[Middle Earth - home brew] - A really bad game night.

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Walt,

Specifically, in your last response, you used the phrase "I as a/the player" several times, each time reporting your emotions -- variously, panicked, cranky, miffed, upset, and fuming. That's starting to get there. But never anywhere do you report being miffed, upset, or fuming at anyone or anything other than imaginary objects: the events of the game world, the other players' characters' actions, your own characters' performance via the dice. That's one area where your response seems to fall short.

...

Which brings me to James' key point, that I want to reiterate, about acknowledging the responsibilities of the other people at the table. Heck, even acknowledging their existence during one of your blow-by-blow accounts would be a step (just as acknowledging your own I-as-a-player reactions and motivations was, IMO).

My fault that I was not more clear.  In the post you were referring to, all those comments and asides I made about my emotional state of mind were about the other players.  If I said I was angry it was because I was angry at the player and what said player was doing to me via the SIS.  If you get the opportunity, please re-read that post keeping in mind that all my emotive asides were directly focused on the other players.  Having done so, does this change any of your conclusions or raise new questions?  Feel free to ask anything that you feel is relevant.  I will withhold comment on the rest of your post until you get back to me!

It doesn't change my (so-far) conclusions or raise new questions about everything that was going on in that session. That's because I didn't for a moment think that you weren't upset, fuming, etc. at the other participants. I just thought it odd, and significant, that you chose not to say so directly, over and over again.

All right, let me lay my cards down on the table and I'll leave it for you to decide if I've stayed in too long with a weak hand.

I think you didn't mention that your anger and other bad feelings were directed toward the other participants because you felt that being angry etc. at them was somehow not appropriate. Because, after all, they'd done nothing wrong. They were playing exactly the way you expect and desire them to. In fact, you'd have resented if they'd done anything different because it would have been detrimental to the Dream. So instead of saying the kinds of things an angry person normally says about the person he's angry at -- "Look how that son of a bitch fucked me over!" -- you report it as "such and such happened in the SIS, and it sucked." When pressed really hard, you admit "I felt angry." When pressed even more, you admit "I felt angry at those people." Now, how hard do I have to press to get you to admit that you felt angry at them because they were sons of bitches and they fucked you over?

I'm talking mostly about whatshisletter, the GM. What you have to understand is, I have all the respect in the world for this guy. That stuff he does --- I've done it too. I'm very good at it. And I'm very proud of being very good at it. Maybe I can even do it better than him, but more likely he's way better than me. He certainly has done it longer and more intensely than I ever did. So, as one "Old Pro" talking respectfully about another... man, it sure looks like was he off his game that session. He bombed. Dropped the ball. Stunk up the joint. Screwed the pooch. Peppered the lawyer.

How? Well, first, he made you wait three fucking hours for a turn to play. There was some discussion a few pages about about "Why couldn't you break character for five minutes to tell him you were blah blah blah" and the answer was "the Dream is so important that even breaking it for five minutes blah blah blah." But why would he or any sentient creature need to be told in the first place that a player who's had nothing to do for three hours is probably getting bored and impatient? He didn't, of course; he knew perfectly well. So why the three hour wait? Well, he had to bring your character in at a plausible point. Apparently his imagination failed him rather badly here, because getting to that plausible point required him to first throw a bunch of meaningless dungeon monsters at the active PCs, while you cooled your heels. You might be under the impression that the strictures of your group's play style gave him no choices in the matter. Believe me, that's not true. Conclusion: he was off his game.

Then a bunch of stuff happened that to me forms a recognizable pattern of continued GM off-game-ness, but the specific incidents are individually ambiguous, unclear, no proof. So I skip ahead to the fumble roll on the arrow shot.

A roll of one means devastating failure. You expect, nay, you outright demand that a roll of one causes devastating failure. But in this case, you have to ask, devastating failure at what?

You-the-player were trying to do, essentially, two different things at that point.

1. You were trying to maneuver your character into alliance with the active PCs.

2. You were trying to establish as much in-game status for your character as possible, relative to the group he was joining.

Number 2 was a legitimate in-game and in-character goal that you chose to pursue because it followed naturally from your character's nature that he would attempt to do so, for all sorts of good in-game reasons. As such, that goal's success was and should have been contingent on the fortunes of play.

But what was Number 1? That was a bullshit goal, having nothing to do with the pre-existing state of the SIS or anything in it. It was a necessary bit of business, a housekeeping chore, dictated by the external circumstances of the play session - -specifically, the need to get your character into the group. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a stinking turd of Dream-killing external necessity, to be gotten rid of while smelling it as little as possible and for God's sake not touching it. The common task you all faced was to get it done, and to conceal, as much as possible, the fact that you were doing so.

Making the success or failure of that goal contingent on the die rolls just makes no sense. It's a category error. It's like making a Monopoly player pay a $200 fine for insulting the banker. It's like a hockey player putting a hard body check on the Zamboni driver. It's like making you make a percentile roll to take a bathroom break.

Under the circumstances, "you rolled a 1 so you have to do jumping jacks for 10 minutes" or "you rolled a 1 so you have to pay me $2 for a new die" would have made at least as much sense as "you rolled a 1 so something happens in-game that makes goal #1 impossible." (And obviously, an errant arrow appearing to be a direct physical attack against the party you were trying to join made goal #1 impossible, regardless of the details of what happened succss- or failure-wise thereafter.) You were all supposed to be pretending that goal #1 didn't even exist! Having it instead blow up in your face and cover everyone with the consequences of having a stinking turd blow up in your face was not just too severe a consequence, it was entirely the wrong kind of consequence, for a 1-in-20-chance fumble roll.

That's where the Lucy and Charlie Brown football kicking analogy comes in.(1) The GM was supposed to be helping you to achieve goal #1 while also helping to pretend it wasn't being manipulated into happening. It was supposed to be a cooperative effort, the way the holder and the kicker cooperate to make a field goal kick. But when you rolled a 1, the GM took it as requiring him to sabotage the effort instead, snatching the ball away rather than holding it for you.

Instead, the roll should have caused a devastating setback to goal #2, the legitimate and openly acknowledgeable in-game goal. Which would have been easy; several of the alternative consequences that I already suggested would have done it. The GM missed this. Because, as I said, he was badly off his game.

There it is, as best I can present it: a plausible scenario of a GM having a bad day, screwing up in various ways, some obvious and some subtle, the subtle failures more devastating than the obvious ones

The question is, do you believe it?

Because I don't.

I don't think the sonofabitch was off his game at all. And, if I'm interpreting their posts correctly, neither do others here who also recognize and share (if not, as I do, admire) an Old Pro's expertise at this general style of play.

Because we've all seen this same story before. Different details, same story.

It's the story of what inevitably happens when Mom says the group has to let the GM's little sister play.

"Okay, but you have to wait until we get back to town so your character can join."

"Don't get all upset, we're just playing our characters. That's how the game works."

"But Mom, she rolled a 1. That's what happens when you roll a 1! The rules say so! It's not our fault she ran away crying. I told you she was too much of a baby to play in our game."

So, here's my real theory. You became Little Sister when you balked at playing a character as evil as the characters they wanted to play. They pretended to respect your limits by allowing a character that was a workable compromise for you, but they treated you as Little Sister, a second-class player not to be allowed to get in the way of their agenda, for the rest of the session. It's all as simple as that.

I don't think they always treat you that way. From what he's written, I suspect that Ron (another "Old Pro," remember) thinks otherwise.

- Walt


(1) I sometimes forget how fucking old I am, and how international this forum has become. Here's the basics: Lucy and Charlie Brown are comic strip characters They're children. Charlie Brown is a likeable but not very bright perpetual loser. Lucy acts a bit older and is often derisive and mean. Lucy sometimes offers to hold a football while Charlie Brown runs up and kicks it, in the manner of a field goal attempt in American football (the ball is elongated and is held by one tip on end, with the other end against the ground). Charlie Brown is suspecious because on past occasions, Lucy has invariably snatched the football away just as he tries to kick it, which causes Charlie Brown to fly into the air and land flat on his back. Lucy convinces Charlie Brown that this time, for some particular reason, he can trust her not to pull the ball away. Charlie Brown believes her and goes to make the kick. Lucy pulls it away. Charlie lands flat on his back, and remains there, too stunned to stand up, from a combination of physical pain, shocked betrayal, and self-loathing for having fallen for it. Lucy stands over him and reveals a loophole in the reason he thought he could trust her.

[Callan S.]

*I PM'ed Jay to ensure I wasn't 'dog piling' with another question*

Hi Jay,

I'm getting you more. But I'd like to ask something about your responce to James.

OK – Everyone decides to come together to play high stakes no gimmie poker.  Everything stands because that is exactly what makes the game so darn exhilarating.  Except one player totally washes out on the third hand, he's out of money and out of the rest of night.  Now did we set out to screw this player over?

In your roleplay, what if someone is cheating/trying to screw over another player?

Do you expect cheating would be detected, because the dream would fray (either immediately, or in the near future)? Could you answer with an affirmative or a negative - I'm afraid anything longer would obscure the answer. :)

[contracycle]

Walt wrote:

It's the story of what inevitably happens when Mom says the group has to let the GM's little sister play.

Thats a plausible scenario, although I have had similar instances which didn't have that particular dynamic.  It's just you have these hard, moody antio-heroes and on meeting each other they posture like dogs, baring their teeth and staking out territory.  Whole gaming sessions have been 'wasted', never moving onto the planned game because the "introduction" turned into a fight or huge negotiation.  This is usually diagnosed as deprotagonised players being walked through someone elses plot and thus seizing control of the action when they can, which I do not dispute.

However, I think the problem is endemic to all games in which sim sensibilities prevent 'spawning' a new character out of thin air.  Its often implausible, and its also implausible that the characters strike up an intimate relationship on such a flimsy basis.  This is precisely one of the reasons I simply abolished character death, and why I'm likely to impose a coerced or dependant relationship between characters, or have an open discussion on how best to proceed.  And these were decisions taken in the recognition that they were compromises in regards the SIS for better game play.

I do think the GM didn't put enough purposeful intent into getting the players cooperating, and it may be that the motives you describe were the basis for that failure.  But I think precisely because it its recognisable, the GM's specific motivation is only part of the problem.

[LandonSuffered]

Just have to echo Walt's sentiments:

As a guy who was once a terrible Typhoid Mary in the old days, I've got to say it seems like the perfect situation. You've got a guy buying into the SIM dream to the point of masochism. The GM gets to hose the character(s) occasionally to:

a)   Show how "dangerous" the simulated dream can be
b)   Up the adrenaline for the other players
c)   Give other players a chance to act out long standing "evil" storylines that the GM considers more "worthy" of exploration (for whatever reason)

You suck up the punishment in the name of being a good "sim" trooper. Other players feed the justification. You end up feeling impotent in what should be a "fun for everyone" hobby.  The principles actors of this little troupe get to tell their stories. The illusion is perpetuated.

All I can see missing is the GM to have a favorite, recurring NPC character to come in and help with the hose job...to act as a proxy extension of the GM's ego and help shape the story. But I guess that might not fly in this illusion depending on how hardcore the Sim.

(depending on the ego of the GM & his relationship with the others, the player that gets hosed may vary from session to session, but you got the brunt of it this time, in my opinion)

[Silmenume]

Greetings Jim,

Jay, I'm still stuck on the fact that just before your first character died in the caves, the GM *made noises to you* about the merits of sparing the other guy's character (couched in terms of the fictional situation), but made no noises to the other guy about sparing yours. I don't think any of your responses ever addressed that point.

That is a fascinating question and one that I am now pondering, as a matter of assumed Social Contract provisions, both why it didn't happen and why I didn't consider it an issue at all.

Regarding the first part, as the action was handled by note and I was in the middle of a ("real time) combat situation I was not paying a great of attention to any interactions between the other player and the GM.  If I sift my memories hard enough, and I would certainly be better served by actually asking the player and the GM, I think I recall the GM shooting the player a grim look (A sort of "are you really sure you want to do this?).  I will talk to both and get back to you with any information that I pick up.

So there was some sort of nonverbal communication, but that still does not address the issue of why there wasn't a more extensive verbal effort.

The guess that I will hazard, but do not consider it definitive, is that once combat starts in earnest the pace of play not only accelerates enormously but the game becomes ever more focused/limited to communications via the SIS to near exclusivity.  This raises the intensity of play, really driving the players to be creative in their efforts under extreme circumstances to effectively signify ideas through the manipulation of the "objects" of the SIS.  Thus the difference I read between the GM trying to cajole me into partnering up with the other player character and the absence of overt effort to cajole the other player into reconsidering his choices was that in the former we were not in a combat situation (where lots of meta-game dialogues and other GM "steering" efforts are typically made) while in the latter we were in combat (where all such dialogues are severely curtailed almost to extinction.)  Upon review I see a pattern where as the pace of play picks up the meta-communication plummets.

Regarding your post immediately following your first I'll have to read the thread you mentioned.  However, I think I remember a thread between Clinton and Ron a long time ago where a similar issue was raised and which Ron responded that the desire to be "good" at what we are doing is not Gamist.  IOW the desire to address Premise effectively and powerfully is not in and of itself a Gamist tell.  I spent an hour searching for the post to no avail, so if I am in error I apologize as I did the best I could to cite the original source.

However I do believe that both Nar and Gam inclinations can more easily creep into the other 2 opposing modes of play while Sim is something that cannot survive on its own.  IOW it is far easier for N/G sensibilities to creep into each other or Sim, but not Sim into G/N games.  I am not saying such "invasionary" play is necessarily functional, but it is less difficult to express G/N in a hostile environment than Sim is.

I am not certain exactly what more you are looking for in the "post-mortem." I thought I had covered much of what was intriguing to me in my post here.  I found the disparate points of view as to what happened, what the other players were attempting and what they thought I was trying to accomplish fascinating.

The results of these dialogues basically broke down as such.  The most successful conversation was with Montana, the player of Eglambar, who understood my point of view and successfully explained his to me.  We both agreed the outcome sucked badly, and we saw how we misinterpreted each other's actions as well.  This was a satisfying outcome in my book and I think Montana saw that I wasn't driving to avoid allying the two parties.  He was frustrated at first but after the talk all was well or at least that's how I read it.

Dave, the player of Durizon, was a different matter.  His approach was "paternalistic."  He did not take the implosion of the scenario as personally as Montana had, but he more or less refused to acknowledge that he had even a small hand in its destruction.  His sticking point was essentially, "Well you knew that Durizon was a Numenorean of the line of Kings..."  I kept saying, that I didn't know that he was a Numenorean of the line of Kings but that I gave a small amount of credibility to his claim as evidenced by my surrendering of my claim to the relics in his "house."  He kept on saying I had pulled a "small Chuck."  Chuck was the player whom I had posted about in The Creation and Birth of a Character who had aggressively self-destructed a number of times the ended with other player characters getting killed and in his worst exploit started a war between the Elves of the Mirkwood and the entire race of Dwarves.  His basic bug is that he is so paranoid that he places no faith in the other player characters and then self-destructs when he is in a position where he perceives that has no other option than to rely on others for his survival.  This has been a serious source of contention at the table and one all us other players are working to remedy.  Dave felt that I put no stock in the other players at the table and "self-destructed."  This was a frustrating conversation as he was unwilling to concede anything at all.  He felt that his offer to anything in his lair that was not directly of his house was his obvious invitation to join the parties and that my not taking him up on it was my issue.  The upshot was that there were no hard feelings.  A middling result but not great.

Chris, the player of Nicodemis couldn't fathom why I read his domination of my NPC kabalist as aggressive.  His intention was to have the kabalist try and smooth the way for party integration.  While I laud his intentions he felt that my conclusions about his actions in game were faulty.  This was the shortest of the three conversations I had.  As he tends to be very passionate and as he has in the past years been extraordinarily supportive added to his well meaning intentions I felt it was best to treat this as water under the bridge.

Does this answer your questions?  Feel free to ask more if need be...

Hi James,

But it's perfectly possible to avoid that kind of experience without violating verisimilitude. It doesn't say anywhere that you have to play a thousand-year-old evil mastermind with the petty mentality of the biggest kid in the schoolyard, or that an evil warrior in quest for ancient artifacts can't bide his time looking for a back to stab. And there's nothing saying that the GM couldn't have provided, logically, within the constraints of the dream, a good reason for the other baddies not to screw you over -- because as you said earlier, it was in no one's interest to have you kacked.

Other than the verisimilitude part, I do agree with everything else.  The player of the Lich did make ovations, within character, via his offer of the gifts of his lair for my party to join; excepting family heirlooms.  I am not pointing a finger at you James, but I do find it interesting that nearly all the posters here keep missing the part where I say that Montana (Eglamber) and Dave (Durizon) both made invitations, within the SIS and the scope of their characters, for me to exploit as reasons to trust and join.

I think that sometimes, just sometimes, you talk as if all inputs into the SIS are overdetermined -- or rather, that given the goal of fidelity to the "dream" there is only one possible course of action. And I don't think this is true.

Again I fully agree with you.  If I gave the impression that this outcome was somehow inevitable given the circumstances (Character and Setting) then I have misrepresented myself.  Ultimately, after the post-mortem, we all agreed at the beginning that it was possible and desirable for the parties to unite.  Bad decisions all around, not predetermined conditions, coupled with bad luck led to this outcome.  No one at the start of play was seeking or wanting to screw with my character and me as a player by extension.

But I do think that the way you play -- reducing out-of-channel communication -- might tend to prevent the normal methods of dealing with these kinds of problems.

I agree.  The trade off is less intense gaming.  That is a choice freely made, but it does bear its own consequences.  I fully concede that.  It is one of the reasons why we do frequently adjourn to a Denny's or the like immediately after a game to debrief.  It's lots of fun as interplayer gaming tends to continue, intentions are revealed, consequences to the Dream are discussed and is also a great opportunity to smooth any ruffled feathers.

My final point was that I think you sometimes tend to conflate your own Sim play with all Sim play.

Right now I treat prioritized bricolage the same as prioritized Address of Premise/Challenge.  How that is implemented is, as you say, a matter of Techniques.

Hey Caldis,

You said it yourself your part in the evening was to join with and support team evil, you screwed up by not doing so.  The other players responses afterwards clearly showed they understood what the concept for the night was, you were to join with them and they gave you plenty of opportunity to do so and in their opinion you spurned the offers.

Yes supporting the other players was an important goal, but it most certainly was not "the goal of the night."  The reason that this post focused on that was because my involvement in the game ended at that point.  The other players continued to pursue their own evolving manifold goals, which evolved as a result of play, for the rest of that night.  One might start off the night with the "goal" to rescue a loved one from a gaggle of orcs and the "goal" might shift to appraising a weapon that seems to be "magical."  There is no one driving "goal" through a game session.  Even in my case I initially desired to mesh but at the same time I was also trying to effectively portray a character in the support of the Dream.  Usually an opening "goal" is presented to start events moving along, but is just and only that – a kick off for the night.  "Where" things go, including goals, is totally unscripted and very unpredictable.  Given that play can and is left to find its own way and in keeping with "causality" such things as I had posted in this thread can happen – and they can suck.

What is important, then, is the process not the destination.  As there is no central concept (Premise, Step on Up) to serve as the guiding North Star driving the course of play then that leaves the aesthetic of naked process, which is gauged in terms of context.

Yes I failed to mesh with "Team Evil," but the destructive part of the night was not in that failing, but in the long wait to play and in the losing of two characters back to back and the subsequent feelings that went along with it.  Not meshing does not equal failure of the Dream.  I could have not meshed and still had a great time.  If the failure in achieving a goal does not reduce the vividness of the Dream then one might argue that goals (concepts) are indeed not only not the driving forces of play but are not good instruments for describing such play.  Myth is already "densely structured;" it does not further compact into reductionist, easily portable concepts without loss of important information.

I only see two possible explanations for your actions.  You either didn't understand the goal for the night, though by your explanation you seemed to understand, or you weren't committed to that goal some other goal was more important. ...

I'll agree that chose to make other goals/motives ascendant, dignity over survival over befriending, but that is the nature of Sim play.  Now, in light of the above, you make a fundamental error.  I had many interests that night, as did all the other players.  Getting together was one of many and it was presented as a problem that, as we were committed to trying to get together at that moment, needed to be resolved.  "Working problems out" is the primary process of play.  This was but one of many that would be encountered and would need to be addressed throughout the night.  This particular problem not only did not resolve well, but ended in spectacular failure.

Expanding the whole of the Dream, as a product of play, was not harmed any more than having all the Dogs dying in a DITV game.  The experience sucked due to a looong wait prior to play, the social embarrassment of losing two characters in a row and the grief that comes from losing something that I had started to invest in.  I felt that I had failed to adequately portray my Character, that I had failed in problem solving, I felt an utter betrayal by fate/life (dice) yet again and that I had failed to show my skillz as a player.

Callan -

In your roleplay, what if someone is cheating/trying to screw over another player?

Do you expect cheating would be detected, because the dream would fray (either immediately, or in the near future)? Could you answer with an affirmative or a negative - I'm afraid anything longer would obscure the answer. :)

Yes.

How's that for brief?  =oD

I'm going to post this now.  Walt, et al, I will address your posts next.

[Caldis]

Yes I failed to mesh with "Team Evil," but the destructive part of the night was not in that failing, but in the long wait to play and in the losing of two characters back to back and the subsequent feelings that went along with it.  Not meshing does not equal failure of the Dream.  I could have not meshed and still had a great time.  If the failure in achieving a goal does not reduce the vividness of the Dream then one might argue that goals (concepts) are indeed not only not the driving forces of play but are not good instruments for describing such play.  Myth is already "densely structured;" it does not further compact into reductionist, easily portable concepts without loss of important information.

The question then becomes why the long wait?  Why did your gm choose to leave you out for four hours?  What view did he have of the dream that precluded your inclusion until the rest of the group was ready to meet up with your character(s)?  As Walt said I dont think this was a mistake on his part, it was coldly calculated there was a reason for it.  I think your GM had a plan for the game which he was working towards.  I think he uses an 'all roads lead to Rome approach' letting the players thrash about for a bit until they eventually find their way to where he was leading them, that may have been why you were left out for 4 hours.  It still doesnt change the fact that the group was working towards a larger goal, it's just one you cant see from your perspective.

I'll agree that chose to make other goals/motives ascendant, dignity over survival over befriending, but that is the nature of Sim play.

No it's not Jay.  I think we've had this discussion before so I'll make it simple this is not an inherent part of sim.  Making those choices is the heart of narrativism and if you dont understand that then it's really hard to have a discussion with you using the GNS terms.  Making those choices may be a part of your play and it may be a big part, if so I dont think you are playing sim as defined here.   Your stance in the past is that Sim has been badly defined, but if we all see it as a valuable distinction then I have to think that it is your definition that is in error.

[dunlaing]

Maybe I don't understand the Nar/Sim division, either.

Just as a frame of reference, if we get together and play a game in which a character is forced to make a hard choice, are we automatically playing Nar?

I guess I see it as Narrative is about putting forward hard choices and then making them, and Simulation is about simulating the character's response to such a situation. So, seeing what your guy (and Jim's guy, and Nate's guy, etc.) would do in a "hard choice" situation is something that should jazz a Simulationist, as opposed to the Narrativist who is jazzed by the hard choice situation itself and seeing what choice he makes (and Jim makes, and Nate makes).

No?

[Silmenume]

Hey Walt,

I do want to say that you most certainly have not over stayed your place here in this thread.

(I have reviewed this post and found it to be extremely snarky.  I should have spent time rewriting it, but I was at work and did not have the luxury.  I deeply apologize in advance.)

I do appreciate the disentanglement I've been able to make due to the constant probing that has gone on.  I did review my first and second post and indeed I did not make mention of my frustration with the other players at the table.  I do wonder why I avoided that topic on these forums as I do talk about such things with the players between the games.  Though from my own emotional makeup I'm not the kind to say, "You f***ed me over," as much as, "What were you thinking when you did X, didn't you consider that resulted in Y to me?"  So if one were to say, "Hey, you sound emotionally constipated," I'm going to have to agree.  I like, no, absolutely revel in role-play because I can be emotional – full tilt.  This is probably why I find every other game I play so disastrously dissatisfying.  If I'm not bouncing off the walls emotionally, if I don't feel I'm in a safe environment to do so, then I'm not getting what I want out of play.  Dead stop.

I think part of the reason I am reluctant to discuss such matters as my personal feelings of dissatisfaction on these boards is that I most certainly do not feel safe doing so.  People frequently hare off making snap and frequently highly erroneous generalizations about life long relationships based upon a tiny slice of life.  One either lets the error lie, which leads to erroneous analysis or attempts to bring in the totality of the history to create a greater, more complex and subtle context.

Regarding the GM's performance that night, I will agree with you on that as well.  This is another example of why I am leery of posting such things.  Posters go stampeding off screaming, "Bastard," and crying for blood whereas your summary is far closer to the mark.  I agree fully that the GM was off his game, badly.  I do dispute very strongly that he was purposefully acting out some malfeasance.  At the after game warm down he was distracted and appeared stressed.  He worries after every game that the players didn't have fun.  It is a major concern of his.  Obviously I didn't enjoy the night and he felt bad about that.

Nor am I trying to imply that this group is without its problems as you'll note in earlier threads.

(And obviously, an errant arrow appearing to be a direct physical attack against the party you were trying to join made goal #1 impossible, regardless of the details of what happened succss- or failure-wise thereafter.)

Its not so obvious as you feel it is.  Montana via his vampire launched an attack on my bowman the instant I ordered the "execution."  This was before I had rolled my die, not after.  It would not have mattered to the scenario if the bowman had feathered the kabalist or not.  The assault began with my order, not the resolution.  The purpose for my action, on a player level, not a character or a scenario level, was to try and exercise some force.  Even if I had rolled a perfect "20" Montana still would have attacked the bowman, due to Dave the Lich's order to me, "Do not do this," as Montana was already in motion.  I would have attacked Montana's Vampire in return and so on.  So I am not seeing how the GM screwed me over with his narration of the effect of the '1.'  Since your in the position not to give any credit to my excuses, you explain to me how this was GM's fault.

I gave the order.  Another player drove into an attack.  I rolled a "1" and missed the kabalist yet any another result would not have affected Montana's course of action he was already committed to.  Dave called darkness to try and prevent the conflict from escalating just as Montana reached our side – the intention was not apparent to me at the time (I read it as hostile).  I hear screaming in the dark and say, "To hell with that, I'm going down in flames but I'm going to take someone with me."  So can you explain to me how the onus of this particular sequence of events was the fault of the GM's narration of the effect of the "1" I rolled; because he sure screwed me by protagonizing Montana and protagonizing Dave.  But isn't that the whole point of role-play?  To let the players attempt to express their CA's – which means facing CA appropriate conflicts as constrained by Social Contract?

Regarding the continuation of the analysis -

The question is, do you believe it?

Every last gilded word with unimpeachable clarity.  I've been playing in this game for eight years and your conclusions do not match my experiences.  But I'm a victim, so I can't possibly know any better.

What staggers me about your final analysis is the same mistake made time and again in sloppy news analysis – the imputation of motives without solid evidence to support it.  This is a sterling example of the shakiness of abductive logic.

You look at the result, a crappy night.  You use your own personal experiences to predict how you believe people as whole act (induction) to produce a case (abduction) that the GM is a cast iron bastard.  The problem is that this backward march to case is fraught with errors and frequently leads to self-supporting but circular and false logic.

To whit –

1.  I had a really shitty game experience.  (Result)
2.  There is no way such a shitty experience can happen without malicious intent in the GM.  (Rule)
3.  Therefore the GM must have acted maliciously.  (Case)

Leading to –

1.  The GM is a malicious bastard.  (Case)
2. Such a GM will run a game according to his personality inclinations.  (Rule)
3.  I had a shitty game therefore we have proven the GM is a bastard.  (Result)

The major problem is that it's entirely circular and does neatly sidestep any evidence to the contrary.  But that doesn't matter, right, because any evidence I present to the contrary is easily explained away as nothing more than rationalization.  It's so very nice neat and tidy and makes it very easy to categorize the event and file it away.

Given the way you've structured this argument it is impossible for me to have any viable input.  The circular nature of the logic employed and the automatic dismissal (which is plainly due to my unreliability as a witness) of any evidence that I bring that is contrary to your conclusions.  The irony here is that somehow I am reliable enough to provide evidence of a bad game and that is taken as gospel, yet somehow my reliability as a witness regarding the people there is zero.  I am locked out of this argument.  Either I agree and am enlightened or I disagree and am self-deluded. 

A fascinating case of arguing conclusions.  It's a whole lot like a conspiracy theory.  And like a conspiracy theory I'll wager there is no evidence I can present, ever, that will alter your conclusions.

I say the bad game is due to the hardcore nature we play and a bad night of judgments calls for all around.

You say the GM is a prick and I'm a victim.

I present evidence to the contrary and that's dismissed with the wave of a hand as, "Oh he's so victimized he's incapable of seeing his own victim hood."

Now I am both a reliable witness and an unreliable witness...

...is there any question remaining as to why I keep arguing that context is absolutely vital to understanding Sim and I keep bringing in more, apparently, useless data?

Context.

Context.

Context.

I'll pony up one more piece of "inconsequential contextual datum."

It's the story of what inevitably happens when Mom says the group has to let the GM's little sister play.

"Okay, but you have to wait until we get back to town so your character can join."

"Don't get all upset, we're just playing our characters. That's how the game works."

"But Mom, she rolled a 1. That's what happens when you roll a 1! The rules say so! It's not our fault she ran away crying. I told you she was too much of a baby to play in our game."

That's a fascinating summary, but one that does not fit the data presented.  The GM did not "force" me into the scenario against the wishes the will of other players or myself.  Out of game we all worked with me to find a way in and I found it appealing that they were making such an effort to find a comfortable way for me to play in that scenario.  I could have played that night not involved with that party at all as a separate scenario.  That is not an uncommon event in our game, though we do tend to find the games more satisfying when we are all in the same scenario.

Thus I am at a loss as to how one could pull this idea out of the ether that I was "forced" into anything and then treated as red-headed step child.  The players were unhappy about what they perceived as me maneuvering the scenario to the point where there was PC on PC violence.  They did not want that to happen.  I didn't want that to happen.  Yes it was not a scenario that I was particularly excited about, but my part in it was workable and a choice I made without coercion.  This was to be a third tier character in my folder much like PTA has its 1-3 numberings as to who has what level of importance in the scenario.  I wanted this to be a "3" character and no higher.

"Lucy did not pull the ball away – I got tackled by Schroeder as I was kicking the ball."  One might question why the official (GM) allowed Schroeder on the field in the first place, but that did not mean he knew that Schroeder was going to pull such a stunt.

contracycle,

Great summary on all accounts and an awesome example of Techniques used to implement a Social Contract agreement.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

We may have reached a point where further breakdown isn't going to yield much. Individual conclusions may have to be let vary.

What do you think, Jay? Time to call it?

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

Absolutely Ron!

For the first time in my time at the Forge, I was coming to that very conclusion. 

Thank you everyone for staying with me for so long and providing so many points of view to digest!  I certainly gained many new insights as a result of all your input!