That Social Box

[greyorm]

From a thread over in the Sorcerer forum

My experience with one on one play is not extensive, but I've noticed myself having similar problems with me and two players.  With that few players, there is a feeling of "Okay, entertain us."  I feel that rather than creating together, I'm being asked to preform.  With three players, this almost never happens.  Three gives the players a dynamic, and I do much more adjudicating and far less preforming.

This struck me as a relevant issue in and of itself.
Why at one or two players, not at three?

If others have the same sort of experience -- and I believe Ron mentions he has -- the number of players obviously affects the social group-dynamic, especially the behavior of players towards the GM...why it that?

I was thinking that perhaps the group subconsciously doesn't consider the DM to be "part of the pack," either through their own ingrained viewponts or some unrealized behavior on his own part?

So while the DM is a part of the gaming group, he's out in this "other circle" (as DM) while they're in on this circle (as players).

Or what, specifically, is so special about three or more players?
Somehow, for some reason, the social dynamic changes...

Anyone have any ideas, or any facts we could create a theory from? Hypotheses? Ignorant opinions? (heh)

[deadpanbob]

Ignorant opinions? (heh)

Greyorm, I'll go you one of these:

When only one or two players are present, it is too much like the act of watching a TV show, going to a Movie, or reading a book - wherein the GM = the TV, the Movie or the Book in this correspondence.

In other words, with so small a group, the players don't veiw the session so much as a social event as they do an entertainment event.

Cheers,

Jason

[Jeffrey Miller]

I think its more about the number of posible social relationships sitting at the table. With 2 people, there's 3 possible relationships - 2 people together, or 1 each alone.  With three people, we rise to - what, 7? with four people...

With the ever increasing number of relationships, we begin to change how we behave from an internal or intimate model to a more public or extroverted mode of behavior.

{Actually, 5-6 is my ideal for some games, especially co-created "troupe" games that are heavy on politics - the number of relationships is such that its seems to be an ever shifting dynamic.}

[Jake Norwood]

My experience is a bit different. When its one-on-one the roleplaying is always more intense and character-driven. Partly because I don't see any point in writing out planned stuff for one person, and partly because that person (or two people) realize that they really are the stars of the story. With a group of 3-5 there's a great dynamic, though one person can often get lost. In a group of 6-8 several people will get lost and there will be very little proactivity in any structured format. More than 8...chaos.

Just my 2c.

Jake

[contracycle]

I solidified my preferred number of players at 4.  One of the things I like is when play contains a lot of in character action and initiaitive, usually from inter-character conversation and intercation.  Two few players and there are not as many ideas offered and inputs; as a result consensus is achieved fairly quickly and we "move" on - at which point it falls to me to alter their circumstances or depict their environment in some way.

[Mike Holmes]

I think we almost have it. Here's my anecdotal evidence.

One on one is uncomfortable because there is that distinctly intimate feeling that the two are sharing an experience rather than having the audience-actor relationship that's more distant, and therefore potentially more comfortable.

As soon as you have two players, you can establish the partition between the GM and players more, putting him aside as the impartial referee. Which helps comfort, because he is no longer seen as judging the performance. But this leaves each player as the audience sole audience for the other. Which is again potenetially uncomfortable between the players as it is too intimate.

As soon as you hit the magic number of three players, then each player can feel that he is in the presence of a referee, and an real audience composed of two players. That's where the comfort level seems to stabilize. Four even moreso.

Do others find that they are only able to play with one or two players if they are good frinds with these people? This is what I find. Too intimate, otherwise.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

Do others find that they are only able to play with one or two players if they are good frinds with these people? This is what I find. Too intimate, otherwise.

Well I can only nod my head in agreement here if that helps. I remember playing one absolutely superb solo adventure with a very close friend as GM. When I have been GMing 2 players, the characters have almost always been siblings or lovers or very close friends. It hasn't really been a conscious decision but more that it felt like the most natural way to tie the characters together. Unlike 3+ players where the character doesn't need to be tightly knit together.

Anyone recognizing that tendency?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi everyone,

I had posted on this down on the Sorcerer board, but I think Mike got it...  the lack of audience is I think the key.  (A high school english teacher of mine once suggested, in fact, that an audience had to be of two or more people.)

With three or more, the audience keeps shifting -- so the GM and player A watch player B, and so forth.  With one on one, you're just looking into each other's eyes... And well, you know...

Christopher

[greyorm]

Hrm, interesting...definitely some good ideas here, and I think I may have stumbled on an answer to a long-standing question I've had about a particular game I played in once:

First, I've never played a solo game, not one that I recall, at any rate.
I have, however, played in a two-player game.  This was a one-time thing, with my my girlfriend as the DM and one of my cousins and I as the players.

It was one of the best games I've ever been in, and I've been trying figure out why that was.  The social aspect never occurred to me, or rather, not in an "out of game relationship" sort of way.

My cousin was not only in my regular gaming group for years, but he and I were fairly close as well.  And, obviously, my girlfriend and I were close (heck, I married her!), so perhaps it wasn't anything about the game per se, but the intimacy of the individuals at the table.

The only part that doesn't add up there for me is the social relationship between my cousin and my girlfriend, which was on the level of acquaintance.  Unless he had a crush on her...which would make sense and is certainly possible (as -- he was a set of twins and between the two of them, one of them always seemed to manage to have a crush on either the same girl I did, or on my girlfriends), and would up the level of the social relationship at the table between them.

Christoffer: I agree, but have a different situation than one of playing a new game with a two-person troupe. I recall a specific night back when my current campaign was just starting and only two of the players could make it. Both had established characters with no family or blood ties between them.

The evening seemed far more social and close-knit than usual for the time, with just myself and those two.  There was more intertwined role-playing as well, with the two characters playing off one another more than usual and seeming more "bonded."

Also, like Jake, I've experienced group sizes of 6+, including a group of 12 one insane evening. My experience is also that the average level of proactivity drops in relation to the group size, so that one might as well only be playing with three or four players (the most vocal/socially dominant players really pushing for the spotlight while the others begin to "fade back") though the game itself slows as the GM attempts to coax reactions from those less involved (or they attempt to interest themselves long enough to do something).

So Mike's answer really works for groups of acquaintances or friends in general, but once you alter the relationship factor of the people at the table, either intensifying it or reducing it, the outcome of the interactions changes.

Would everyone's experiences tend to agree with that?

[contracycle]

I think the low numbers of players allow the GM to focus more tightly on the experience, in fact compel such focus.  The players too can forcus more closely on each others status, where with a bigger group there is more there is more information being tossed about, so keeping the common vision gets somewhat harder and the depth of personal empathy drops as more social relationships need to be maintained, both in game and out.  I have also seen a tendency for large groups to fission into cliques for a variety of reasons; sometimes this can be healthy and allow everyone to focus more on their immediate context.

I pretty much agree with most points mentioned above.

[M. J. Young]

...this is not my experience.

I was going to say that the only solo play I ever did was one-on-one with my wife; but I realize that I've done a lot of Multiverser solo play with E. R. Jones, sometimes with one of my kids, and with several other players at different times. That may have more to do with the way Multiverser works, as it becomes intensely focused on individual characters rather than group activities in many game sessions, so it's easier to run one-on-one much of the time. E. R. Jones also had the habit of running his "group" games in one-on-one sessions over the phone and riding in cars and anywhere else--his game was always active, and players sort of came and went when we had the time. But I can't really find anything about the dynamic that was consistent, and I think everyone agrees that such solo play is intense and to some degree rather intimate, so you've got to be willing to get to that level of intimacy to feel comfortable in it.

Now, I've run great games for player groups ranging up to thirty (admittedly taxing, but Jones did fifty more than once). But some of the best games I ever played were threesomes--two players and a referee.

The original player group went for about six years, with people coming and going but the core three players always there. The other two were my wife and the boyfriend of her childhood friend Margaret, whose name was Bob. Margaret was part of the core group until she broke up with Bob, and I think she (despite having incredible luck at dice and cards) played mostly to be part of the group. So the breakup meant she didn't come around for games anymore; and there were other real world issues (divorce of one couple, someone moving away, that sort of thing) that gradually reduced us to three.

By that time, we knew each other extremely well. Bob and I could so tune in to each other's modes of play that when Janet was refereeing we could conceive and execute a plan without a word between us, just by picking up each other's cues from character actions. They similarly were able to do incredible things when I was behind the screen, and Jan and I held our own against the tough refereeing and bleak setting which was Bob's Gamma World.

Now, maybe it was because we had been playing together for several years with others before we were whittled down to three, and maybe it's because despite appearances none of us were ever really "people persons" so we do better in smaller groups, but two players and a ref always worked extremely well for us.

--M. J. Young