Initializing the roleplaying experience

[Eero Tuovinen]

So, I'm fiddling with game design a little bit, and I'm thinking on what makes the social and psychological event of roleplaying possible. What, in general terms, are the things that cause it so that roleplaying happens, as opposed to not happening? I'm especially interested in culturally isolated, textually originated conditions; you have a rpg book, nobody's ever done this thing before where you live, so how does it start? What kind of game it has to be for roleplaying to happen and continue?

Specifically, here I'm looking at my own experiences and how roleplaying is generally done, and it seems to me that the path to roleplaying goes through the authoritarian GM. The way I imagine it happening usually is that one guy gets the inspiration to want to play. Because he wants to play, he goes to the bother of reading the rules. Because he wants to play, he convinces his friends to try it. He's the GM, because the GM's traditional job is to guide and monitor the proceedings, which is what the first guy has to do anyway, because the others have no idea how to play. What's more, it seems to me that this authoritarian structure persists as a functional (meaning that it causes and propagates play) social model long after all participants have either left or become rpg hobbyists themselves.

If the above is right, how does it stack up to a game without the GM figure with unlimited power? Because I'm imagining Polaris in a library, and folks reading it and planning play. Does Polaris faciliate play as well as D&D, for example, does? We can agree that D&D play continues as long as the GM is willing, yes? The people will turn up and play because the campaign is a social duress, if for no other reason. Does Polaris cause games to begin and continue as efficiently as D&D?

Furthermore, let's not forget that the different games or different social models might generate different subcultures as well. D&D generates 3-10 person isolated and stable cliques, wouldn't you say? Like terrorist cells, except they don't have hierarchical connections (unless Gencon is one). Boardgames, on the other hand, seem to have a slightly looser subculture; the groups are the same size, but there's also a little bit more social movement, especially because of the club model: many players come together regularly, and play groups are sorted then and there, so you play in various different combinations. Larps have a much wider and more fluid social structure, so big that it isn't that different from golf players, for example. Questions: what is efficient for propagating play, and how can rules affect the social level?

Ultimately: if we're making a game specifically for mainstream markets, wouldn't it be weird if the correct answer to the social structure question would prove to be the authoritarian GM? If this is not so, why not?

[matthijs]

Campaigns are possibly a problem wrt propagation. They tie up players for indefinite periods of time, during which they might not have the time to recruit others.

Two examples:

1. Marc has picked up the DMG. He learns the game, thinks it's cool, and gets his 4 friends to play. They spend a lot of time playing with each other. Sometimes another friend might drop by and learn the game. They all play with Marc, because he's the guy who knows all the rules and holds the authority; the rest of the gang can take it easy and just turn up for an evening of entertainment, so no need to recruit others.

2. Marc has picked up Magic: the Gathering. He learns the game, thinks it's cool, and gets a friend to play. That friend tells another friend, and shows him his cards, and they play. And the friend tells another friend - and so on.

The nearest thing to one-on-one single-session games in RPG's are the solo gamebooks - which aren't always played solo. A significant amount of role-players started out with Fighting Fantasy or the like.

[komradebob]

The way I imagine it happening usually is that one guy gets the inspiration to want to play

What do you think are the preliminaries to this step? Specifically, what experiences do you imagine that this person goes through prior to being inspired to play an rpg?

Ultimately: if we're making a game specifically for mainstream markets, wouldn't it be weird if the correct answer to the social structure question would prove to be the authoritarian GM? If this is not so, why not?

I think you make a good case in your post for the authoritarian gm being the basis for the growth of the rpg hobby as we know it. As a counterpoint, I would say that the authoritarian gm, and the styles of design that support/encourage this:
 

Because he wants to play, he goes to the bother of reading the rules. Because he wants to play, he convinces his friends to try it. He's the GM, because the GM's traditional job is to guide and monitor the proceedings, which is what the first guy has to do anyway, because the others have no idea how to play.

...act as barriers to potential players used to a more level-playing field, all participants equal game/social structure.

Or, to be blunt, GMs, as a concept, are just weird.

[Trevis Martin]

I'm going to offer my own experience here.

I got into roleplaying b/c my uncle, who played, decided to take me to a game shop.  I was mildly interested in seeing him and his freinds do their thing but in the game shop I found a copy of Palladium's Robotech game.  This fired me up.  I loved Robotech at the time (soap opera with aliens and giant transforming robots, what's not to love?)  I bought the book very much out of fandom, but also enchanted by the possibility that I could now pretend to be one of my heros just like on the TV show.

I took the book back home to Kansas City (my uncle lived in Omaha) and grabbed my best freind, also a Robotech lover, and showed him the game.  So we sat down and figured out how to play.  Now if there had been videogames at the time, (there were, but I mean ones like we have today such at Robotech: Battlecry and Robotech: Invasion) I might have not gotten into the RPG so much.  Anyway, me and my friend took turns being GM while the other played a pilot.  We pretty much just pounded out combat between us and the aliens time after time and had a good time doing it.

I continued to collect gamebooks for it and eventually we got into the idea, as suggested in the books, of playing out stories with them.  So we got together more friends.  I owned the books and had read them all (I was certainly the most bookish sort) so I was declared GM.  So our play went on, pure celebration of the source material.  Often it underbellied the main plot of the cartoon series.  We played many different stories, we didn't really have a notion of 'campaign' I think because the show was episodic and it did eventually end.

Somewhere I started to notice other games out there and bought them and read them.  It was always me who introduced them to the group and thus usually me who GM'd the games.  I've been mostly a GM in my experience (though I've been doing some remedy to that in recent years.)

So that's what inspired me to play.  Love for the source material of the game.

best

Trevis

[Larry L.]

Cool Eero! This is a phenomenon I've been paying attention to, trying to understand.

See, back in the day, I taught myself "how to roleplay," based on TSR texts. Based solely on solitaire play, I developed preconceived notions of how roleplaying must work. Later when I did find groups to play with, I was always a little dissatisfied that they were always playing the "wrong" ways (and always different wrong ways!) but kept this opinion to myself. Subsequent game texts, of course, played to this and passed themselves off as a superior way to play than "Strawman RPG." My assumption that my introductory experience could be some kind of orthodoxy experience skewed my ability to see the games (as opposed to the text) as they were.

I also know for a fact that there are folks that once played role-playing games and don't anymore, along the rationale of "I used to play in Joe Whoseywhatsits game, and that's what roleplaying is, and that's not interesting to me anymore. Therefore, if you call it role-playing, I don't even want to try it."

Flash forward to the Forge and GNS and all that, and I'm like, "Doh!" I'm still embarrassed that the whole "cargo-cults" notion didn't occur to me, as though roleplayers around the world should be receiving game instructions from the RPG Pope or something. Role-playing is a far wider and richer endevour than is commonly understood by "the industry."

I have noticed, now, that being conversant in Forge terminology is super-beneficial to being able to Game With Purpose. Now if someone doesn't dig some aspect of the game, there's some terminology to communicate this and, uh, drift the game somewhere more mutually enjoyable. Unfortunately, I know of no quick crash course in Forge terminology that everyone easily digests. I sure as hell don't know how to explain it. I fear that I'll start spouting this stuff to a seasoned gamer and they'll get all "what planet are you from?" like I'm going into a dissertation on Marxism or something.

So I think designers have some responsibility to not perpetuate this weird "our way is the only True Way" brain-damage that the "industry" seems to perpetuate. I think "The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast" is some kind of hand-washing for this practice.

Ultimately, I'd like to devise some system of "Well, I know these folks are on wavelength X, so they're likely to all enjoy a game with Y."

"Subject matter," as Trevis mentions, is also the only reliable Y I can think of. I want to say things like "role-playing vs roll-playing" and "G, N, or S" but as I understand those aren't useful until someone's had time to develop a preference.

(Somewhere in there I was going to refer to GenCon as Mecca for the cargo-cults, but Eero already... uh, I'll just back away from that one, thanks.)

Uh, I don't know how practical any of that is to you, Eero.

I'm totally on the "traditional GM is a bar to mainstream appeal" side of things. I mean really, that's a weird looking social arrangement if you don't know the history of it, no?

[Justin Marx]

Hypothetical exercise based on Trevis' and Larry's remarks:

If new gamers are brought in through fan-based material (mine was TMNT and Other Strangeness.... as a 10 year old kid with waaay too much TMNT paraphenalia), but can be turned off by GNS elements that are not to their liking, AND, if writing a game which can accomodate all three modes of play is (theoretically - in my understanding of the GNS articles etc.) impossible to do in one book, would, or could, someone write up three different play modes (I'm guessing with seperate systems) in three different books for a popular, mainstream premise (eg. Matrix, Harry Potter, etc.) and market it like that? Would it increase the chance that a player would find the value of the game and then seek to explore it more (as opposed to being turned off by elements he didn't like, which he may discount as not worthwhile)?

Also, I think you have to look at the age of the player when they come into gaming. Younger gamers usually come in through gamist, D&D hack and slash in my experience. But a creative adult may be more interested in narrativist elements as they require some level of emotional maturity to play.

And it is a fascinating phenomenon and I am interested in what this thread turns up.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I started writing a response to the thread, but half-way through recognized that I don't really have anything constructive, yet. I'll have to think on this some more, especially in terms of design goals. The key question is to recognize what type of hobby roleplaying should be. I have some vague notions, but nothing developed yet.

So go on if you have anything to add, I'll come back when I get my thoughts in order.

--
Actually, a couple of fast comments:

Komradebob: I think that the prospective GM gets inspired to start his clique by the virtue of liking the idea of roleplaying. The book sells a dream, and play happens when the vision is strong enough to entice the person. It's no different from any book with an agenda, and the tools of the writer are similar.

Justin: I don't think that GNS is at all relevant to why people start playing roleplaying games. Or rather, people will play in the mode of the game they have, assuming that the game manages to guide the player into a suitable mode. Most people are quite capable of enjoying all three modes, at least before being brainwashed by the game books offering things but not delivering, which tends to lead into obsessive behavior in search of the rewards in question. Also, I'm not convinced that age is a strong indicator of preferred mode: children like storytelling and narrativist play just as much as adults do. Indeed, much of the unstructured "play" childrens do is narrativist: taking on roles and discussing situations through it. Playing house and the like. Other children's games are of course more gamist in nature.

--
My concrete question: should my game have a strong GM, if my goal is to entice normal-human-play naturally and non-painfully? Is it more natural to have a leader backed by rules and expectations in those crucial first sessions, or should each player be equal (barring the role of one person as the one who explains the rules, which happens in boardgames without a problem).

[Jack Aidley]

No, your game should not have a GM, for these reasons:

1. The GM role is very hard to explain.
2. GMing takes a lot of skill.
3. GMing creates an expectation that one player is more important for the fun than the others.

[komradebob]

should my game have a strong GM, if my goal is to entice normal-human-play naturally and non-painfully?

Y'know Mike's Standard Rant about Combat systems in RPGs? I think there should be a standard rant about GMs in rpg designs. Unless there is a truly compelling reason to have one, you should consider skipping it. If one is needed, consider very specifically what they can and cannot do and clarify this.

Oh yeah, and what Jack said.

[Paul Czege]

Eero,

My concrete question: should my game have a strong GM, if my goal is to entice normal-human-play naturally and non-painfully? Is it more natural to have a leader backed by rules and expectations in those crucial first sessions, or should each player be equal (barring the role of one person as the one who explains the rules, which happens in boardgames without a problem).

An excellent question. Allow me to break out two sub-questions related to design:

1. What do I do, design-wise, to get a leader motivated?
2. What, then, does the leader do so that gameplay actually happens?

What I'm seeing in the responses here is folks variously mistaking one of the two sub-questions for the whole question. And I think this is because traditionally roleplaying games rely so wholly on the societally ingrained leadership skills of prospective leaders.

Boys develop this skill within the social context of the adolescent play group. So, a group of boys is hanging together at the playground. One says, "Let's play bike tag." Another says, "No, let's trade baseball cards." And whether the guys play bike tag, or trade baseball cards is almost wholly dependent on the leadership skills of the boy who advocated each of the activities.

So, if the setting/situation/color/system is cool enough, the prospective leader may be hooked. And if the process of making the game event happen isn't beyond his native leadership skills, the game may happen.

But your question is this:

3. And can I facilitate motivation and follow-through without relying on a leader?

Most roleplaying devote attention to sub-concern 1, and not at all with sub-concern 2, on the presumption that it will follow from the natural ability of the prospective leader if the game really nails sub-concern 1. If a roleplaying game does concern itself with sub-concern 2, it's only to the extent of mitigating the cost of failure for all participants by a) delivering simple (easy to learn) mechanics and b) minimizing time investment.

I think, if you're wanting GM-less play, you need to concern yourself with both sub-concerns to the extent of knowing what you'll do as an alternative to each of them. How will you hook your prospective players? And, more importantly, how will you facilitate the game actually getting played?

The latter, I think, is incredibly interesting design territory. Ron, you know, is pursuing his own ideas on it with Spione. Myself, I gave a print copy of My Life with Master to an Australian woman last summer, after she emailed for a shipping/handling quote and told me a bit about herself. At one point she'd been in an all female gaming group, and we had some email conversation about what an all-female group might do with MLwM. I was seriously interested in seeing an actual play report of such a game, and she seemed interested in getting the band back together, so I sent her the game. They did chargen, but then lives intervened and the game itself didn't happen. And I think the failure is the result of me, and MLwM, relying on traditional/natural/male leadership.

I don't know anyone who's thinking outside that. How do girls learn to organize social activities? My gut tells me if you can formalize that, it will be quite a stride toward achieving your goal.

Paul

[Larry L.]

Paul,

Holy crap are those sharp observations. I hadn't seriously considered the relationship between leadership and GMs and the way the texts handle it, but you're right on the money. Gotta chew on this a while, please keep going.

[Paul Czege]

Eero,

I can't resist, posting again before you've responded, or insight into how girls learn to organize social activities has been offered. Forgive me.

In part, I think the solution is about mechanical alternatives to organizing social activity that don't rely so heavily on motivated leadership. Some thoughts:

Your game could formalize the sending of invitations. (Danielle and I are in the middle of wedding planning, so it's on my mind.) Some folks will accept, and some will decline. I believe the How to Host a Murder Mystery games feature formalized sending of invitations.

You could embed some linkage to real concerns within the mechanics of the game. Perhaps players pay an entry fee, and the events of play somehow determine a charity to which the collected fees are donated.

Can you build trust and closeness between participants as part of a pre-play activity? The way, say, a cycling team builds trust by training together. (I think it would have to be something that was clearly necessary and fundamental to the game, rather than a tacked on trust-building exercise.)

But it's also about cutting out barriers.

Can your game incorporate meaningful participation from children?
Can it elegantly handle the absence of of a participant?

Paul

[Eero Tuovinen]

Paul cuts to the bone of my topic much better than I did. His issues there are exactly what I'm about in this thread. The point about male activity is well reserved and appreciated. I'd like some insight on female initialization of social activity as well. And yeah, I talked with Ron about things skirting all this when he was in Sweden, but apparently we didn't get to this particularity yet.

Those suggestions in the second post are gold, too. I've figured out answers to some of them already, but that closeness thing was still sort of hanging around in the background. Now that you mention it, of course I'll have to address it.

So, thanks. I'll let all this simmer a bit still before trying to cap the thread with any conclusions (especially as it'll be hard to add anything to Paul's verbalization of the issue). I don't like to hurry with things, when a couple of days of thought might actually reveal something.

--
"Everything I know about female organization I learned by watching Japanese television": girls think it's more important who you do things with than what you do. Girls like karaoke. Natural girl unit is two girls, leaders are defined by having boy-like social webs. Girls are more interested in relationships than boys, who prefer philosophy.
--

But I don't think that only girls are my topic, so if anybody has any other alternatives, feel free to take them up. let's not polarize thinking unnecessarily.

[Levi Kornelsen]

My own experiences:

I taught myself to run games in a small town by way of the GURPS basic set, which I bought because a guy in the store said that it was "comprehensive" - which I thought meant "easy to understand" at the time, being about twelve.  Then I taught about three other kids, and played on.

At sixteen, I moved to the big city and found out that most kids my age didn't play GURPS.  So I taught them - about ten in total, about eight veterans of D&D, about two kids completely new to gaming.   Then I borrowed other game books from anyone who had them, and learned those.  And ran them, teaching a newbie the ropes of those games here and there.

Then I got into LARPing with Vampire.   I went from introducing people to games to being part of a network that introduced people to games, and from teaching one person the rules every year or so to teaching most of the basics to about six people a year - though I didn't bring them in myself.

Right now, others bring newbies in to my group, about three a year since the Vampire craze died, and I help teach them.  I run games - mostly LARPs - as an authoritative, and authoritarian, GM far, far more often than I play them.

[Larry L.]

Paul,

I dig the ideas about practical organizational tips being right in the game text. Successful GMs, by necessity, have figured out what is necessary to make play happen. But I know I've had to figure some of these things out the hard way, with a number of abortive attempts at getting a game going. I particularly like the formal invitation idea, it seems like a good way to weed out flaky players.

Eero,

I don't get the Japanese television reference.