'Exhuastion Escalation' in illusionist play

[Matt Snyder]

In another thread, Ron Edwards, while discussing possible pitfalls in Illusionism, wrote:

And finally, such play may suffer from "exhaustion escalation," in which the game-world crises become larger and larger scale, in inverse proportion to the players' diminishing emotional commitment to dealing with them.

Ok, have I been asleep at the wheel (again)? Has this been discussed on the Forge previously? I have experienced precisely what Ron's describing here, and I was rather delighted to note that Ron recognizes this as enough of a pattern to name the damn thing.

If this has been discussed, please point me to threads. If it has not been discussed, well, discuss it.

My intitial questions are:

How have people using Illusionism successfully avoided this problem?

If you've experienced exhaustion escalation, has it driven you away from Illusionism, perhaps unconsciously?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

As I recall, I first brought this up in a series of email exchanges with Jesse Burneko. I've only referred to it now and again since then; I don't think it's been discussed as a focused topic.

A lot of people probably know what I'm talking about. In the first year of play, the villains try to rob banks. In the second, they try to blow up a building. In the third, the entire city may be brought under control by the mind-ray. In the fourth, WW III looms as a threat. In the fifth, the aliens from Sirius invade ...

... and meanwhile, the players' enjoyment and excitement about what's going on in the game-world and with their characters diminishes exponentially. Note that the GM is a player too, and for this player, it's even worse because all sorts of tricks are failing to work. For instance, the "One of you is a traitor!" story, carefully worked out with the player who agrees to play his own ringer, ends up being a total bust because no one can tell the difference between the evil-replacement and the original character, or cares. The "mutant prejudice" story ends up a total bust when the players just go "Dark Phoenix" in response. Etc, etc.

What's going on is Situation with no Premise. That's really all there is to it. The solution is to get Premise into the processes of play (i.e. go Narrativist) or switch to a game which requires not even the illusion of Premise (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, or some other raw-butchery, perhaps humorous game).

I submit that playing Dust Devils, for instance, would rarely if ever succumb to this particular problem. Why not? Because Premise is constantly present in that game.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Snyder]

Agreed, Ron. I felt I "recognized" this phenomenon because of years of dysfuntional D&D play years ago. (To clarify, while this issue has been a thorn in my side, woulds have long since healed).

My own experience with escalation exhaustion was, I think, playing D&D 2nd ed. for years in which rather than view the gamist tendencies of leveling up and scaling challenges in the forms of tougher monsters, our group viewed them in simulationist terms, illusionist terms. The GM would take something away (an item, a friend, a power, whatever), then we'd earn it back, only to have it yanked away yet again by someone tougher, bigger, etc. This frustrated players to no end; play was sorely unsatisfactory, and increasingly so. Our solution was no solution at all: usuall start the whole process all over again. Go figure. I think many groups were playing in this way for years, probably still are. It seemed to me endemic to D&D of the sort we, and many other groups I observed, played.

[jburneko]

Hello,

I would like to add that I think this phenomenon actually doesn't require escalation at all, as I have observed it most recently in my weekday group.

A little background: My weekday group decided that they would really like the expereince of climbing the full D&D ladder so I made a deal with them.  I said I would run D&D from 1st to 20th level on two conditions.  1) I could use the Ravenloft setting.  2) There would be no "story" pressure and I could just run old 2nd Edition modules converted to 3rd Edition.

The characters have just broached 11th Level and over the course of the last six or seven sessions the kind of emotional exhausion being described has begun to occur.  There has been no escalation of Situation at all since most Ravenloft adventures were pretty evenly written.  As the PCs go from Situation to Situation over time they come to care less and less.  What has ended up happening is the PCs have actually turned INWARD for their conflicts.  In the beginning I could run two short Dungeon magazine style adventures in a single evening.  It now takes me THREE sessions to run just one because the players spend so much time just sorting out the conflicts that they've made up among the group and virtually IGNORING the situation around them.

I think it has to do with the amount of time it takes for some players to find a "voice" or begin to recognize a kind of proto-theme being developed for their character.  Then, over the long term, they begin wanting to develop that into a real Theme by addressing a real Premise but are stuck with the same-old pre-planned Situation driven play.

This is the pattern I've noticed among my players.

In my Narrativist games play starts out really slow as the PCs seem to flounder trying to figure out what to do, how to act or even search for a problem to solve.  Things kind of just happen randomly and sometimes repetatively.  But in the long term things begin to flourish and thrive.  Eventaully the players find the "voice" for their character and start taking action.  Things take off in fun, new and unexpected directions.

In my non-Narrativist games play starts out really fast.  Players zip from scene to scene to scene.  They follow clues, they solve mysteries, they vanquish evil.  But in the long term things begin to die off and become really forced and drags.  As the players find the "voice" for their characters they start wanting to address their own conflicts and issues and stop caring about other people's problems.

I think this may result from players not being very good at recognizing a Premise from the get-go even if it's present.  They kind of wander around aimlessly looking for things to do.  After they've seen enough of the Big Picture (even if the Big Pictures is just a relationship map and some NPC driven conflicts) eventually something begins to click.   The Premise begins to bleed through to their conciousness and then they take off.  In a game where Premise is absent, the need for some kind of emotional connection, I think, may result in players constructing a kind of pseudo-Premise from the pieces of past Situtations that they DID find emotionally compelling.  The result is that they begin acting on this pseudo-Premise which comes more and more and more into conflict with the GM-preped Situation.

I think the "escalation" effect is in fact the result of a GM installed patch to attempt to fix this problem.  Instead of recognizing the need for Premise the GM assumes the players are simply bored of fighting bank robbers and so just has them start fighting building bombers.  And probably in the short term, it works which is why the escalation continues.

Just my thoughts.

Jesse

[Jack Spencer Jr]

What's going on is Situation with no Premise. That's really all there is to it. The solution is to get Premise into the processes of play (i.e. go Narrativist) or switch to a game which requires not even the illusion of Premise (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, or some other raw-butchery, perhaps humorous game).

Hmmm. What I am going to say will probably be considered inflamnitory. I don't mean it to be. It is an honest question. But this sounds like a good arguement against Simulationism. If the solution is to go Narrativist or to switch to a game without even the illusion of premise, or I think replaces Premise with Step On Up, then what this whole thing seems to be describing is answering the hard Simulationist question "Is it enough?" with an emphatic "no."

It that what we're seeing here? What am I missing?

[GB Steve]

How have people using Illusionism successfully avoided this problem?

If you've experienced exhaustion escalation, has it driven you away from Illusionism, perhaps unconsciously?

I've had this kind of problem as a GM and player in games before.

It usually comes about through ramping up power levels as PCs gain experience. This is the mechanic that drives it but it is not the cause.

The cause is that the PCs don't have anything to care about beyond the character sheet version of the character. What I mean is, amassing XP, getting levels and blobs, or extra dice become the goal of the game instead of enjoying the experience of being the character, or interacting with other characters or coming to some understanding of the background.

I had  a 2 year AD&D campaign that is remembered with great fondness by the players that started at 1st finished at 15th level. Sure, there was a gradual ramping up of power levels, in arch D&D style, to match the PCs level but it was against the background of the PCs becoming involved in local, and then global, politics.

They had some emotional investment in the background and this is what stopped it becoming stale.

On the other hand, I've played games of Traveller which have stayed at the same power level and just petered out. This tends to be because as the PCs wander the galaxy, the don't find anything to care for, at least in an illusionist game.

If the PCs are generated with some strong background idea and this is addressed during the game, whether by illusionism (I hate that word btw) or some other means, then the game lasts longer.

[W. Don]

If the solution is to go Narrativist or to switch to a game without even the illusion of premise, or I think replaces Premise with Step On Up, then what this whole thing seems to be describing is answering the hard Simulationist question "Is it enough?" with an emphatic "no."

Beeg Horseshoe Theory strikes again?

To focus on Matt's questions though:

How have people using Illusionism successfully avoided this problem?

If you've experienced exhaustion escalation, has it driven you away from Illusionism, perhaps unconsciously?

In the games I've played (usually as GM), I've noticed that either one of two things happened to steer the group away from "exhaustion escalation": (a) a true premise is introduced (eg: In a recent Star Wars game for example, "What does rebellion cost you?") ; or (b) we eventually just decide to go for the sheer fun of bashing orcs' brains out.  All of which explicitly supports Ron's ideas above.

Personally, I find sustaining Illusionist play to be very taxing on my part as GM -- it's as if I'm lugging or prodding the game, the players, indeed the whole show forward by myself. It's sad and lonely work, IMHO. I really never had a word for it before I learned about Illusionism on The Forge.  So, Yes -- the exhaustion (and it's corollary lack of satisfaction) has driven me way from it as a mode of play.

I think that perhaps all of this might be rooted in player involvement in the group process. The GM whips out disaster after ever-escalating disaster and the player's don't feel they're really involved -- they become ever more disempowered if you will. Thus they're gradually (or right up front) led to contributing less to the "group-ness" of the game. Which means also means the GM is getting less energy and support from the group even as he focuses more and more of his own energy on escalating the events. Premise  in Narrativist games is a way of facilitating strong and resounding player-character contributions to the group effort.

My apologies if the presentation above is somewhat fuzzy. Brain isn't quite on high gear today, but the will to discuss is.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jack raises the $64,000 question, and it's a good one.

The answer is, "That's why Simulationism is a play-priority and not merely 'more' Exploration."

In other words, for Simulationist play with a strong emphasis on Situation to continue as such, the people involved have to want to do this more than they want to get committed to Premise or to Step On Up. This would mean, as a group, wanting to "experience Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium and my GM" more to create a Lovecraftian story with a novel point of its own. To some of us, that's bizarre and subverts the whole point of play; to others, it's so exactly what we want that it's hard to see anything else as possible.

GBSteve, there's nothing derogatory in the term "illusionism." To the contrary, I consider it highly skilled play. Your response about making it work presents a very good point - which I translate into my jargon as, "Exploration of Situation & Setting works as the priority when Exploration of Character is explicitly made subordinate to it."

In other words, if you let Character Exploration out of its cage, it can evolve into Character-centered Premise (going Narrativist) or into Character-to-Situation Step on Up (going Gamist) very easily. Thinking over the text of Arrowflight, which is probably the finest Illusionist-based role-playing text I've ever seen, over and over, I see passages supporting this principle.

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

In other words, for Simulationist play with a strong emphasis on Situation to continue as such, the people involved have to want to do this more than they want to get committed to Premise or to Step On Up. This would mean, as a group, wanting to "experience Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium and my GM" more [than they want] to create a Lovecraftian story with a novel point of its own. To some of us, that's bizarre and subverts the whole point of play; to others, it's so exactly what we want that it's hard to see anything else as possible.

I see an unrecognized in-between possibility here. In between "experience Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium and my GM" and "create a Lovecraftian story with a novel point of its own" there can be "create Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium, my GM, the other players, and me." This is entirely Simulationist as far as Premise and Story Now are concerned, but the metagame agenda is not just to imagine the explored elements, but to create (one or more of) the explored elements -- in this case, situation -- through play.

Countless threads have discussed the importance of who's creating the story (and when). Who's creating the imagined elements (and when) can be just as important. For instance, no-myth play doesn't appear to have the problem of exhaustion escalation. And that's probably because no-myth players have the opportunity to become invested in creating -- not just imagining or experiencing -- situation, through play, via their characters' actions.

- Walt

[contracycle]

Hmm.  Wouldn;t characters creat situation through their action by default?  Seems to me the action at the table is always the characters situation, one way or another.  I'm not sure I see what you are getting at.

[Marco]

I agree with Walt.

Haveing engaged in play that I would describe as thematic simulationist play, I can say that a number of things drive it.

1. Sometimes the vision of the world is compelling. The finest games I've been in have been exploring or engaging in a world that was amazing to me. A thurough examination and interaction with 'what if?'

2. The Lovecraft novel that we're creating has a start condition but no pre-ordaned ending. One character might give up in exestential angst. Another might decided to fight fire with fire (learn magic even though it corrupts), a third might rely on the inherent goodness of man (the player and the mechanics might or might not bear this out--but either way, at the end o fthe game the player's approach would've either been born out or failed).

In that sense the novel is not being created by Chaosium and the GM but by everyone at the table.

3. In a scenario like Silence of the Lambs (to use my most common example) most avenues of approach to the problem will fail (the FBI has little by way of clues, getting to the Senator's daughter means playing Lecter's games)--but as a player, getting to respond to that and enjoy exploring that interaction isn't hardly the same as following a script. I may not be able to use my fast-talk skill on Dr. Lecter--but if I come up with a really good ploy, I expect that to work.

That doesn't quite feel like someone else is writing the novel and I'm *just* reading it.

On the balance I don't much like the idea of illusionism (such as it is--some people might say that a GM who alters an enemy force between games because one of the players is sick is practicing illussionism--or one who responds to a well made streetwise roll made in a new town by making up on the spot that the character *knows* and has history with a contact there is being illusionist ... ).

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

Characters are fictional and don't create anything. Sorry to get all pedantic there, but this is one of those cases where the distinction is important.

Do players create situation through their characters' action by default? I don't think so, but I realize I wasn't being clear on what I mean by "create." I don't mean adding to the shared imagined space by executing a game mechanics procedure and reporting the outcome, or by instantiating a character's Standard Operating Procedure. I mean actually thinking something up, something that has at least a small element of the unexpected in it. I'm talking about real human creativity. "I do five hit points of damage" is not creating situation in the sense I'm talking about, but "I bash the glass out of his hand, splashing his drink on his date's face" might be -- provided that the system has allowed, but not specified, such an outcome, and provided that the action described is not the character's SOP or other form of cliche. On the larger scale, the process of accomplishing a pre-set mission involves situation evolving over time, but it's not creating (in the sense of exercising creativity) situation through play unless the players' choices can take that evolution in unexpected directions. That possibility exists in Sim play, but is certainly not assumable by default.

This is hard to explain, partly because the distinctions I'm trying to make have been largely overlooked and therefore the terminology (e.g.
"create" =?= "cause" vs. "invent") is not designed to describe the distinction. I have a monstrously long data-dump of an essay on this topic in the works. In the meantime, I don't want to hijack this thread. The point, with regard to the topic of sustaining the appeal of Sim play over time, is that exercising and exhibiting creativity through play can be a strong (literally) creative agenda even when the object of that creativity is not "story," and that such a creative agenda accounts for the long-term continuing appeal of some Simulationist play.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Walt,

Your in-between proposition seems to me to be a paraphrase of my Simulationist description. I'm fine with creative interjections and novel approaches in that context; it's the aesthetic priority that I'm talking about. When you say, "do Lovecraft," that's the key - with all the new plot angles or unplanned outcomes or whatever-you-want, if that's still the goal, then we're still talking about pastiche. Imaginative, fun pastiche, novel pastiche ... but still "doing Lovecraft," as an act of homage.

All of which is a fun way to play, which I enjoy in moderation, and which others enjoy primarily or even exclusively.

Marco, you seem to be under the impression that my definitions of Simulationist and Narrativist play are split between "no-theme" and "theme." This is incorrect.

Best,
Ron

[GB Steve]

Characters are fictional and don't create anything.
I mean actually thinking something up, something that has at least a small element of the unexpected in it. I'm talking about real human creativity. "I do five hit points of damage" is not creating situation in the sense I'm talking about, but "I bash the glass out of his hand, splashing his drink on his date's face" might be -- provided that the system has allowed, but not specified, such an outcome, and provided that the action described is not the character's SOP or other form of cliche.

I think that it's hard to distinguish between cliché and 'genuine' creativity. At the very worst it's a continuum where it's hard to draw a line between the two. And besides, cliché, to a certain extent is what makes these games playable. It's what provides the common ground from which small departures create an interest (provided, of course, that creation is the point of the game, because it doesn't have to be).

In D&D, for example, you can describe the character actions in any terms you like and keep the HP talk to a bare minimum. In fact, this kind of approach is usually recommended in the rules.

The point, with regard to the topic of sustaining the appeal of Sim play over time, is that exercising and exhibiting creativity through play can be a strong (literally) creative agenda even when the object of that creativity is not "story," and that such a creative agenda accounts for the long-term continuing appeal of some Simulationist play.

I'm not sure creativity is what is special, not why the game succeeds. I think raw creativity often leads to the kind of emotional exhausion as described before.

I think the creativity needs to be harnessed to the good of a other goal, such as stonger player ownership of the game or even plot development.

[Marco]

Marco, you seem to be under the impression that my definitions of Simulationist and Narrativist play are split between "no-theme" and "theme." This is incorrect.

Best,
Ron

No-not under that impression--I was responding to Jacks' "why play Simulationist" question ("If the solution is to go Narrativist or to switch to a game without even the illusion of premise...") and pointing out that this has little to do with simulationism per-se (i.e. a Simuationist game doesn't have the "illusion of premise" but may still have theme and protagonized PC's (for some values of 'protagonized PCs' anyway) ).

-Marco