the group wants to play but consistently forcing their own agenda (not CA) on the group.

Exactly, Chris' activities in the game are less about the game and more about disrupting the social contract.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[MatrixGamer]

Creative Agenda:  The aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-playing.

I'm having a hard time seeing the "socially manipulate Chris" priorities as being aesthetic in nature.

Once the word aesthetics comes into the picture things get fuzzy real fast. I personally don't view a pizza covered in spray varnish and hung in a gallery show as art but I know first hand that it was done at Indiana University 25 years ago. Great joke though. The person who threw livers at a cross with barbed wire on it was less funny.

There is the one artist I forget who you took a pencil drawing of an earlier artist and erased it, then hung it in an show saying - drawing by X erased by Y. Destruction can be an aesthetic - even if you don't like it. (Which by the way I don't.)

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[MatrixGamer]

Hiya,

Total Social Contract.

Chris, it seems to me as if you're still struggling with this concept a little.

Oh, I understand it is part of the social contract. Of course everything that happens in a role play game is in that box, by sheer dent of being at the gaming table. What I'm wondering about are not the people who refuse to play, or those people who honestly join in a game and use it to create. It just occurs to me that some people join play not to create but to destroy. That intent seems very different from honest creative agendas.

It is thanatos rather than cosmos (destruction rather than creation).

The reason this could be important in a theaory of role playing is in how it effects design. We can try to balance games to moderate the corrosive effects of extreme gamist play but those same rules moves will not stop someone who is truly obstructionist.

It such players are not seen as "playing the game" because they are not creative, then how can their legal moves inside the game be explained. On the other hand if we say they are playing then how does social contract wrecking behavior fit into any creative agenda. They are creating destruction.

I certainly don't want to be "obstructionistic" in this discussion - which could easily be seen as fitting into the Big Model - since we are in a social contract, exploring a point creatively, which can be seen in the ephemera of forum postings. I just had this thought last night and thought it could be a worthwhile avenue of exploration.

So my questions to the forum is - Where do these players fit? And what are they doing in and to games?

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Ben Lehman]

Chris --

Let me see if I'm on the same page with you -- what you are talking about would be called in MMORPG terms a grief player or griefer: someone whose sole enjoyment of the game is brought about through ruining other people's fun.  Is this correct?

I've been thinking about that a lot recently.

yrs--
--Ben

[MatrixGamer]

in MMORPG terms a grief player or griefer: someone whose sole enjoyment of the game is brought about through ruining other people's fun.  Is this correct?

I've been thinking about that a lot recently.

yrs--
--Ben

Yes they could be grief gamers. This doesn't mean they always are. Obstructionist play may only come when something outside of the role play social contrat triggers it.

Glad to hear someone else see this too. It is real.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[John Kim]

Then Terri makes Willow walk into the vampire lair to get eaten. The others try to save her even thought this is absolutely not what the story was suppose to be about.

Terri is clearly playing a game, but it is not role playing. She has brought her "Other social agenda" namely anger at Chris, into the game. She is using the game as a language to passive-aggressively gig Chris.

I'd call that Obstructionist.

I have a bad reaction to this for two reasons:  your phrase "what the story was supposed to be about" and "other social agenda".  The former implies that unexpected actions which radically change the story are bad.  The latter implies that the game is supposed to have a particular social agenda.  

My perspective here is as someone who has at a number of times been called a "problem player" precisely because I didn't follow what the story was supposed to be about.  I also have had some extremely good experiences with bringing in more personal social agendas into play.  

If I were GM in the above game, I suspect I would take a moment to plot with Terri -- giving Willow a reason for going after Xander, like maybe some evil ghost has it in for Xander and is influencing her.  So by making it a part of the game, I use her agenda to drive the game instead of struggling against it.  Hopefully, Xander gets the stuffing knocked out of him somehow, everyone else struggles to find a cure, and somehow things get resolved in the end -- in more ways than one.

[Ben Lehman]

Glad to hear someone else see this too. It is real.

BL>  Has anyone here disagreed with you about its existence?  I think the disagreement is about whether or not it is a Creative Agenda.

I spent a long time thinking about this, and I'm coming close to an answer.  Maybe a new thread in a couple of days?

yrs--
--Ben

[Bankuei]

Hi,

I think it might be worthwhile to take careful note that many instances that could be seen as "obstructionist" might come from different causes-

- CA Incoherence amongst the group- the group is "talking past each other" with regards to their assumptions of what CA is in effect, and see each other as being problematic and obstructionist

-Passive Aggressive action- as in Chris' example.  A common behavior amongst people in general, in & out of gaming.  Though this kind of stuff happens, it's a reaction to a situation- not the original intent for play("Hey, I'm going to play D&D with this guy, and treat him like crap though play!")

-Griefers- as in online play, or trolls in discussion boards. They get their kicks in ruining whatever fun others are having- regardless of what kind of fun that may be.  

Of the groups, only the third can really be considered as coming to the table with the intent to wreck things, but even then, I would have a hard time calling it a CA of any sort.  It'd be rather like asking "What do you call an artist who does everything to prevent art from being produced?"  "You don't call them an artist- that's someone who doesn't like art."  You could replace the words with cooks & food, musicians & music, carvers & woodwork, etc. but the point is that obstructionism goes completely against the very basic Social Contract of "We're here to play" with "I'm here to stop you FROM playing, in ANY fashion that you might find fun."

The CA would be what kind of art, food, music, is being produced, but if the problem is whether ANY kind ought to be produced in the first place, it's above CA.

Chris