Who's your Pep-Squad?

[Callan S.]

I'll be quoting that actual play example many times in the future, I think.

I agree with everything except this conclusion: "I've just taken my excitement (as semi-official Pep-Squad) and succeeded in infusing it into another player."

I've thought (a variation of) that for many years. That I could make the players feel something, or put some feeling in them. Certainly I'd run games and parts of them would make the players excited. So, for lots of reasons, how do I make them excited again? Eventually as the efforts to make them excited failed, I lost part of my own sense of excitement. As you might guess, further efforts failed even more because of this, leading to me being even less excited. And so on in a gaming death spiral (of course, after not gaming for awhile the itch/the excitement would come back in all of us...only for the spiral to return as well).

This threads really clarified some thoughts. What's going on is that your providing a fascinating object and a conduit to it, through which others can explore it/interact with it. The other player is already excited about fascinating objects even before you provide it and already keen to explore/prod it *. What you've done is made them aware a fascinating object is present/available, and they see the means by which they can explore it through the rules (ie, the humiliate conflict). System certainly does NOT matter in terms of the players excitement in using that conduit. All system does is open it up so the player can interact with the object. It's a miss-association (I think) to link conduit with player excitement creation. It's like thinking that if you make a hole in a dam, the hole is somehow creating water. Rather than thinking the water comes through the hole, from another source. Or it might be like thinking the newly created hole makes the water on the other side of the dam suddenly come into existance. Atleast that's what this thread says to me now.


The key to the facinating object is the clear connection between you and it. I'd like to emphasise the importance of this by rambling on about it in an attempt to explain just what that means as a connection and how significant it is in terms of contact with something real. I'll save it for another thread though, and just leave it at the idea that it's really important. :)


The dark side of pep
Looking at some dysfunction around this region, I think you get that with "these rules don't let me get to what I'm really interested in, they just get in the way! To hell with rules, let's freeform!". Looking at it in this light, although you get to show what you'd like to invest in, this does away with a firm conduit by which other players can manipulate the fascinating object. I think I've just figured out what really bugs me about tossing away the rules! It brings in really interesting stuff, then neuters my ability to explore it/prod it to any significant degree. How frustrating...it's blue balling!


* Keeping in mind, they are always interested in something...it might not be the same sort of thing your interested in though. GNS helps to figure out who is aligned with your interests, at a broad level.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

(I've experienced ensemble play just once, at "Moira" last weekend. But I hope one of the resident Swedes notices this thread and explains further. This is still a limited phenomenon, not even a completely acknowledged one, and only exists within a sub-set of larpers there.)

The is a few years old, and has some connection to the fact that same people see one another in games. So it's easier for them to read one another (a spaceship-larp, "Carolus Rex", played in a real submarine was stated by some as a key starting point of the movement). Furthermore, character creation happens through "group templates" which the players then semi-jointly fill with personal stuff until each concept becomes a character in its own right (as opposed to getting a complete character description from game designers).

These factors create a base where it's relatively easy to start reading the playing style of other players, especially on the general level. In any discourse it becomes quickly obvious whether someone is strongly dramatist or character-intensive, for example. A good player ("good" according to those criteria, anyway) then reacts to what she reads, and provides what she sees as supporting the other's playing style the best. The things that have most potential to develop in the hands of the player being read. As the other player does so as well, both benefit even though they initially had to play less intensely in order to take such meta-level considerations into account.

This system favors drama-oriented and environmentally immersive players (the latter are those people who play larps primarily to feel the sense of being somewhere else, of "living within the fantasy" for a while), but is acceptable to most. Especially when two or more hard core dramatists meet in-game, the results transmit to a heightened game experience for all present, even those not directly involved in their discourse. The downside is that for heavily character-immersive players such as myself, playing "well" according to this system means giving up a part of what I love most in larps, and thus it doesn't work for me /when I'm directly involved/ (it works wonderfully when I'm affected by others doing it, of course). Furthermore, the system isn't often acknowledged, so that ensemble outsiders may not even know that they have to read the others as much as they do. A funny side effect of ensemble play is that this is one of the few playing styles where it's actually possible to play Nordic experientalism stuff with a gamist approach: in return to your accepting that your victories are fixed and will have to fit the game's structure flawlessly, the other players will provide the triumphs you desire for you.

Basically you can sum it all up, to a stereotypically Swedish culture -seeming maxim, as "It's each player's responsibility to make sure every other player in the group has a good game, even if that means giving away a part of the intensity of your own game experience. If everyone does the same, you get more back in return than you initially gave." (Love-bombing -style larp, the religion analyst in me would say. :)

When I'm less busy, I'll post a couple of examples on Actual Play.

-Jiituomas

[TonyLB]

"Responsibility"?  I suppose.  But doesn't that word have a lot of burdensome, joyless connotations?  I listen to other people because they say brilliant, fascinating, surprising things, not because I have a responsibility to suppress my own desires in favor of theirs.

It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're talking (a) about being excited about what I'm doing in the game, but also (b) being excited about what (say) Jordan is excited about in the game.  Because, of course, Jordan got excited about something in the first place in hopes that it would spark further excitement in me.  So by taking the time to listen actively, I help to close the feedback loop of excitement (Jordan -> Me -> Jordan) plus I validate Jordan as a human being and a friend by listening and understanding.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

But doesn't that word have a lot of burdensome, joyless connotations?  I listen to other people because they say brilliant, fascinating, surprising things, not because I have a responsibility to suppress my own desires in favor of theirs.

That's precisely where the ensemble approach differs from the typical gaming approach. It's indeed the /responsibility/ of each players, which is then rewarded, not a situation where my excitement in the game creates a positive feedback loop as it encounters yours. So the idea is indeed to suppress your own desires so much that you can give everyone else more. In return, they are supposed to give you more. What is created is a larp that somehow seems both more and less intense than a game working on the more individualistic style of interplay. For an ensemble-play first-timer, it can be thoroughly unsettling (if you have a fixed idea of how a game should be experienced) or very welcoming (especially if you're new to larping). It's also a noted fact that some players are simply unable to enjoy a game where they have to suppress their desires, and some others find it weakening their game experience, meaning that the method isn't suitable for everyone.

-Jiituomas

[TonyLB]

I'm confused by the distinctions you're drawing.

Are you offering "show no interest in other people's material" and "suppress your own desires" as the only two possible choices?

Or are you actually arguing that, between the choices:  "show genuine, excited, interest in other people's material" and "show duty-bound, joyless interest in other people's material" the latter is better?

You've only been in one of these LARPs, right?  Can you give some illustrative examples (perhaps over in Actual Play) of this principle in action?

[TonyLB]

Remove the word "only", above.  That was early-morning dead-brain of me.  You have been in one of these LARPs, yes?  You are, therefore, the de facto expert for this conversation.  If you've got Actual Play moments to describe, I'm all ears!

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

There's now one personal experience on the Actual Play forum, to provide an example.

Tony is correct in that I've only been exposed to the method for one three-day game plus the about 10 hours I spent discussing its differences with character-conscious ("selfish") playing with the local players and game designers. So I'm in theory versed with the idea, but am still very much an outsider. What I do know is that it's not better for the kind of larp themes I prefer to play (and create in my own works), but it certainly seems to fit people who have a narrativist/dramatist approach to larping.

-Jiituomas

[Josh Roby]

First off:

a spaceship-larp, "Carolus Rex", played in a real submarine

That is too fucking cool for words.  How easy is it to immigrate to Sweden?  Roleplaying on real submarines!

To the topic at hand, though: I think I get what you're saying, Jiituomas -- it's part of the social contract that all players are expected to try and puzzle out what the other players want, and serve them up some good stuff.  Sort of like the traditional GM role of 'figure out what the players want and make a plot about that' except with twenty-or-more players doing it simultaneously, your success rate will be much higher than the GM figuring and balancing everyone at the same time  I'm going to take a wild leap and guess there's a lot of female players involved -- us boys aren't that interested in (or good at) discerning others' interests and intentions, but I can certainly see it as an element of the metagame.  It probably also creates powerful rapport between players who 'get' eachother.

Sounds like MUSHing, actually.  Adam?  Sound familiar to you?  Lots of MUSHers end up playing with the same people consistently, and fall into groups of folks who feed off eachother.  Out-of-game conversations also reveal and align interests in specific authors, genres, movies, and the like.

Tony, I agree that the word 'responsibility' has some negative connotations to it, but I also don't think it's too far to say that when gamers sit down at a table, they are assuming a set of responsibilities -- most of these are things like "be nice" and "don't exclude one player" or "protect everyone's niches".  It's not too much of a stretch to define some of that positively: "listen to your fellow players, see what they respond to, serve up what they're looking for."  This can also certainly be reinforced mechanically -- player-driven reward systems where you give folks points/xp/dice/whatever for doing something "cool" is nothing more than communicating to the table what you like, after all.  Now we just need to systemitize rewards for providing opportunities for other folks to shine, too.

[Callan S.]

If your busy supressing/hiding your own desires and trying to figure out what someone else wants, your going to have a hell of a hard time. Just as much as someone else is going to have a hard time figuring out your hidden desire, your going to have a hard time figuring out theirs.

I'm playing this way...I can see it now!* Everyone hiding what they want in the interests of a better game...but if everyone does it, it ends up a mexican stand off/dead heat. Everyone sort of tensely staring, looking for the slightest sign of desire in someone else, while doing their hardest not to give away their own desire.

What you need to break the stand off is a selfish bastard** who just does what he wants (within rule constraint) and then everyone else just runs in and supports him. This is the only way the above 'watch everyone elses desires/hide your own' rule works...if someone can break it and be the exception to the rule (everyone can take turns at doing this via some distribution method, of course). Of course, usually no one can break it. Since if they do, no one rushes in to support the selfish git. It's thought only the 'watch everyone elses desires/hide your own' rule is good roleplaying. This git is obviously a bad roleplayer, to this line of thought.

The selfish bastard ties in with the pep squad position I think!

* Must work up some clear actual play accounts.
** Jokingly overstated.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

If your busy supressing/hiding your own desires and trying to figure out what someone else wants, your going to have a hell of a hard time. Just as much as someone else is going to have a hard time figuring out your hidden desire, your going to have a hard time figuring out theirs.

The Swedes actively involved in this way of playing had a lovely word, something like "playing by ear" to descrive how it works. (Apparently) the trick is in learning how to give as much as possible while still staying as closely true to your character and your own desires as possible.

Think improvisational jazz: Instead of playing your own tune that gets close  to what the others do but would be dissonant, you transform your idea slightly so that it fits in to the music. In return, the others will adapt their playing slightly so that your contribution is intergrated as well as possible. This gets repeated whenever someone wants to bring in a new thing - if the thing requires adaptation, that is. That last part is very important. In a well-designed game, the suppression may not demand much of you - for instance, in my Actual Play example, I simply did not choose the most likely pattern, but I stayed well within the confines of the character I'd been given. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the game designers' vision.

What you need to break the stand off is a selfish bastard** who just does what he wants (within rule constraint) and then everyone else just runs in and supports him. This is the only way the above 'watch everyone elses desires/hide your own' rule works...if someone can break it and be the exception to the rule (everyone can take turns at doing this via some distribution method, of course). Of course, usually no one can break it. Since if they do, no one rushes in to support the selfish git. It's thought only the 'watch everyone elses desires/hide your own' rule is good roleplaying. This git is obviously a bad roleplayer, to this line of thought.

You're very right here, but only as far as a worst case scenario is concerned. In a game done well, it never happens, since the characters and situations tie in to support one another most of the time, and when they don't, the suppression needed isn't too much. In addition, external events break the suppression processes and force direct character-to-situation relationships to appear. Under this system, a good player is one who is able to stay true to his own character and its connective social network while also being able to play by ear. Too much and too little suppression is in such cases "bad playing".

It's also worth noting that in such games, (I've been told) it's quite common that players of character groups negotiate within their groups before the game on intra-group systems for helping others experience more, and then /integrate those systems into their characters/, so that much of the time in-game, they can provide what is needed by simply playing their characters /as they are/. ("Your Troll needs a translator availlable, so that you can both experience and convey his slow-mindedness better. So we'll write that my Sylph often likes to hang in the company of people who can protect him when he foul-mouths someone. And I'd like to emphasize the predatorial aspect of my Sylph. Since your Troll needs to drive humans from his lands, can we define in advance how he usually does that, so that when you speak of it to others, I can tie in talk about my character's experiences in hunting humans?")

-Jiituomas

[Larry L.]

I'm playing this way...I can see it now!* Everyone hiding what they want in the interests of a better game...but if everyone does it, it ends up a mexican stand off/dead heat. Everyone sort of tensely staring, looking for the slightest sign of desire in someone else, while doing their hardest not to give away their own desire.

This is why I've been gushing all over Capes. The game basically forces you to jettison this style of play. If you're not properly communicating your desires to the other players -- thus giving them an opportuny to create opposition to those desires -- the game just sits there like Tony's basketball.

Hey, maybe all the "Is Capes a G/N hyrid?" fuss is actually just observing "Pep" and deciding it must be "Step On Up."

[TonyLB]

Jiituomas:  I guess what I'm not getting is the notion that suppressing your own desires is necessary to help you show excitement for the works of other people.

Basically, I see four mathematically possible interactions:

• Adam suppresses his excitement about his own contribution, in a way that blocks Bob from doing his thing (Callan's stand-off play)
• Adam gets excited about his own contribution, in a way that blocks Bob from doing his thing (near-zero-sum, selfish).
• Adam suppresses his excitement about his own contribution, in a way that gets Bob excited at the same time. (near-zero sum, selfless).
• Adam gets excited about his own contribution, in a way that gets Bob excited at the same time (Pep Squad).

I get the impression that you think only the near-zero-sum is possible:  that in local play, any increase of your excitement must create a corresponding (though perhaps not equal) reduction in someone else's excitement.  I'm going to move beyond that, but seriously, if I've got it wrong do correct me.  It's only an impression, I won't be offended.

In my experience, the near-zero-sum game arises from certain modes of excitement.  I'll highlight three functional modes (there are some negative-sum-game modes that are just odious, and if I were doing an exhaustive essay, as I may some day, I would get into them, but not today):

• Entertainer Mode:  "I'm going to do something so cool that everybody will be amazed by watching it."
• Spectator Mode:  "I'm going to be amazed by watching the cool things other people do."
• Riffing Mode:  "I'm going to do something so cool that everybody will be forced to be cool and respond to it, which I'll be amazed by watching."

Obviously, Entertainer and Spectator go together like ... two things that go together really well.  If you have LARP players who are switching back and forth between Entertainer Mode and Spectator Mode then you are going to have a near-zero-sum game in terms of excitement.  Their excitement about their own stuff will be high in Entertainer Mode.  Their excitement about other people's stuff will be high in Spectator Mode.  So they can reduce their self-excitement to increase their excitement about others, or vice versa.  And, probably, the amount that they increase excitement (when properly played) is more than the amount they reduce excitement, so while it's near-zero-sum it's not actually zero sum... you don't capitalize on every moment of fun, but you capitalize on more (overall) than you would if nobody were in Spectator mode.

This avoids the dreadful head-butting that happens when two Entertainer Mode people go at each other.  "Sit still and watch my uber-cool stuff!"  "NO!  You sit still and watch my uber-cool stuff!"  "You selfish jerk, you're ruining my fun!"  And I'm all for avoiding that heart-ache.  Yuck!

But swapping between Spectator and Entertainer mode fails to get to the productive head-butting that happens when two Riffing Mode people go at each other.

"So, you value Peggy Polyphone?  Well I've got her trapped in a laser cutting machine!  What do you say to THAT?"
"You FIEND!  That rocks!  You think evil's cool, huh?  Well by rescuing Peggy I will show that justice will always lead... to VICTORY!"
"Oh, the hell you say!  Very cool.  Like Justice, do you?  Well sure, you've rescued Peggy Polyphone.  But now it turns out that I've brain-washed her to be a villain!  Will you pursue justice even at the cost of opposing her?"
"URRRGGGGH... nice play!  I... I... YES, Justice is more important that personal feeling.  I smack her across the chops!"
"Oh wow... that's quite a statement for him."
"Yeah, isn't it just?"

So here's my position:  Whether rightly or wrongly, when I hear things like "It's your responsibility to listen and figure out your fellow players" or "You suppress your own desires in order to help other people achieve theirs" I hear echoes of the near-zero-sum game of Entertainer/Spectator modes of excitement.  And I think that's very functional.  It's just that I like the full-bodied flavor of Riffing-Excitement so much better than I wonder whether folks who do Entertainer/Spectator realize that they can have Riffing as an option.  Does that make sense?

p.s. If I haven't boggled people with terminology (a big "if") maybe we can also split off a thread to talk about how rules systems encourage and facilitate particular modes of excitement, and how they link them to particular roles (GM-Entertainer and Player-Spectators, for instance).

[Callan S.]

The entertainer set up (my personal approach in relation to it) - I've tried to move away from that style because it's just me having my own way. It's something I can do all by myself. If I were fascinated by Major Victory for example, I could sit at home thinking of how he'd beat all the bad guys just the way I wanted him to (I might write fiction about him...possibly end up publishing something about him).

I could entertain these people with just what I like, but it's just showing off something I'm making all by myself. Why am I inviting the input of these guys if I just want to do that by myself?

MOST importantly, if I'm going to have to do all the entertaining from start to end, then I want and NEED to be doing exactly what I like from start to end. Any input from other players will only interrupt what I like doing. Take Tony's example of the Major Victory speech...imagine him saying 'Justice always leads...' and then another player cuts his sentence short, to say he's leaving the room so he can examine a particularly interesting tree outside. While Tony is left thinking 'Why? Why cut in then? Just let me finish what's important to me!'. Tony's example of what he cared about only takes a few seconds to finish. But the role of the entertainer is to entertain for a whole session. It takes a whole session for him to finish what he cares about. Until then, players can only interrupt what he likes doing, unless they try and do exactly what he envisioned (illusionism/participationism).

I'm totally seeing this now!

I've been continually trying to reject that style of play during my career. But the style I try to head to has it's own problems. Let's call it cold start riffing.

Basically how it works is the GM is setting out to make the players get excited. However, the GM doesn't inject into the game what he himself finds exciting because A: Play should be about what the players find exciting and B: If as GM I do what I find exciting, I'll need to do it from beginning to end (which leads to the illusionism  above)*. So the GM is showing zero excitement (the opposite to Tony's Major Victory speech, which shows lots of excitement for something). This gives the players nothing much to get excited about. If the players aren't excited about anything and the GM isn't excited about anything then absolutely nothing happens.

I've noticed this previously in my own group, how play has to go through 'warm up' before we are really playing. Pre-prepared material is entered into the game with a sort of shotgun strategy in mind, in that with enough prep fired into the game you'll 'hit' something and make a player excited.

And over time you do score hits. Depending on the time between 'hits', the players excitement starts to build. At this point the GM's excitement starts to grow because of the players energy. This feeds back to the players, who start getting more excited about the game stuff. This builds up over time and eventually makes an enjoyable game. The problem is these days, by the time we get there we're exhausted. Eight hour sessions aren't possible for us as adults, only two hours. Another player actually said to me once that it feels to him like we've only just begun when we stop. Two hours just isn't enough for cold start riffing to get anywhere really satisfying. Not to mention I hate the prep. The shotgun strategy means so much gets used up to no effect.

I was going to have a wild stab at how Tony's Major Victory example differs wildly from this. But instead, what does everyone else think the difference is?


* I have to do it from beginning to end, because when I write a beginning I'm interested in I'll end up wanting a certain type of ending to go with it. The only way I wont want that, is if I'm not interested in the beginning.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

I guess what I'm not getting is the notion that suppressing your own desires is necessary to help you show excitement for the works of other people.

I'm saying it isn't. What has been presented here has simply been an alternative way of getting more excitement, one that works on different principles and in different circumstances from what most players seem to be used to. FOr some players it's better, for others it's worse. Simple as that.

I get the impression that you think only the near-zero-sum is possible:  that in local play, any increase of your excitement must create a corresponding (though perhaps not equal) reduction in someone else's excitement.  I'm going to move beyond that, but seriously, if I've got it wrong do correct me.

No. I'm demonstarting a system where people try to avoid conflicts between the different playing styles (vall them CA or not) by training participants to be less obsessive about them. I for one prefer the riskier "excitement breeds more excitement" method most people are familiar with.

In my experience, the near-zero-sum game arises from certain modes of excitement.

It also rises from what one might call experiential modes (immersive attitude on narrative, character or environmental elements, or some combination of those) come in conflict with one another and/or the modes you describe, for example a character-immersive obsession comes into conflict with an entertainer. In many games this would not be a problem, but you have to understand that the Swedes invented the ensemble style precisely for games where the experiential factor is much more important than in, say, a general fantasy or assassin larp.

-Jiituomas

[Josh Roby]

"So, you value Peggy Polyphone?  Well I've got her trapped in a laser cutting machine!  What do you say to THAT?"
"You FIEND!  That rocks!  You think evil's cool, huh?  Well by rescuing Peggy I will show that justice will always lead... to VICTORY!"
"Oh, the hell you say!  Very cool.  Like Justice, do you?  Well sure, you've rescued Peggy Polyphone.  But now it turns out that I've brain-washed her to be a villain!  Will you pursue justice even at the cost of opposing her?"
"URRRGGGGH... nice play!  I... I... YES, Justice is more important that personal feeling.  I smack her across the chops!"
"Oh wow... that's quite a statement for him."
"Yeah, isn't it just?"

Tony, in your example you're including where the players are tuning into eachother as well as throwing out what they're interested in.  That is, they're saying "You think evil's cool, huh?" or "Like Justice, do you?"  I think that's an important element that is getting some seriously short shrift here.  In addition to doing what you think is cool, you really need to try and figure out what the other player thinks is cool.  It's then and only then that you can connect what you think is cool and what they think is cool.  Otherwise you get this:

"I've got Peggy Polyphone in a laser cutting machine!"
"You fiend!  That laser cutting machine was made by poor, eyeless children in southeast asia!"
"...uh... yeah, and it's going to slice up Peggy Polyphone!"
"Where did you get that machine?  What company made it?  Where are its factories?  I'll go rescue those poor children!"
"You do that, and I'll, uh, put this machine on pause until you come back."