social contract stuff -- another thread

[xiombarg]

Since people seem to be talking about this sort of thing, check this out:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiombarg/306814.html

Be sure to read the commentary as well.

My current plan is to sit the group down and hash out, verbally and in-person, all the issues the recent session of my Scarred Lands D&D game have brought up... What I'm looking for is practical advice on handling this from the Forge community.

[ADGBoss]

I read your jounral post and the commentary.  There seems to be a good deal of tension going with the group now, at least to an outsider.  I could be dead wrong on this but if there is, was this caused by the game session, the game, or some other factor? (sexual tension or a feeling about gaming in general?)  These sort of ideas are going to shoot any attempt at Player molding right down because the tension is not game related.  I think you know this and you know the group better then I do so I will leave you to sort any off-table type of stuff.

Now I definitely think sitting this group down is a great idea that hopefully is going to reap some reward for game play in general.  A couple of points I found as I went through that I wanted to address.

1) Splitting of the party and Defeat.  The party suffered a pretty heavy defeat and it seemed that Players AND Characters suffered a sort of morale drop. Almost a war gaming like setting, Unit gets pounded, loses half strength and routs.  Now anyone who was in the military or a war or who studies can tell you somewhat the effects of being routed can have on a unit.  Except that, despite the tradition of Fantasy and Gaming, Parties are not necassarily Units.  They are more groups of friends or acquaintances on a more dangerous mission then getting dinner at the local restaurant.
Lets take a real world example(1): You, me, and Dave Panchyk sneak into the Old Mall and into Illusions to retrieve something we left behind or was perhaps taken away from us and is being held in the store.  We sneak into Illusions and are confronted by someone. We are foiled and turn and run.  Dave heads for his home, you run for the new mall, and I run towards Ocean City.  So it is not unrealistic even in a heroic campaign for a group to suffer defeat.  And defeat is a perfectly viable option from a scene.  Failure should not be an end but indeed for role playing it can be a beginning.  This is more viable in a Sim or Nar game then a G I would think.
So you should talk to them about how this defeat exasperated the other issues and lead to the divurging paths.

2) Acting Heroically.  This is hard to define. Maybe impossible (as I found in my rpg.net articles on the subject) and in any sense HEroically means different things to different people.  Its more problematical to be HEroic in a group where you do not have a great deal ties or very strong ties as opposed to the group which is very close and very focused.  However, it should be possible to have the group focus even if there are character frictions liek alignment.
What you may want to do is fully describe what you mean by heroic (if your packet has not done so already). From this you may also want to have a rediscussion of alignment, not to lecture per se but just so people know where each person sits in respect to alignment.  LN to one person may not be the same LN to another, and thats one issue with alignment but thats neither here nor there.

3) "My Guy" I love the way you put this and I think its so true. I see one player in particular was very defensive about his character's actions even though you pointed out you were speaking in generalities. However, I think that "My Guy" though it may be related to Actor Stance, I think it can go well beyond the boundaries of actor stance.  To my eyes, there was not a clear "Why" for the group to be playing and because the Why was not defined, when it came to evaluate the game as a group activity, it was hard to figure out where things went wrong.  People became defensive about it instead of asking each other what the heck?
Clearly defining why the group is Role Playing together at this moment and time as well as clearly defining each character (as best as possible) so to minimize surprised Players.  Also maybe help the players understand that truly, when doing group RPG, that the fun factor of the group IS inter-related and that Player and character actions can damage that.

Now once the initial discussion is done, you might begin to use your Actor / Author ideas as well as others as a sort of medicine for the problem.  Saying "lets try this to fix the problem" may very well find open minds where there were closed minds previously.  

Hope this helps

Sean

[xiombarg]

Certainly clarifing the purpose of the game, and trying to keep people focused, is a big part of what I'm trying to do: the "why", as it were.

Two of the players are making new characters, who have more of a reason to integrate with the remaining PCs. It'll be interesting to see if this technique works. In the meantime, we're still going to sit down and have a talk. I'll be sure to bring up your points during the discussion.