[Amber] Two Sessions: Narrativism and Hardcore Gamism

[Mikko Lehtinen]

We've played two more sessions of Amber. The first one had a clear Narrativist focus, and was very enjoyable for all of us. In the second session some of us shifted to hardcore Gamism, and it was an ambivalent experience.

Players: Veke (the GM), me (playing Istwan), Kristiina (playing Nina), and Robert (playing Salvador).

Fourth Session: Narrativism

I was a bit worried how Robert would affect the group dynamics, since he has clear Gamist tendencies, while Narrativism binds the rest of the group together.

Ron, I read again your essays about Gamism and Narrativism, as you recommended. My experiences are similar to yours: in our earlier campaign sessions seemed to alternate between Gamism and Narrativism, but usually one of them was the clear focus. I could enjoy both styles, so I had no big problems with this, but sometimes Robert got bored. Our Gamist sessions were sometimes quite hardcore, perhaps a bit too much for my tastes, with both players and characters competing against each other. Now this dynamic seemed to change, because of Kristiina, the new player. We agree that Kristiina wouldn't enjoy hardcore Gamism.

This new campaign is developing toward much more focused Narrativism. We have a clearly defined premise (What does the family mean to you?), and the players are now the true driving force behind the story. I hope Robert learns to enjoy Narrativism, too, but I'm not sure if this will happen. In this session Robert wasn't quite as active as the other players, but he did have his moments.

Robert created a good kicker for his character: Salvador woke up as a prisoner to some unknown entity, and was surprised to see Oberon, the True King of Amber, chained and unconscius next to him. Wow! This kicker turned GM's plans upside down, and he was happy about it.

Our rules twist, the "coin mechanic", was again working like a charm. Robert didn't quite get it yet, but he'll learn, as he sees me and Kristiina in action. This is how we used the coins in this session:

1. I used a coin to have Istwan provoke prince Corwin to take action against Istwan's mother Deirdre, in an extremely complicated psychological situation that addressed our premise in at least a million ways. For the last 20 years prince Corwin had been drunk, trying to forget everything about Amber and his relatives, especially Deirdre, who he both loved and hated with passion. No, I'm not going to explain the situation in detail, it would take at least ten pages of text. :-) In the end Istwan succeeded in a way. Corwin was really, really pissed off. He stopped being self-destructive, and turned his anger outwards. Corwin promised to help Istwan, but first he said he had to take care of some "issues".

The GM hit me with a couple of very effective Bangs. First Corwin suddenly slapped his human lover with force, probably killing her, conveniently ending another love/hate relationship that was causing him pain. Istwan observed Corwin's behavior coldly, feeling very responsible for waking up a monster.

Then Corwin and Istwan travelled to Spain to "meet a very important person". The person turned out to be Viola, a cousin that Istwan (and me, the player) had always been very fond of, although Viola had never liked Istwan. Even better, Salvador (and Robert) liked Viola too, and in the old campaign she had been Salvador's only friend. Viola was the perfect hook for both me and Robert, and Kristiina was very excited about the situation too. All the player characters were present in this scene.

Both Viola's father Caine and his uncle Corwin had always abused and tormented the girl in every possible way. In the old campaign Viola was always full of hatred and tough as nails, a merciless killer, but now her will had been finally broken. It turns out that Viola had been for many years unhappily married to his father Caine's henchman and lover, Luigi, an evil man. She had lost all hope of a better life. She was addicted to narcotics and - to my shock - pregnant to Luigi.

Shit. This helpless girl was used by everybody, and now I was making her situation even worse by bringing uncle Corwin here... I knew that Corwin was going to hurt Viola somehow. I acted without thinking, and all the other players helped me without questions. We kidnapped Viola and took a Trump to a distant Shadow. Soon we found out that we had angered prince Corwin, and prepared for a fight. Yeah!

The story continues, but I'll stop here.

2. I used my second coin to remind the GM about Juiblex, the psychotic and extremely unpredictable demon killer from the Shadows. Juiblex had served my character for a while in the old campaign. We agreed that Juiblex would become important, but I had no idea how. Perhaps he would try to assassinate Istwan? Juiblex ended up attacking prince Corwin at a critical moment, allowing Istwan just enough time to escape via Trumps. Cool!

3. Nina's cousin Akar, a cruel necromancer, had been psychically dominated to believe that Nina was his beloved wife. Now Akar's real personality was quickly returning, and Akar was about to teleport away. Kristiina panicked and spent a coin to have Nina murder Akar, who was still helpless. There's much more to the situation than this, but maybe it isn't very interesting out of the context. Kristiina's decision was cool in many ways:

a) This was Nina's first violent act in the campaign. Previously she had been a pacifist.

b) The GM has a tendency to protect the important NPCs. It's agreed that it is quite rare for an Amberite to truly die. But since Kristiina used a coin, the GM had to take this murder seriously!

c) Killing an Amberite will have some really, really bad consequences for Nina. Although the elder Amberites often treat their children like shit, they still love them very, very much. Akar was prince Gerard's son.

It was a great session.

Fift Session: Hardcore Gamism

I was tired when the session began. Due to some misunderstandings I arrived late, and was quite unprepared to play Amber. The session turned "ok" nevertheless, but it was very different from the previous session.

When I began playing, a lot of things had already happened. Most importantly, Robert's character had stolen my character's Trump deck!

Robert was trying to provoke me, and he succeeded. The whole session turned into hardcore gamism, a prolonged fight between Istwan and Salvador. Many of the NPCs became involved in the fight, too. In a way it was fun, and I confess that I had somehow missed this shit. In the end Istwan got his Trumps back.

I mean I and Robert had fun, but I'm not sure about Kristiina. Since we were playing in the Gamist mode, we weren't a very good audience for Kristiina's Narrativism. She just wanted to make us boys stop fighting so that we could concentrate on the important stuff. Our fight wasn't very important story-wise.

I agreed with Kristiina. I tried to do some player to player talk with Robert to make him understand, but it didn't help: he was hiding behind his character. Fortunately we both agreed at the end of the session that we can't continue playing like this.

I think we need more pressure from the GM, so that we wouldn't need to fight each other.

I'm starting to realize that if I want to reliably have a good Narrativist session, I need to keep Banging the GM. Our GM isn't exactly driving us with Bangs, even when we are getting bored. I know he has a million good Bangs in the store: his NPCs are very interesting. He just won't hit me with those Bangs very often unless I (or somebody else) take the initiative in my hands.

Kristiina is good at getting her character in trouble, too. Robert isn't.

Questions? Suggestions?

[TonyLB]

Suggestion:  Give Istwan something he wants to accomplish in his relationship with Salvador, and tie that into how Istwan feels about his family.

If Robert can drag you into a conflict at any time (which, clearly, he can) and wants to do so (which, clearly, he does) then it's going to happen.  Saying "Hey, don't do that," isn't going to have any impact.  He's got some issue that he wants to work out.  You're not going to stop him from doing that, short of ejecting him from the group.  So accept that it's going to keep happening, and figure out how to make it cool.

So I'll make up a for-instance:  Maybe Istwan wants to prove (to himself more than anyone) that the family is about more than who can be the greatest bastard, and therefore he wants to win the respect of the elders without stooping to Salvador's level.  The relationship with Salvador is his test-case for what the elders respect, and thereby what the family actually is.

Without motivation:  Salvador steals Istwan's Trump Deck.  Which, frankly, on its own?  Ho-hum.  Yeah, yeah, I know, they're useful and all, but still.

With the "for-instance" motivation:  Salvador steals Istwan's Trump Deck.  Which, on its own, is now a statement about family.  You immediately hand a coin to the GM and say "The elders are watching this sequence of events very carefully, but not interfering."  And then you fight fair, and Salvador fights dirty, and you do not get your Trumps back.  But that was never the question.  The question (for you) was what the elders think.  And the GM will have to pick an elder and tell you (through how that elder now treats Istwan) whether they respect Salvador's actions or Istwan's.

I know that would be more satisfying to me.  Do you think it would be more satisfying to you?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Tony,

interesting ideas, and I might actually use some of them. But I don't think that they help very much with the actual problem.

We have used tricks like the ones you suggested. And they work. In the earlier campaign the elders did pay attention to our dangerous hatred toward each other, much like you suggested. Istwan did many things that changed his relationships with elders. Mostly he made bad moral decisions that he regretted later, because they endangered his friendship with uncle Gerard. I loved being an unhonorable, back-stabbing bastard. Most of the time I'm a Narrativist, so I do spend much time thinking about these moral decisions. So we have already turned our fighting into something cool in the Narrativist sense. (Yes, it's cool and stupid at the same time. Our fighting is about "honour", and IMO honour issues are almost always stupid.)

But! It's just that when we get all Gamist, we don't have time to pay attention to Narrativist details, not during the actual play. Limited mental resources, you know. Fuck, we just want to win, no matter what. So our fighting has had many interesting Narrativist consequences, but during the fight we don't pay much attention to them. Only later, when we shift back to Narrativism.

Even though this style has worked for us in the past, we obviously need to change it now, because of Kristiina, who doesn't get it. We used to take this fighting much more seriously. Now it's just a "funny" habit,  and hopefully it's not that hard to get rid off it.

[TonyLB]

But see, that's my point.  What I'm saying is that you have to give up winning the prize of "beating Salvador."  You choose a different prize ("Impressing the Elders with my newfound virtue," or whatever) and aim to win that instead.

It takes two to tango:  You're both making this into a zero sum game, between the players.  Not Robert alone, and not you alone.  You are both choosing to pursue the idea that "I only win if the other guy loses."  Of course you're going to go Gamist.  There's no point lamenting it.  It's your conscious choice, as much as it is Robert's.

What I'm saying is that you, unilaterally, can opt out (if you want to, which I'm not at all sure you actually do).  Not by having Istwan surrender (feh, how boring that would be!) but by creating an agenda that you, the player, can pursue whether Istwan wins or loses, and then paying attention to that agenda rather than to the rivalry for rivalry's sake.

When you say things like "We have used tricks like tihis before" then it convinces me that you haven't grasped what I'm talking about here.  This isn't a little trick to make the Gamism more palatable.  This is a complete change in the way you approach these scenes.

Am I making any sense here?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yeah, I know it's my conscious choice, too. I've been missing these fights with Robert. Actually, at the end of session #4 I was the one who was provoking Robert. We like to fight, and we need no reason!

We fight because we like to compete, because we want to show off to each other. If we weren't gamists, I believe these duels would be much, much rarer. Because, frankly, from Narrativist POV, they are quite pointless.

I believe you can't have both Gamism and Narrativism in the same roleplaying session. At least it wouldn't be very satisfying. But in the next session or so we might very easily use these fights as Narrativist story-components. We've done that many times. That's why I talk about tricks. And believe me,  our fights have had very dramatic Narrativist consequences, even though we didn't originally start the fight for Narrativist reasons.

At the moment I think we just need to give up these Gamist fights altogether, because of Kristiina. It's not really possible to magically turn these fights Narrativist, because they aren't. We just need to give up fighting.

Am I making sense? If I don't, please ask questions.

[TonyLB]

Okay, now I get what you're saying.  It's not that you're being forced into the Gamism, and want techniques to help you avoid it.  It's that you like the Gamism, in the same way that you like Narrativism, but it doesn't fit this group, this game.

Yeah, okay, that's tough.  Obviously, techniques are at too low a level of the Big Model to have much impact on that.  At best they can serve as quick reminders "Hey, we're going into a place that we decided we didn't want to go," and point you back to your social contract.

I think we're on the same page here, now.  Thanks for clarifying!

[xenopulse]

I don't know how the mechanics work, but is there a way you can separate out the fight for a time when it's just you two? I.e., can you get your Gamism fix when the other people are not sitting around bored? :)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Perhaps we could have separate sessions sometimes...

The best solution from my POV might be two different groups. At the moment it seems that Robert is watering down my Narrativist fun a bit, and Kristiina is diluting my Gamist fun.

Our Amber campaign might work better without Robert. But it wouldn't be nice to kick Robert out, because he's truly enjoying himself. Given enough time, perhaps he will learn to enjoy Narrativism. At the moment I'm optimistic. I like to hang out with these people, everybody is having fun.

But I guess we can't tolerate very much gamism in this group. I'm not sure what we should do. It's unavoidable that some of the time Robert will be doing Gamist stuff with the GM, while Kristiina and I chat about Narrativist stuff in character, not bothering to listen to Robert. Hmm, that doesn't sound too bad. It's just that Robert is lacking the audience.

[Andrew Norris]

I've seen gaming situations where two PCs were in conflict, and one of the players was jazzed about the conflict because of the stakes, while the other was just happy to be involved in a conflict.

It's not a merging of the two styles of play, but it works at times. It just means that the stakes on one side are as simple as "show up my opponent". It's pretty easy to set up this kind of situation when the characters are indirectly in conflict, such as through intermediaries.

[Ginger Stampley]

I'm a little confused about the underlying social contract premise. I hear a  lot about Kristiina not enjoying the Gamist aspects of play, and now I gather from this thread that she's the only one not having some fun with it. Yet there's an imperative to change what Robert enjoys as a player because he doesn't enjoy the Narrativist play as much as the Gamist play.

If you can't change the group's composition, it seems to me that all the players have an obligation to accommodate the others. Yet you're not willing to ask that of Kristiina. Is it because she's a new player, or is there some other reason that asking her to flex a little isn't on the table?

[Having said that, I second Andrew's suggestion on putting stakes on the table as a way to draw Kristiina into play and accommodate her desires while also accommodating Robert's.]

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Well, I like Gamism, but I like Narrativism more. That's the main reason why I'm playing. Our GM thinks similarly.

I don't really know Kristiina that well yet. She obviously prefers Narrativism, but perhaps she could enjoy Gamism, too. She tends to freeze when she needs to make gamist choices, but maybe it's just because she isn't accustomed to our playing style yet. But she's learning fast. In the duel she was actively trying to stop our fighting, cleverly using all kinds of tricks, including NPC manipulation and sleeping gas.

Hardcore gamism, meaning straight PC-PC duels (at least between me and Robert), easily breaks our Narrativism to pieces. I felt bad during the last session, because I was very interested in what Kristiina was doing at the same time, but I couldn't concentrate at all on what she was saying. Too much addrenaline in my blood! Nina's story was at a climax point, but we were a really bad audience.

Otherwise Gamism isn't a very big problem for us, but I'd like to keep it in the secondary role. All of us can "flex a little", no problem.

Yeah, I know what you mean with the Stakes. In the session #4 both me and Kristiina did things that shaked the world, and set the Stakes really high. Robert loved it. As long as there's enough dramatic conflicts going on, he can keep picking sides, making plans and fighting, and is really happy. That's the ideal situation for all of us. So, as I said earlier, we just need to keep Banging the GM!

We aren't boring Robert to death. Robert is much happier in this campaign than in the Gamist D&D campaign he is playing (Veke is gamemastering that one, too). That's saying something. Robert really digs our fast & dangerous playing style.

And yes, there were interesting Stakes for Kristiina in our duel. Nina badly needed someone to help her, and now she had to choose between Istwan and Salvador, because she couldn't get both. Istwan flatly refused to be on the same side with Salvador. Also, there were important NPCs watching our fight, including cousins Viola and Boromir (Nina's lover). Nina's decisions affected them all. Everybody had to pick a side.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Hello,

I realized that I need to tell you more about how this duel between Istwan and Salvador made me feel. It's a very complicated emotional issue for me, and it's hard to think about it clearly. This conversation with you all is helping me a lot.

1) I strongly felt that Robert's decision to steal my character's Trump Deck was a breach in social contract. I had exactly two options in my mind: a) To accept his Gamist challenge and forget about the Narrativist stuff I came here for, or b) to stop playing, and handle this issue out of play. I chose a), but next time I'm gonna pick b).

2) Yep, I like fighting with Robert. We both needed this fight somehow, and were provoking each other. Once I accepted the challenge, we had fun. At the same time, it wasn't just a fight between fictional characters, it was a fight between real persons.

3) Why did we need this fight? Was it a fight? Hell, it's very complicated. I felt that the duel between Istwan and Salvador made me and Robert better friends. By challenging each other, and by taking it seriously, we confirmed to each other that we are good friends, and that we appreciate gaming together. It was a ritual of some kind, for old times' sake. Perhaps our characters were thinking the same. Istwan and Salvador weren't exactly trying to kill each other, it was just playing.

4) I don't especially like competing against GM's characters. Winning isn't a big deal, losing is just as fun. Robert is a special case. Even with Robert, I hate doing any kind of long-term planning against his character, and I'm not doing it. That would break the cooperative spirit that I feel is necessary for Narrativist play.

Did this make any sense? Clearly we need to have some more talk about our social contract.

[contracycle]

Raise the stakes.

It seems to me that the problem here is that really the ongoing duel(s) between these characters is distracting, becuase it is not intended to be the subject of play.  Therefore, you can either make it the subject of play, or make it too hot to touch.

I don't believe you can REALLY be going head to head if you both walk away from it and all-is-forgiven.  So next time, kill the fucker.  Don't play with him, cut him down.  And if the GM is effectively tying boxing gloves on your fists, make him stop.

This is mostly in response to your point three; the fact that you two are playing , rather than fighting, is not-so-tacit approval for his actions.  You are in effect condoning his seizure of the spotlight, and joining him in it.  This counter-acts your stated wish that you both should stop - it becomes a "do what I say not what I do" message.

And I do not think any of this will preclude narratavism either.  Play-fighting is not an important human issue, real fighting is.  Dead bodies have repercussions.  This is already appearing somewhat, as seen when you mention that the conflicts between these characters have forced Nina and NPC's to pick sides.   Actually finishing the fight brings this process to its logical conlusion and allows the game to move on.

What I find slightly ironic in this situation is that Amber by all reports is easily able to handle PC-on-PC conflict in terms of setting and convention.  I have read of a number of games that were explicitly based around such conflicts.  So this all seems very Amber to me, and thus it is somewhat ironic that it is causing you problems.  I think this is because you are preserving the form of the conlict without giving it any real point or bite.

[TonyLB]

Mikko:  Please elaborate on how you felt that the theft of the Trumps was a breach of social contract.  I'm utterly floored by the suggestion.

[Ginger Stampley]

Mikko:

I'm guessing you felt the theft of the Trump deck was a breach of social contract because you weren't there when it happened. There's a definite social contract issue there ("what happens to PCs whose players are late to the game/absent") and in your shoes I'd want to address that with the GM in particular as well as with Robert and the group at large.

One of the difficult things about playing Amber is that so many people come to the game with different expectations based on their reading of the source material (Zelazny) and the gamebooks, plus all the house rules and customs that have developed in diffferent gaming communities. It's a hard game to iron out a social contract for.