[Primitive] Dreamation 07

[Kevin Allen Jr]

[Kevin Allen Jr]

To my horror I have cut and pasted the Un-spell/grammer checked version of that post. Sorry for inflicting my horrific typing upon you all.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Kevin, and thanks for the bellowing that caused my fellow SotC players to jump out of their chairs periodically. 

I'm no CaveMaster, having only played once, but I don't see a practical way to enforce some sort of continuity.  If the session is unfocused, that says interesting things in a different but no less valid way than a more traditional, straightforward session does. 

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I agree with Jason. Primitive is such a Rorschach-y game that I think one must accept whatever emerges from the group dynamic. No amount of Cavemastering in the sense of guiding or "fixing" things seems called for (although obviously good scene-framing, role-playing, fun & management are important CM tasks).

Primitive will indeed be played by me and many others. It and carry are currently at the top of my "must do soon" list.

Best, Ron

[bluegargantua]

Hi Kevin,

  This is Tom, the caveman who flipped the raft in order to kill off the first outsider.

The "No Talking" rule

Civility vs. Savagery is the core of your character

  First off, the No Talking rule means that there's only so much discussion you can have about any issue.  The most complex thing we ever did was the elk hunt at the beginning and that took awhile.  After that, we had some spirited one-on-one discussions (do we let the guy onto the raft? do we go out to the island?), but we couldn't really have any large group discussions about anything.  This isn't necessarily a problem or a benefit, it's just the way that the game is structured.

  The Civility vs. Savagery thing means that you generally either see yourself as clever monkey or a brutish ape.  You want to engineer situations where your "better half" can be employed.  Two of us (me and axe guy) went completely into the Savage while Dro (and Jeff?) went heavy into the Civility.  So there was immediately this disconnect between members of the tribe depending on their preferred method of dealing with things.  If you think of yourself as a Savage, your first instinct is to kill/destroy anything that looks like trouble.  If you think of yourself as Civil, you strive for something more nuanced.  Again, it's not necessarily a problem or a benefit, it's just the way the game makes you think of things.

  All of this means that slavery is the natural intersection between killing off the outsiders (savagery) or letting them live (civility).  It also helped to break people up into smaller units partially because it would be easier to come to an agreement on what to do next -- fewer people to talk to and you'd probably pair up with someone aligned to your way of thinking.  It also explains a great deal about our resolution.  When freaky unnatural things happen, investigation is probably going to be difficult for a large group of people and simply fleeing the area (or finding some other form of resolution) is going to be the easiest to get everyone to sign off on.  In this case, the two people who went to the island were still very curious about it, but not so curious they were willing to go back.

  I don't think I'd sweat it too much.  It's a fun game and as long as there's an interesting situation to get people going, they'll work within the constraints to find the best solution for that particular group.  If you're really worried about it, running the game with a smaller number of people would probably make a lot of these issues less annoying.

later
Tom
   

[Nathan P.]

Hey man,

I'm still waiting on playing/running the game, and will definitly pay attention to the stuff you brought up when I do. But it seems to me that "a satisfying ending" may not be as...necessary?...in Primitive, because the focus of play is so heavily on the language development thing and the civility/savagery thing. Dangling plot threads seem like they would be almost necessitated by the fact that you have to spend a good deal of time figuring out how to communicate.

If you're interested, shoot me the scenario writeup, if any, via email and I'll do that when I run the game. We can compare notes!