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

[James Holloway]

Jay,

I've found all the threads relating to your game fascinating, and this one is no exception. I suggest going back and reading Ron's posts again, trying to avoid the perfectly understandable emotional reactions to his colorful turns of phrase. I feel like we're seeing a disconnect between the way you talk about the session itself and the way you talk about the more general issues relating to it. In a way, this is a testament to your emotional investment in the play style. Your hurt, anger and confusion come through really clearly.

But I kind of feel like the one thing that's missing is serious consideration of the role played by the other players at the table. In your recaps of the game, you often tend to naturalize things that are totally contingent -- so you'll say "well, of course, if this happened, then character X was going to do that," or "of course, rolling a 1 results in a catstrophic, humiliating failure" when there's no "of course" about it.

Now, I wasn't there, but it sounds to me like there was a lot of bullying, chest-thumping, competitive kind of play going on, with the main focus on who was dominating whom. "My character is evil" is a great excuse for that kind of behavior -- behavior we all engage in from time to time. But the conversation you had after the game makes it sound like everyone got together, with the same agenda, and with the best will in the world, you got hosed out of nowhere. And I have a hard time believing that, to be honest. It seems unlikely to me that a group of rational adults gets together under the circumstances you've described, you have a shitty time, and it's nobody's fault -- just the way things are.

I ran an Unknown Armies game a while back based on the novels of James Ellroy -- which is to say that pretty much all of the characters were mercenary, self-serving swine trying too late to be the good guys. They hosed each other over all the time, but the responses to it were very different. There was a lot of appreciative "oh, you scumbag!" kind of stuff, but I don't think people ever went away hurt. And we were playing in full-on Sim/Color mode.

And I think the difference there is in player intent, and in Techniques, rather than in CA. I think the difference between Sim and other modes may be kind of a red herring here.

[Ron Edwards]

I agree with James, obviously.

Jay, here's a thought, pertaining to your posts themselves, as written artifacts. I know you review your posts carefully before putting them up. But I suggest you may be doing so in a way which hampers the discussion and what you can get out of it.

It's as if someone were to say, "Clean up this room," and you do. But when the person comes back, the mess is still there - only dusted, polished, and annotated.

That's what it's like, reading your posts. You are focused on answering every person, every point, and every sentence, as clearly and with as extensive footnoting as possible. This is, as I see it, more like pouring shellac over a spilled puddle of beer on your floor and posting a dated placard over it, rather than mopping it up.

The last thing I'm interested in would be a post that walks through my last one, responding to each and every thing in it. No wonder you're exhausted by posting. And no wonder I find myself saying, again, "Nope, review your text before hitting Post." I'm now realizing that this advice is not being applied in an effective way. I need to clarify to you - don't dust and polish the wad of detailed bit-by-bit responding. Instead, respond to the overall point of a given post. If you think it's wrong, no need to back it up in debate-rhetoric detail - just say, "Hey, I see that, but I don't think it fits, thanks for suggesting it." Or, "That point fits, like this, but not this one."

I don't see any point for this thread, or any thread, to become a morass of ever-more-detailed dissection of ever-smaller points. Check out some of the basic, larger-issue points raised by others. That's why Walt's questions are serious business ... but also why, I think, your reponses to them really aren't responses. They're more like data-dump legal briefs that simply don't ask those questions of yourself at the level Walt is aiming at. Same goes for the points James made. There is literally no value to be gained by focusing on the minutiae of phrasing.

Try it out. Also, review why you posted this thread at all. Are you getting what you wanted from it? Why or why not?

Best,
Ron

[Precious Villain]

Hi Jay,

I've recently re-read a lot of the other postings about your Middle Earth game sessions, and they've raised a couple of insights.  I've got two questions for you to consider (but you don't have to reply to the second one if you don't want to - it's really for your consideration).

1)  It's my understanding of your games that players are not treated equally at all times and in general.  That is, it's part of the "social contract" that more experienced and accomplished players can get special characters, voting rights, first refusal to games, etc.  And, it's also part of the social contract that at certain times you will play a character whose sole purpose is to support someone else's play in the spotlight.  Am I correct in this belief?

I have the impression that you try to level out the spotlight issues across sessions.  I.e. I played the crippled old dwarf who couldn't fight anything and mostly mumbled and napped this session, but in later sessions I'll play the pirate king with the magic hat.  (Silly example, I know).  But the idea is that you don't break the Dream in play, but when the Dream hands somebody a particularly bad hand of cards the GM might stack the deck for another game.  This leads me to question 2. 

2)  What do you want to happen in the future with this game?  I don't mean what you expect to happen, or what you think might be fair or what would be socially acceptable given the Dream and the social contract you have with the other players.  What do you want?  You can see why I'm making a reply to this question optional - I could understand you wanting to slash your GM's tires but not wanting to post about it.  Do you want some spotlight time?  A change in ground rules so this doesn't happen again?  Maybe just to be left out of the "evil party" sessions?  Was your experience so bad that it's worth breaking the dream to prevent a repeat?  Think hard about this, even if you aren't ready to post about it.

[jlarke]

It seems like the evil scenario, coupled with a determination to stay in The Dream for as long as possible, creates a situation prime for disfunctional experiences. The PCs are evil, right? In character, they're only going to cooperate with your character as long as their perceived self-interest requires it. As long as they're in The Dream, nobody gives a damn about anyone else's feelings, do they? That might be OK if you can drop back to player-to-player interaction to say, "Hey, if you do that, it's going to ruin the fun of the game for me," but you really really don't want to do that... so what can you possibly do to protect yourself when things don't go well?

[Caldis]

Hi Jay

I stayed out of this for awhile to allow others a chance to participate in your discourse but I've been watching with interest.  I have a few points to raise and I hope you'll find them of interest.

First thing, I agree that evil is not the problem.  Tolkien gave several interesting perspectives on evil in his work from Saruman and Wormtongue to the orcs who captured Frodo to further examples in The Silmarillion.  There is an interesting topic there about how evil interacts within Middle Earth and I dont see it as one that destroys the dream.

Ron said something earlier that I think cuts to the heart of the problem though you havent commented on it yet, you have a clash of agendas.

- You want to be free to respond to situations in a way that you feel is consistent with the character.  You want to be able to make the statement about what it means to be this character through his actions. 

- You also recognize that you fumbled at doing what was expected of you, you didnt manage to team up with the rest of the group.  There is a preset course you were expected to follow.

In this case these two agendas came into conflict.  You cant freely respond as you think the character would if that is going to take you in a different direction than you are expected to go and vice versa.  One of them is going to have to give. 

I suspect that one of the problems here was also the fact that the problems came out via player vs player interaction.  I would hazzard a guess that your gm is more adept at reading the cues each individual player gives off and conversely you are better able to pick up the cues he gives off than the ones coming from the other players.  He is better able to read the cues and morph the situation so that you can seem to be fulfilling both agendas.  Left to your own interactions with your deeper investment in your own characters it's harder to see the way.

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Jay,

There are many new posts here already for you to respond to (and I hope you do; this could become the most interesting and important AP thread since hyphz had a demoralising day). So I don't want to pile on any truly new questions or observations -- perhaps just a reiteration or two of questions already asked. But mostly, I want to thank you for making the effort to address my questions. Even if you didn't do so at the "level" that Ron or I had hoped, nonetheless I see signs of progress toward understanding and addressing the issues we're trying to explore.

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). Since you appear to prefer to focus on specifics, let me point one out that James already referred to: the interpretation of the roll of 1 for the arrow shot that resulted in the arrow flying toward the other PCs. To me, this looks like the ultimate "Lucy snatches the football away just as Charlie Brown tries to kick it" moment in the history of gaming. Yet three times you've recounted that event in detail, without the slightest indication that any human decision-making was involved between the 1 coming up on the die and the arrow whistling past Durizon's ears. It's as though Charlie Brown, interviewed after the fact, says, "As I recall, I swung my foot a little off-target, and as a result the football suddenly all by itself moved sideways out of the way." Why didn't the bowstring break, the arrow hit one of your own party, the archer (under the extreme stress of being trapped between loyalty to you and awe of the enemy) impale his own foot, or the arrow veer off into a dark corner of the cave disturbing three hitherto unnoticed irritable cave trolls? Who at the table made the decision, on what basis? And, at the risk  of my sounding like someone playing a psychiatrist on TV, how did you-as-a-player (the only "you" any of us care about here) feel about that person's decision? (And I mean the decision itself, not its imaginary ensuing repercussions in the SIS).

- Walt

[Callan S.]

But I kind of feel like the one thing that's missing is serious consideration of the role played by the other players at the table. In your recaps of the game, you often tend to naturalize things that are totally contingent -- so you'll say "well, of course, if this happened, then character X was going to do that," or "of course, rolling a 1 results in a catstrophic, humiliating failure" when there's no "of course" about it.

Great post, James!

Hi Jay, thanks for sticking with us though the post!

Now, in relation to the above quote, I read this pulpy novel once where the protagonists get away from a gun wielding guard in a art gallery, by picking up a fine painting and holding it in front of themselves. The guard just can't bring himself to damage the highly valuable painting, thus his gun was no threat at all and they got away.

I dare say you value the dream immensely.

But what if someone is hiding behind the dream, using your heart felt desire not to damage it, to do what they want? Relying on the fact that if you said "Hey, you just made that shit up to get your own way", you'd be ripping up any belief you had in the dream at that moment. Thus, you don't say that and try and incorporate what their doing into the dream "Of course a roll of a one equals catastrophic failure".

In one game I played, the GM tried to frighten our lowly first level characters with a dragon flying low overhead. The other player had his character look up, to see the colour of the dragon. He couldn't see the colour of a low flying dragon.

If I'd really valued the game world, I'd have tried to figure out that with some sort of reasoning "Perhaps magic is involved" or such. But I'm willing to tear the dream up open and see the GM with all his control issues.

Although, I admit, I think I'm more jaded and less trusting of the game world (it's why I basically lothe rules design that are very much up to interpretation).

But what about you, how much do you value the dream? What would it take to make you rip open the dream, like I did in my dragon example?

[Ron Edwards]

That's enough, guys, we're dogpiling.

This thread should continue only if Jay wants it to.

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

Hey Ron,

I have not been ignoring the advice in your posts as much as I have been avoiding the potent yet foul tasting medicine you've graciously offered.  I am extraordinarily thin skinned so I have been trying to put as much emotional distance between myself and the powerful "Chi" of your words.  Literally I have not summoned the courage to read any of your posts dated on or after the 31st until now.  No reflection on you at all, as I have acknowledged before I am waaaaaaay too thin skinned – to my own detriment.


As you've justly indicated you don't want piecemeal responses.  I'll try and honor that to the best of my capability.  I had an awful time; I do not deny that on any level at all.  I do think your assessment of the responsibilities at the table in not accurate.  I'm seeing way too many Nar based "tools" in the analysis to agree with both the assigning of the blame as well as what those various "blames" are.  My delving ever deeper into what you referred to as minutia was an effort to re-align the conversation into what I felt was a more direct Sim orientation.  I failed.

In your post date on the 8th you posted two things that I have actually been pondering on for a number of days.  I'll answer the question you posed directly to me first –

"Also, review why you posted this thread at all. Are you getting what you wanted from it? Why or why not?"

The short answer is an emphatic, "yes."  I started this thread for two basic reasons.  One was a cathartic working through of Social Contract issues.  The second was to bring forth an example of a "critical failure" of Sim play so that I could then examine "what" it was that Sim things indeed failed.  The obvious reason being that examining that which disappointed the most must be very indicative of what is at heart of the Sim CA.

I have discovered a number of very important data about Sim.

Unlike Nar, Sim is not concept oriented but rather context oriented.  Thus any discussion about "actual Sim play" must contain lots of context or people will misread the whole.  There is no "gist" in Sim play to discuss, no high order "concept" than can be quickly and easily summarized, just lots and lots and lots of contextually significant events which point to an ever more complex and, unfortunately, irreducible whole.

I can fully understand why people who are well versed in "conceptual" dialogues would find these types of writings infuriating – to them it is all minutia and no point.  But that is EXACTLY what Sim is and barring Chris' anthropological tools I don't see any way around that fact.  There simply is "no discussible point" in Sim – it is simply in the doing.  No more, no less.  People who complain about the endless string of useless details are not Sim oriented.  Those details ARE both the context and the product of play.  I don't mean those and they in derogatory terms on any level whatsoever.  Sim play = mythic thinking – sloppy, hard to follow, all about context which requires huge amounts of other data and extremely resistant to "engineering/concept" analysis.  To understand it you have to pull each and every Sim game apart piece by agonizing piece – there are no conceptual shortcuts.  There are no Premises upon which to hang or reference all other parts of the game.  Sim does not "obey" the hierarchal model of the model.  In Sim there is no beginning or end, top or bottom – rather its one big circular mess and no "concept based" Ocham's razor can cut to the quick simply because there is no quick to get to.  ...and this is what drives most high order analysts absolutely crazy.  They get frustrated waiting for the Sim'r to get to the point!  There is never going to be a point – its a giant heterogeneous ball of Social Contract, Techniques and Ephemera constantly morphing by the process of Exploration guided by some group supported aesthetic (color)!

Talking about Sim is really like talking about "live jazz" performance.  Unless someone has had huge amounts of training with music, looking at sheet music or listening to someone else talk about the riffs, keys or scales none of that is going to help anyone until they've heard the actual "tones" and their interactions together and over time.

On the social contract level, that has been more frustrating.  Overlooked was that I was given the option to play with the group or the GM could A and B the night with TE on the A side and cutting to me on the B side.  I could have opted out of the scenario entirely as well, I was totally OK with not playing that day at all.  I said, I would like to play but you don't have to A & B the night, just give me someone who isn't demonically evil.  I made two choices of my own free will to step up when I could have easily stepped out.  The GM did not "force" me to do anything!  I came up with the coarse outlines of a character concept.  I have posted in the past that sometimes we do start games with empty sheets and that is incredibly fun as well.  So I was neither dumped into nor coerced into anything that I didn't suspect was coming.  I had watched those characters played at least 4 or 5 times prior to that awful night.

So what went wrong was not a GM boogeyman problem but rather a situation where we kids were all given a bunch of very sharp and very dangerous objects to play with...

Does this mean I am saying we play in a panacea?  Hell no.  But the problems lie in different forms and in different areas than what has been offered up so far.  The problems that have been "identified" are based on the paradigm of "concept/engineering" thinking and are not founded in "mythic thought" processes.

I don't know what to say.  Some people get it and it's a phenomenally satisfying shared moment.  Others say, "you're doing it wrong!" and that's extremely demoralizing.  It's like a Renaissance painter berating an Impressionist painter for his sloppy use of the brush – but that misses the point!  You see, that "sloppiness" is an inseparable part of that style of painting.  No matter how well intentioned, being constantly corrected for that "sloppiness" won't make the impressionist a "better" painter nor produce "better" impressionist paintings.  I am not saying I am without flaw, but I am beginning to see that our game sensibilities are a reflection of our thinking approaches as well.  I know that you are a far more agile thinker than I, but I don't think all the problem lays with my posting style alone.

What's particularly frustrating is that many "problems" are diagnosed and run right up to the Social Contract level which are in fact Sim CA issues and that is one of many reasons this CA is soooooooo dang difficult to discuss.  Sim ain't like the other CA's – even at the very base level of its relationship to the model Sim is very different from G/N.  Given the dogma of hierarchy the argument of a theory of something cyclical is bordering on impossible.

(I grok the whole letter for a name thing – I was imagining myself being "discrete," instead I was obfuscating.)

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!

Hi Callan,

But what if someone is hiding behind the dream, using your heart felt desire not to damage it, to do what they want? Relying on the fact that if you said "Hey, you just made that shit up to get your own way", you'd be ripping up any belief you had in the dream at that moment. Thus, you don't say that and try and incorporate what their doing into the dream "Of course a roll of a one equals catastrophic failure".

That is a fascinating question to which there is no pat answer.  We had a player with us for many years that was a "gamist" in "sim" clothing.  We have soooooo little mechanics that it is virtually impossible to work currency, "mechanics" or just about anything else on the meta-level.  However, it did slowly become apparent in the SIS and there did eventually arise quite a ruckus when we stared to complain that the player was perpetually seeking ways to "win" (best Challenges)  He was a brilliant player and he always found ways to account for his getting possession of the "magic arrow" or survive the combat when everyone else didn't even though he did engage in a helpful manner, etc.  The key was – "always/never."  He "never" made a heroic last stand – he "always" found a reason to avoid that possibility, etc.  He took it upon himself to save Middle Earth form "the coming War of the Rings" and was busily creating as many characters as he could who would be alive at the time so that he would turn the tide of battle.

An example where this really hit home to him was when he was playing a barbarian with a party traveling through some mountains.  We had a new player at the table who discovered a very large skeleton with a "perfect untarnished" arrow lying in the middle of it – hint hint it was the remains of a dragon that was downed by an "elven arrow" that was probably thousands of years old.  Some how the barbarian, Utan, found his way to the new player and tried to hard ass the arrow from him – except that it is a fairly strong game cultural convention that that type of barbarian he played hated bows as a "boys weapon" and preferred "big steel."  IOW he was making a grab for what in all likelihood was a magic item.  Later that night we came across a colony of mountain ogres and he went off in single combat for some reason – just up and off he went.  I know he had a reason for going but it wasn't about being "heroic."  He had horrible luck and got pasted.  I was not good.  The table was quiet for a bit and then we moved on.  The player was devastated that none of the players rushed in to try and help him out.  The problem was that given how he'd been playing the lone wolf at the table for so long, not really bothering to interact or bond with any of the other player characters we surmised that he didn't want us to come along in the first place.  We were too far away to "hear the combat" and his character(s) "always" had the habit of looking after themselves so we didn't make an effort find a reason to possibly offer aide.  The player spoke to the GM after the game about why no one came to his aide and the response that he got was that since he was such an ass (read – CA conflict) for so many years that no player was willing to gamble their characters trying to find a way to help him out.

Regarding the GM hiding behind die rolls is another issue.  I can happen but if he did so regularly then the fabric of the Dream would begin to fray.  Remember we the players, via the Lumpley Principle, are the ultimate arbiters of what is reasonable and what is unreasonable during play.  Through the 10 years that I've been at this table and the thousands of "1's" I've witnessed rolled they are almost always catastrophic.  I would have more likely called foul if the "1" I rolled under the circumstances I indicated in my first post did not result in something horrid.  It would have frayed the fabric of my Dream.  You see, the narrating of entailments of an action is a key Sim skill of the GM.  For us players the ability to deal with said entailments is a key Sim skill.  The "1" did not utterly drain my character of HP's; I was still capable of being effective mechanics wise.  I got slammed because I froze up and could not deal with the entailments of that "1".  I get it that the GM ultimately narrated my demise, but such an end is not a forgone conclusion.  I have seen a number of other players extract themselves from similarly impossible situations.

Just as a quick note – the dice merely act to "indicate" the nature of the entailments to any action that is being arbitrated.  The craft/skill if Sim GMing and Player input is in the creation of interesting entailments on the one hand and the clever dealing with GM created entailments on the other.  There are no tables for looking up entailments – it is nothing less than an act of raw creativity on the spot.

Unless there is a grievous break in the Dream it is unlikely (but not impossible) that a long-term player is going to yell, "Bullshit!" at a GM call.  This is not because of some "cult of personality" but rather a long history of the GM being able to make those "long" calls weave seamlessly into the Dream without breaking causality.  IOW an explanation will come and it inevitable not only works, but works extremely well.

But what about you, how much do you value the dream? What would it take to make you rip open the dream, like I did in my dragon example?

Actually, without going into detail in this thread here, we had something like that happen not two weeks ago.  We didn't say anything in game, but afterwards we players did confer that we felt that something had indeed caused the Dream to suffer.  (I would be more than happy to oblige posting about it if you wish me to.)  Suffice it to say we felt the GM had so many occurrences occur that were on the hairy edge of plausible that we all felt that something was "wrong."  Ultimately we felt that the GM was panicking about how to keep a scenario interesting for the players with such high level characters and threw everything but the kitchen sink at them.

James,

But I kind of feel like the one thing that's missing is serious consideration of the role played by the other players at the table. In your recaps of the game, you often tend to naturalize things that are totally contingent -- so you'll say "well, of course, if this happened, then character X was going to do that," or "of course, rolling a 1 results in a catstrophic, humiliating failure" when there's no "of course" about it.

Bingo!  You're absolutely right in that events in the game are "totally contingent."  That totally lines up with my earlier "rant" about Sim being all about "context."  I too could go on a great deal about how this works in our games and related to the Sim process as a whole, but that too would have added yet many more words and pages (details) to my already bloated postings.  If this particular is of interest to you, I'll let you know that I am obsessed with it, then let me know!

But the conversation you had after the game makes it sound like everyone got together, with the same agenda, and with the best will in the world, you got hosed out of nowhere. And I have a hard time believing that, to be honest. It seems unlikely to me that a group of rational adults gets together under the circumstances you've described, you have a shitty time, and it's nobody's fault -- just the way things are.

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?  Do we do a "take over?"  Do we forgive his debts and start again, which totally torpedoes the necessary finality of betting and thus sinks the high stakes exhilaration of making no go-back decisions?  What do you do, this player is totally upset but any changes to the "system" will torpedo the "Step on Up" (as it were.)  We know going in that such things can happen – that is part of what makes the game so darn white knuckled!  However, when they do happen (and they will happen) they really blow.

And I think the difference there is in player intent, and in Techniques, rather than in CA. I think the difference between Sim and other modes may be kind of a red herring here.

I'm not following you here about "other modes," but I do think the issue was "stakes."  IOW the hardcore Sim "dial" was set very, very high.  The more intense the game, the deeper the lows.  Combine that with some very overwhelming personal issues regarding self worth and you have an extremely volatile mix for an emotional disaster far in excess of what should have happened - something akin to adding Deuterium to an atomic bomb.

Thanks everyone!  I have learned much about myself personally, the Sim CA and posting here in the AP boards!  The questions I have solicited still stand if anyone is interested in the answers.

[dunlaing]

You're attributing a lot to the "Sim" part of "hardocre Sim." I think (and I may certainly be wrong) that as much of the issue being discussed here is related to the "hardcore" part of "hardcore Sim."

For instance, your poker example works as a "hardcore Gamist" example equally well.

Just a thought.

[Supplanter]

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.

Other than that, I'd like to re-orient the thread a little bit. In your first entry, you said the session was bad, but "the post-mortem was fascinating." Possibly because of the way the thread developed, we never really got to the post-mortem, except in very summary, depersonalized fashion. Could we hear more about it? Or are you sick of the whole topic?

Best,


Jim

[Supplanter]

You're attributing a lot to the "Sim" part of "hardocre Sim." I think (and I may certainly be wrong) that as much of the issue being discussed here is related to the "hardcore" part of "hardcore Sim."

For instance, your poker example works as a "hardcore Gamist" example equally well.

Just a thought.

This interests me because of Jim's Beeg Horseshoe Theory (Beeg Horseshoe III?), which is that the ends of the horseshoe are narrativism and simulationism and it's *gamism* that is the connecting substrate. I hold this theory about half the time. The reason: I think there are performance - "Step Up" - components to both Nar and Sim. These can be explicit, like the "pig skills" in the homebrew Jay was talking about or the tactical intricacies of a game like Capes, or implicit (like the discipline of eschewing metagame-derived advantage in Virtuality or the guts to set hard conflict stakes in what I've called "macho nar" elsewhere). Also, it seems like both Nar and Sim games are rife with potential to drift toward Gamism, either functionally or otherwise.

Best,


Jim

[James Holloway]

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?  Do we do a "take over?"  Do we forgive his debts and start again, which totally torpedoes the necessary finality of betting and thus sinks the high stakes exhilaration of making no go-back decisions?  What do you do, this player is totally upset but any changes to the "system" will torpedo the "Step on Up" (as it were.)  We know going in that such things can happen – that is part of what makes the game so darn white knuckled!  However, when they do happen (and they will happen) they really blow.

The difference is that in poker, everyone else at the table is trying to fuck you over. I mean, they may not be directly trying to hurt your feelings, but they're out for themselves and devil take the hindmost. And within the controlled environment of gambling, that's OK.

Your playing group is all male, right? You got the chance to play mean, nasty evil people competing with each other for dominance, and through random chance or the GM being pissed off at you, or pure-Sim well-these-characters-would-naturally-be-more-powerful stuff or whatever, you came out bottom dog twice. I'd hate that experience too. It'd take a very self-possessed person to treat that kind of experience lightly. I find it kind of interesting that one of the examples of a problem you cited back when you first started posting on this subject -- the bit with the Dwarf and the Elf King -- was about a player who endangered his character and everyone's by being unwilling to be humiliated.

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.

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.

Now, what do you do in the long run? My immediate instinct would be to say "nothing." Everybody has an off day; every GM runs a poorly-thought-out scenario, every player plays a character off-key or lets a bad mood ruin other people's fun. 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. And I'm not sure what to tell you about that.

My final point was that I think you sometimes tend to conflate your own Sim play with all Sim play. That's what I mean by the difference being one of Techniques rather than CA. But I'm not sure this is a point directly related to this specific problem.

[Mark Woodhouse]

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.

I don't know if this is Jay's perception, but it's one that I've heard very emphatically from 2 different players who describe similar play to Jay's. That in any given situation, there is always one deterministic outcome that will happen, and that sufficient knowledge of the fictional constraints of character and setting will show that outcome to the player(s), and that they are obligated to pursue that logical outcome. That's what I've heard described as 'Pinball Sim' in Mike Holmes' original formulation - where not just the world, but the characters as well are governed by pure causality.

I don't think, from Jay's previous posts, that his group really believes this hardcore - but it may be held up as an ideal to strive for. If a player really "gets" the Dream fully, their decisions should converge on this deterministic model.

[Caldis]

Jay it sounds to me like you are looking to close the discussion and I wont be surprised if Ron comes along shortly and does so.  However I noticed you didnt respond to my earlier comments yet and I was hoping you would if not please at least consider them. 

Unlike Nar, Sim is not concept oriented but rather context oriented.  Thus any discussion about "actual Sim play" must contain lots of context or people will misread the whole.  There is no "gist" in Sim play to discuss, no high order "concept" than can be quickly and easily summarized, just lots and lots and lots of contextually significant events which point to an ever more complex and, unfortunately, irreducible whole.

I call bullshit on this Jay.  Your play experience clearly had a conceptual base to it.  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.  They had set the scenario up so that the evil wouldnt immediately fall on each other and could manage to work together towards a common goal.  You came along and are resistant to that goal.  You are instead more concerned with playing your characters as arrogant, even in the face of superior magic and souless creatures it's more important to remain arrogant than to except working with them. 

I only see two possible explanations for your actions.  You either didnt 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 say it again Jay you had a clash of agendas, you were clearly on the out from the rest of the group while they showed the commitment to the dream.

I look back at it now and I see Ron said the same thing so maybe I'll just quote it.

I have zero confidence that you're going to understand this - that you are dealing with two things that seem synonymous to you, but are not. One of them is to please Cary, be in the story, celebrate the setting. The other is to experience the character, feel the character, emote the character, make the character do stuff. You just ran into the grim reality that if you don't accomplish the former, then the latter is worthless to the other people in the group.