"I know what I want"....player investment in rpgs

[hardcoremoose]

Hey guys,

I've been thinking a lot about player investment in a game.  We discuss it all the time.  Some examples:

I've championed group character creation in recent months, as have others, because we believe that input from other players helps to create audience investment in each other's characters.

In the various "horror" threads bouncing around here, I've gone to bat for authorial power as the key to creating real "horror", the idea being that no one knows better which buttons to push for any particular player than the player himself.  In fact, author/director stance has always seemed like the easy way to go when trying to get a player to care about anything in any game, not just a horror game; the act of authoring or creating something should, in theory, carry with it a certain amount of investment.

But I've seen people struggle with this stuff, and it makes me wonder, can anyone actually articulate what it is they like about any given thing?  If not, then there's no guarantee that authorial/directorial contributions will mean anything more than what the GM is capable of providing.

I suspect there's no great answer to this question.  What I'm really wondering is if you guys think authorial/directorial stance is the great solution to the problem of player investment that I've often claimed it was, or whether you think a better answer is the tried and true method of growing player investment through in-game activity (ie, the GM "makes" the players care)?  What reasons do you have to support your particular line of thought?

Thanks,
Scott

[contracycle]

I agree with your general claim; I think if players create world elements they are more engaged.  As to whether players can actively exploit this for play purposes...

I can see how a horror nartrative could be created by players introducing the creaking of doors and the like.  What I'm less sure about is whether players with a greater interest in direct exploration would be interested, or might even find such elements problematic.

I've had good experiences as a strong directorial GM letting players create the "home base" for a cyberpunk campign; IMO they identified with, and better visualised, the place a lot more than usual.  I would like to extend this by finding mechanical methods to "regionalise" directorial/authorial power so that I-the-GM can still use smoke and mirrors in conjunction with (LIMITED) player directorialism.  If it can be done.

[Ron Edwards]

Gareth (contracycle),

Beautifully stated. I think it might be done very well, although working out the boundaries over time might take patience on everyone's part.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

See, here is where a dichotomy arises.

I think that you may be projecting a bit, Moose. I think that for some players "Immersion", the kind caused by the feeling of an objectively Simulationist world about the player's character, can be the key for many players. This creates an investment in the character's feelings (which, if relaistic, should then include their feelings for others) as the player, in a minor way, "becomes" the character (or feels for the character intimately, whatever).

The best example I can give is about horror. The player feels that if he is the author (or worse the director) of the horror that they will not be able to actually adssociate with the horror felt by the characters. And I understand the sentiment. The Narrativists will now tell me that they, too, feel this "Immersion", but I know them both, and they are two different things.

This is why we Simulationists do not want to abandon it completely and go over to Narrativism. We don't want to lose that sense of Simulationist Immersion. I think that, to an extent, whichever one (Sim or Narr) causes you to be more invested is the one likely to be most attractive to you. I may be mixing cause and effect. But there is certainly a relationship.

In actuality I crave both forms of investment, but GNS talls me I can have only one or another. Or perhaps the illusion of one with another, but not both sources of investiture in actuality.

Mike

[Le Joueur]

I agree with your general claim; I think if players create world elements they are more engaged.  As to whether players can actively exploit this for play purposes...

[Snip horror.]

I've had good experiences as a strong directorial GM letting players create the "home base" for a cyberpunk campign; IMO they identified with, and better visualised, the place a lot more than usual.  I would like to extend this by finding mechanical methods to "regionalise" directorial/authorial power so that I-the-GM can still use smoke and mirrors in conjunction with (LIMITED) player directorialism.  If it can be done.

Beautifully stated. I think it might be done very well, although working out the boundaries over time might take patience on everyone's part.

Hey, that's exactly what I was getting at with the Referential and Gamemasterful boundary stuff I put into The Scattershot Gaming Model.  (Although I probably need to write it more clearly and give some examples like the above.)

Fang Langford

[hardcoremoose]

Hey guys,

I wrote my first post to this thread in the wee hours of the morning, and I don't think I was actually articulating my concerns very well.  If I could, I'd like to direct our attention away from explicit authorial/directorial stance stuff, and instead look at anything a player does to communicate interest to a GM.  Authorial and directorial stance are definitely one way of saying "hey, I think this is cool", but there are others, and they can be as simple as a player in a simulationist game bringing up certain subjects repeatedly in conversation.

What I'm getting at is this:  If a player communicates an interest in some aspect of the game to the GM, is the GM well-served by assuming that the player will have an automatic emotional investment in that thing?  Or is such an investment merely an illusion created by a player's innate desire to be acknowledged and have the spotlight shine on them (which I'm not sure all players have), and that real emotional connectiveness can only come over time, by "getting to know" the game, its setting and inhabitants, and one's own character?

I know it sounds like I'm arguing narrativist versus simulationist, but I'm really not.  And I'm sure few of us are actually qualified to comment on human emotional response on a scientific level, so we're basically left with just stating our opinions.  Nonetheless, I find the topic interesting.

- Scott

[Mike Holmes]

Looked at that way, I'd say some players are able to commit instantly, while others take time. So it depends on the player. And, as you put it, some players like the spotlight more than others, and they will probably need it more to be committed.

I find it takes about a half page of interesting prose about a fantasy world to get me so committed to the setting that I might weep over a charracter I lose ten minutes later (OK, maybe not weep). Most players take a bit more than that I'd guess. So consider me on one end of the Player Ease of Commitment spectrum. On the other end is a type of player that I personally despise who will not commit no matter how hard you try to work with them, or around them, or whatever.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

Scott, that's a great question.

I think since we're using the term "investment," it's okay for me to bring up, at least as an analogy, the distinction between amount invested and return on investment. Either one is pretty meaningless without the other. What we think of as the player's emotional investment may actually be better characterized as the emotional reward for investment (the profits). A big rate of return on a small investment, or a small return on a big investment, will generate little emotional reward.

So if a player details a whole section of the game world, but that creation is never explored, there's no reward. If a player happens to mention her character belongs to a secret society, and the GM eagerly details the secret society in full and reweaves the plot to revolve around that secrect society, there's a reward but based on little initial investment by the player. In neither case should the GM expect the player to be very emotionally involved in that creation.

Communicating to the GM an interest in some aspect of the game is not an investment. But it's probably an offer to make an investment. The GM has to consider whether or not that investment can possibly pay off in the game before deciding whether to encourage or discourage it. The investment itself comes from devoting thought and/or game play time to creating something.

And am I loading yet more burden onto the GM, as I tend to do, in this case the responsibility to generate returns on players' investments? For once, no! The GM can facilitate the process and provide a small fraction of the return, but the lion's share comes from the involvement of the other players in the player's creation -- whether that creation is character, premise, setting, situation, or color.

Example: A player creates a character with secondary acting and singing skills, whose background includes once having been in a theater company. He mentions that he's always thought it would be cool to play a game where the whole player-character group had a public identity as members of an itinerant band of performers. (Okay, so he's not the most original guy around, but his heart is in the right place.) This is an offer to make an investment. Whether it should be acted upon, or put aside as an idea for your next campaign, depends on how feasible the idea is in the context of the game and its compatibility with the goals of the other players. If you do decide to act on it, your task as GM is not to bring about the player's desire yourself (which you couldn't do anyway, without seriously infringing on the prerogatives of the other players), but to provide sufficient motive, means, and opportunity within the game for the player to make it happen if he can. He must convince the other player-characters to go along with it, but you can nudge the situation so that traveling in disguise for a while becomes a wise course of action. He must obtain the necessary accoutrements, but you can see to it that Dr. Fate's Medicine Wagon happens to come up for auction (earning the enmity of Dr. Fate; make a note of that for future plot use). He and the other players must play out their show's premiere performance in game time, but you can make that performance into an adventure, prefereably without burning the whole thing down in the process. He must do all this over time without it ever overshadowing the rest of the game (except maybe at that first-performance adventure) because the other players have their own interests going on too.

Emotional involvement, under those circumstances, is all but guaranteed.

- Walt