[Dreamation WGP] Two-Fisted President Balks!

[Michael S. Miller]

There was an awkward position. Msm, Alex, John, Iskander and Luke were all in it.  X happened. msm feels bad about X happening and whats to know what he could have done or might have missed to keep x from happening again.

Perhaps I could have run the game as I wrote it, instead of the way I did!

Ron & Jim & Kat, etc. are right. I deprotagonized Jon. I committed the cardinal sin of Narrativist GMing: I became invested in a certain outcome. I didn't realize it at the time, since I wasn't invested in particular story-stuff happening (like in traditional railroading), but I still showed up at the table with a preconceived notion of how the game was going to go: We were going to finish a Story Arc. I didn't care how, but I had written these characters so that we could play endgame to the very end, and I used Force to make that happen.

What would have happened had Jon forced me (through good cardplay) to yeild to him? Well, his Two-Fisted President would have destroyed the alien mothership, and neither Alexander's victory nor loss would have finished the Story Arc and devastated the villain's Plan. Big deal. So the story wouldn't have been over. The aliens still would have been a threat, even without their mothership and its controlling hivemind. Because of the real time constraints, we wouldn't have been able to play any of that stuff out, but I'd never finished a Story Arc before at a convention, so it would have been nothing new. A touch anticlimactic for Alexander, Luke & I who very much wanted to see the Story Arc finished, but not a bad session.

Instead, in using Force to ensure a complete Endgame, I broke several of the rules of my own game (since those rules are there specifically to prevent this kind of thing). Kat's right that even if Alexander had yeilded, I could not have snuffed out the minds of all humanity forever. Conflicts in WGP don't work that way. At most, I could have snuffed out the minds of all humanity until the next scene. Likewise, I could not have nuked the US in an irrevocable way. Because Jon had chosen to Devastate his Duty to defend the US during that conflict, I could have harmed the US in a way that lasted until the end of story. Depending on how the actual Endgame had played out would have determined whether the new condition lasted forever (if the villains' won), or was a temporary setback (heroes' won).

By ignoring those rules and bringing social pressure to bear on Jon, I was the one who screwed up. Thanks for the help in seeing that.

[Luke]

I appreciate that you all have come to a consensus on some of the stuff that went wrong in that session, but for the record, I vehemently disagree to most of it.

Points I agree with: I can be really enthusiastic; and Michael should have intervened in my enthusiastic entreaty to get Jon to yield. If I were the GM, I would have told me to back the fuck off, and explained the stakes -- the end game -- to Jon as a neutral party. But we were all pumped, and I can get a bit crazy.

Where I disagree is with the assessment of Jon's behavior as cool or ok. Dude was feeling the time crunch, sure. I appreciate that. But dude would not look up from his own little private conflict to see the big picture of the game at hand. Michael had out-maneuvered me--I was playing to lose! Alexander outmaneuver Michael and Alex wasn't interested in the theme we had created. A big meaty ball of play landed in Jon's lap that had all of our sticky finger prints on it. The AWESOME thing about WGP is that it was now within his power to take all of our sweaty intense play and make his own statement with it. But you know what? Dude said, "We're just going to go through another round of conflict? Forget it, I'm leaving." No statement. Nothing. I was aghast. He didn't give a shit about my contributions to that game. He, literally, dropped the ball and kicked it under the table.

Outraged, I voiced my protest. In this case, I didn't voice it as a designer, as One of the People or a friend of Mike's or Alexander's. I answered as a player of a really cool game in which I had invested my time and energy. Was there a better way to do that? Sure. But that's what happened.

But, in immediate post-game retrospect, I realized that dude short circuited. He could not -- did not WANT -- to deal with what the game was about and what we had said thus far. Time crunch, it wasn't his thing, he wasn't having fun, whatever. From my side of the table, it was a circuit overload. It was not cool to the rest of the players at the table.

-Luke

[Iskander]

A story about a President of the United States who *just can't make himself nuke the United States despite the consequences for the rest of the world* has powerfully created theme.

And the other guys at the table, including the GM, wouldn't let him do it. The rest of you had decided *for* Jon what theme he ought to by gum create.

I wholeheartedly agree that would have been a powerfully created theme. However, that's explicitly not what happened at the table in actual play. We reached the point where three of us had 'live' conflicts ongoing, and Jon walked away from the table, the conflict and the game.

The second problem is the initial impulse, slow to die throughout the thread, to explain things in terms of the outsider's (Jon's) weakness... This isn't analysis; it's excuse-making. It's scapegoating. It's pathologizing the guy from Not the People. I recognize that this thread eventually got past it, but it's a tendency that should give people pause.

I disagree that looking at the pathology is necessarily scapegoating, and maintain that there is a pathology in walking away from a game at the point that Jon did.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Where I disagree is with the assessment of Jon's behavior as cool or ok.....He didn't give a shit about my contributions to that game. He, literally, dropped the ball and kicked it under the table.

....there is a pathology in walking away from a game at the point that Jon did.

Yes, absolutely, and to the extent I can judge anyone's actions based on second-hand reporting, Jon did you guys wrong. He broke both the revised Kat Miller Principles I suggested before: "only you know what you want and you're responsible for raising issues with the other players before they break your fun" and "you are all responsible for each other, so watch for problems developing and try to work it out."

By contrast, you guys sound like you were following Principle No. 1 just fine -- you knew what you wanted, you were all over it, you were having fun -- but where you did break down was Principle No. 2, taking care of Jon. "We are all responsible for each other." Cue Kumbayah, the Barney Song, etc. ad nauseam, but it's freakin' true.

[Ron Edwards]

This thread has dealt with the issue of responsibility about as far as it can, without degenerating into blame and defense against blame.

What would help now is a discussion of the phenomenon, and perhaps comparisons and counter-examples with other play-experiences.

Best,
Ron

[TheTris]

I think in the thick of the action it can be difficult not to "write ahead" in the story you are creating.  So instead of "Wow, this is cool guys - how about Dave decides to feed his hamster", you think "Wow, this is cool - how about Dave decides to feed his hamster, and the hamster will turn out to be Sprocket the super-hamster, who saves someone really important, yeah, I'll aim for that"

I'd call this covert story writing.  Once you've decided that story is cool, you care more about a version of that story, than a cooler but different story.

If it's overt then it can be a functional part of the game, and encompassed by the authority you have to write story, and the authority the other players have to negotiate that.

If it's covert then you no longer have a SIS.

Your imaginary space to some extent includes the bit where Dave's hamster is a super-hamster called Sprocket, destined to save someone precious to Dave.  That isn't the same place other people are at.  It's not shared anymore.  There are fundamental differences.

I think that might be some useful analysis.

[Doug Ruff]

If it's covert then you no longer have a SIS.

I'd like to suggest a different conclusion: if it's covert, it's not part of the SIS. There is still a shared space, but there's also that individual's own 'headspace'.

This doesn't have to be a problem. If I'm playing with my friends and I think it would be cool if my character was in secretly in love with one of the NPCs, I don't necessarily have to share this. I may prefer to slowly reveal this fact during play. This may not be the preferred style within your gaming group, but what's in my head is my property, right?

However, the problems start when my individual story starts to conflict with the group's shared story. For example, if the shared story involves said NPC betraying the party, and I immediately use my personal story ('my character in love with this person') to mess up the shared story - for example, by ambushing and killing the other player characters - then I've let down the rest of the group.

(This may be a lame example: I don't have an immediate personal play experience to hand, but I hope that this fictional example serves to illustate the point.)

Why have I let down the group? I had two other options available to me, that could have preserved the shared story.

1) I could have 'retconned' my personal story, and no-one would have been any the wiser. I can do this if I'm not particularly invested in my 'covert' story.

2) I could have brought my story into the shared space and allowed the other players to comment on it before I acted. "Hey guys, I think my character's in love with this guy, which means I'm going to turn on you. Is that cool?"

Even having said all of that, I think there are playgroups where ambushing the party would have been perfectly acceptable, on the basis of 'that's what my character would do'. However, this only works well where hidden agendas are part of the group's social contract. For example, if I were playing Amber and someone pulled this trick on me, I'd suck it up as being "in genre".

This helping any?

[TheTris]

I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

I suggest that if you covertly decided ahead of time that the NPC would fall in love with you, because you thought that would make cool story, then another player used authority to narrate the NPC betraying you all, the clash comes because you have written your own version of events which move your imagined space away from theirs.


In the example you give, it seems you are playing with a pretty standard convention where you own your character's head.  In that case, it's fine to decide he is falling in love, because "I don't know what's going on in someone else's head" is part of the SIS.
If you were playing a game where another player had authority over that character's emotions, you would cause a dischord just as much by deciding to fall in love, because you don't get to add that.  When the guy with authority declared that the character had grown to hate the NPC in question - more clash.
Equally, if you were playing a game where that "NPC" was entirely under your authority, it's fine to make them love your character, and the guys who decided betrayal was a cool story without having any authority are splitting the SIS.

Does this make sense to you?

[Julian]

I suspect problem may have been a disconnect between the game mechanics and the needs of drama. Whether this was just at the table (in the framing of conflicts), or more fundamental to the game, I'm not even going to speculate.

If somebody has to deliberately lose, then that loss has to provide a satisfactory ending to their character's arc. Jon and Alex's conflicts, as described, don't have that. If Jon folds, the day is won, but it's not because the President let the people he's sworn to protect be destroyed in order to save the greater whole - it's because the player threw a card game.

Frame those conflicts as "Delta does something suitably heroic vs. Delta gets re-integrated into the Hive Mind, but suppressing his will causes the mind to hesitate at a critical moment" and "He nukes the ship vs. the Hive nuke North America, because the President chose to smash (important piece of alien tech) instead".

Now you might well see them racing to fold.

[Doug Ruff]

I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

I suggest that if you covertly decided ahead of time that the NPC would fall in love with you, because you thought that would make cool story, then another player used authority to narrate the NPC betraying you all, the clash comes because you have written your own version of events which move your imagined space away from theirs.


In the example you give, it seems you are playing with a pretty standard convention where you own your character's head.  In that case, it's fine to decide he is falling in love, because "I don't know what's going on in someone else's head" is part of the SIS.
If you were playing a game where another player had authority over that character's emotions, you would cause a dischord just as much by deciding to fall in love, because you don't get to add that.  When the guy with authority declared that the character had grown to hate the NPC in question - more clash.
Equally, if you were playing a game where that "NPC" was entirely under your authority, it's fine to make them love your character, and the guys who decided betrayal was a cool story without having any authority are splitting the SIS.

Does this make sense to you?

Yes it does, and I'm not being sufficiently clear. This may be because I've chosen a poor example, but I'll stick with it for now. Same situation, but assume that although the 'I'm in love' thing was only "in my head",  I had every intention of bringing this into the SIS at some time in the future. Does this match your 'covert story writing' situation now?

[TheTris]

Answer (in case I'm wrong after "However")

It depends on what your authority was.  Remember that in the traditional style of rpg where one player = one character, part of the SIS is that you don't know what's in the other character's heads, just as you don't know what's behind the next door in the dungeon.

However:

I think I stated that "covert story writing breaks the SIS" too confidently, and this has led to us talking slightly at cross purposes.  I had in my head that it was already overt in the trad style of rpg that my character's headspace contains things you don't know.  Not actually stating this made it sound like I was saying something other than I meant to.

If any hidden knowledge broke SIS then GMs would reveal entire maps to the party before play, as well as having conversations like "Mrrk the evil is plotting to delay you until his help arrives in 10 minutes time".

Does my initial statement make more sense if I phrase it this way:

Writing content that is entirely uncovered by SIS means you no longer have a SIS.

That is, something can be concealed, without being apart from the SIS, if it is overtly covered in the SIS that such things may be concealed.  This can be the dragon in the next room, the love my character has for an NPC...  If something is not overtly covered in the SIS then it is covert, and you no longer have a completely shared space.  In my version that NPC loves me, in your version they hate us all, in my version there is a dragon in the room, in yours an unguarded pile of treasure.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

You guys are spinning into a discussion of your own about this covert/private/not SIS thing. I suggest one of you using an example of actual play from your own experience to start a new thread, if you'd like to continue it.

Michael, has this thread served its purpose, for you? Luke?

Best,
Ron

[Luke]

Michael, has this thread served its purpose, for you? Luke?

I said my piece; this thread was over six posts ago.

[Michael S. Miller]

Michael, has this thread served its purpose, for you? Luke?

I said my piece; this thread was over six posts ago.

Ditto. Thanks to all for their input.