Motivations...

[Doctor Xero]

Neil, Doctor Xero, & anyone else who is having trouble imagining such a thing as PCs acting separately while the players act together

I have no trouble imagining it -- I have played in Vampire: The Masquerade
and other competitive RPG playing.  I have no trouble envisioning it.

I personally prefer, for myself, with no universal statements about what anyone
else is allowed to prefer, in my own tastes, personally, ~I~ prefer cooperative PC
gaming over competitive PC playing, especially when I am acting as a game master.

For a good example of the sort of situations I try to avoid, take a look at almost
any Knights of the Dinner Table comic book.

It appears from postings that a number of people have trouble imagining that it's
possible for cooperative PC gaming to be enjoyable.  Several posts have implied
that competitive PC gamers are more sophisticated and mature or more realistic
than are cooperative PC gamers.  I find this either/or rivalry ludicrous, which is
why I write against it.

I have never posted attacks on competitive -- I have posted defenses of cooperative.

If in my growing frustration over being misinterpretted repeatedly, I have expressed
myself with more vigor than some forum people find comfortable, I give them my regrets.

Still, if one more person reinterprets my words as a universalizing attack against
competitive gaming, I'm going to lose a lot of respect for some of the people on this
board.

Doctor Xero

[M. J. Young]

Can anyone give me any mechanics or elements that reinforce this?

In Legends of Alyria, I think there are two that are significant; there may be others.

First is the Storymap based character generation. No one is creating "my guy"; rather, everyone is working together to create a set of characters who are part of the story that's about to be told. Thus everyone has input into the identity of the hero and of the villain, the sidekicks and the innocent bystanders swept into events--each character is a collaborative effort which is then entrusted into one player, whichever player the group agrees would play that character best.

The second is the use of inspiration and corruption points. At any time, a player can bypass the standard resolution mechanic by spending one of his points--either inspiration or corruption. However, unlike games in which you burn a point to win the contest, these points don't work for you; they work for ultimate good and evil. If you burn an inspiration point, the conflict is resolved in some way (agreed by the group) that makes the world a better place; if you burn a corruption point, the conflict is resolved in some way that darkens the skies a bit. Inspiration and corruption are about the ultimate struggle in Alyria between unicorns and dragons, and not so much about the petty quarrels of people. When you spend one, you give up thought of what your character would want to have happen, and instead place it in the realm of what the group thinks is the good or evil outcome.

With Multiverser, much of what happens stems from things players naturally enjoy. Watching someone else's game is like listening to someone read a story, or watching a movie. One of the things that it took me a while to realize is that running a game with multiple staging like that wasn't as difficult as it sounded, because ultimately everyone was interested in everyone else's game. We gamers tell game stories to each other; if the referee is doing a good job with game flow, we get to watch those stories as they are created. Thus independence stems from this mutual interest in the adventures being created.

Although it doesn't often happen, it sometimes happens that Multiverser player characters become antagonistic toward each other. When they do, it can still be great fun, because what are they going to do, kill each other? That just means that they've been separated for an undetermined length of time, and continue new adventures for a while.

One of our earliest test players created a character who was a space mercenary, a wizard, a martial artist, and an extremely powerful character overall; then, in a twist of fate, he was reborn (it happens once in a great while) as a little girl. She drove her parents insane, quite literally, with her insistance that she was not their little girl, but a space marine who had been to uncounted universes. In a wonderful moment of inspiration, the referee decided that the mother, driven to madness by this, was scriff-infected, becoming a verser; and that finding herself and the child still alive in another universe, she decided that the child was a demon, and her only hope to escape the curse of living forever in these alien universes was to find a way to ultimately destroy that child. Being defeated by the superior opponent, she found ways to empower herself, until she, too, is one of the most powerful characters known in the game--and she pursues him. Whenever she turns up in his worlds, he's gone--he knows she's powerful, and he has to figure out how to beat her before she gets him. It makes for wonderfully fun play; she is the perfect Nemesis for him.

Why wouldn't it still be wonderfully fun play if your perfect Nemesis was played by another player--particularly if neither of you could die, and there would be times when you would be completely isolated from each other so that you could do other things? It seems pretty good to me.

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

I cross-posted with Doctor Xero.

I hope that I have not been taken either as attacking cooperative PC play or as thinking Doctor Xero has been attacking it; I enjoy a good party game, as long as all the players can manage to show up with some regularity. There are several people on this thread expressing different shades of viewpoints, and it's easy for comments to be misdirected or misattributed; that's a mistake, not an attack.

If I may, I'd like to comment on one point.

For a good example of the sort of situations I try to avoid, take a look at almost any Knights of the Dinner Table comic book.

KoDT is a wonderfully funny strip; however, I think most of us agree that it represents dysfunctional gaming. Those fictional characters are attempting to play in a PC-cooperative fashion, and fail to do so because they have individual objectives and ideas about what matters in their games. No one wants to have play like that, generally speaking; everyone wants to avoid it. However, since the KoDT group is playing a game in which cooperative PC parties are the rule, they're a perfect example of why such game-demanded character parties don't guarantee player cooperation. What matters is not whether the characters are supposed to be working together, but whether the players are doing so in fact.

Interestingly, there's a theory abroad that Hackmaster as written is not the game, but rather is a prop for the game--that in playing Hackmaster, you're not really supposed to be playing the characters you've created, but rather you're supposed to be playing the stereotypical gamers who are running those characters--the player fighting that you see in KoDT is supposed to be the roleplaying that happens in Hackmaster, as the players take on the personae of stereotypical roleplayers and in deeply immersive play argue with each other about the game they're playing. Thus Hackmaster is perhaps something of a satire of gamers, not a game of interplayer conflict.

PC cooperation does not ensure player cooperation, and PC conflict does not create player conflict.

I respect your preferences; cooperative play is wonderful. I think your view of the alternative is warped, however. Cooperative play by players in creating an adventure in which some players are controling villains and others are controling heroes is not divisive.

This, in fact, is the way we've always played; it's just that it's always been three, or seven, or twenty, or fifty, against one. The referee is one of the players; if he's creating and providing the villains, that's not different in kind from having any other player do so.

--M. J. Young

[joshua neff]

Doctor Xero--

I don't think anyone here is saying "non-party" games are better than "party" games. I like both--I love superhero teams & pulp adventurer teams. When it comes to swords & sorcery, I love the friendship between Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser. What I (&, I believe, the others) are saying is that "party" is not the default for RPGs, nor is it necessarily something that should be pushed. If the gaming group wants to have the PCs all as one happy group, fine. If not, that's fine, too. I don't see either as inherently better than the other. Nor do I see "non-party" as inherently less competitive or "back-stabby"--I've certainly played in enough "party" games in which one or more players did their best to compete with other players. As MJ pointed out, there's a huge difference between dysfunctional play & "non-party" play, & "non-party" doesn't push dysfunctional anymore than (in my experience) "party" pushes cooperation & camaraderie.

[contracycle]

But, if the reasons competition in RPGs is labelled as negative do not hold true for similar activities (wargaming, cards, boardgames), then the reasons for the labelling in our community need to be seriously examined as well.

Yes.  One of them I'd venture is a much lesser need to create an SIS which commands consent.  All the boardgames, by contrast, are external OBJECTS for which consent necessarily exists already.

And secondly, yes: thats why its a distinct entity from those games.  People may choose to take it up as an acitivity for precisely these reasons.

MJ wrote:

KoDT is a wonderfully funny strip; however, I think most of us agree that it represents dysfunctional gaming.

Dysfunctional because it is competitive.

I say again: there is no meaningful competition in healthy RPG.  The model as it stands locates competitiveness in Gamist step on up, but if players are stepping on up to each other, with all the consequent posturing and rubbing faces in it after the decision, then this is an unhealthy KODT-like dysfunctional game.  In fact, players step on up not against each other but as part of the team AS PLAYERS, even if their characters are nominally conflicted.

And pardon me for banging this old drum but until the obfusctaory term "competition" is divorced of its ideological apologetics and a more precise term deployed, we will keep coming around this circle.  I've lost time of how many objections have been raised that RPG is almost universally cooperative play, followed by the inevitable talking past each other and the rationalisation that competion somehow means something other than it says.  At the very least, this shibboleth does not help.

[Doctor Xero]

Intelligent discussion requires the willingness to critique and to be critiqued.

I hope that people in this forum feel free to critique my comments, with intelligence
and/or humor, or to share thoughts inspired by my comments, and that I may be
allowed to do the same.

However,

when you critique what I write, critique what I write -- don't "put words in my mouth"
and then critique me for those words falsely ascribed to me.

When I preface my comments with "personally" and then make only comments about
my individual preferences, don't reverse my words and then critique me for allegedly
making universal comments.  Comments on one's personal preferences are the opposite
of universalized comments.

When I write about "PC (player-character) competition" not about player competition,
don't misread player-character as player and then claim I've written about player
competition and critique me for alleged comments I'd never made.

Making certain we critique ~only~ what another poster has actually written is a good
practice in general.  It promotes intelligent discussion.

Making certain we critique ~only~ what another poster has actually written is a good
practice in general.  It keeps topics from devolving into one party reiterating what he/she
said while the other party ignores the reiteration and continues to critique based
on perpetuated misreading.

As for this topic, after six apparently futile posts, I've given up on damage control to
clarify what I had actually written as opposed to the words repeatedly put in my mouth.

I post the above only so that future readers of this topic will know that I commented on
my own personal preferences and on player-character competitive play, never on
universals and never on player competitive play (except for one post about what often
happens when competitive players and cooperative playing groups clash).

My sympathies to ross_winn for having his topic derailed by this.

Doctor Xero

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Ross, it's your call whether to close this thread or not. Let me know.

Best,
Ron

[Doctor Xero]

I am reluctant to post again here, but I found something in another thread which seemed all-too-pertinent.

The social contract causes the competition to be honest.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9741

It's important to recognize how critical that social contract is.

Cooperative groups have cooperative play as part of their social contract.

Competitive groups have competitive play as part of their social contract.

Groups of players who cooperate while their player-characters compete
also have this as part of their social contract.

The damage occurs when competitive players new to a group ignore
pre-existing social contracts which specify cooperative play only.

The damage occurs when cooperative players used to playing
competitive player-characters ignore pre-exisiting social contracts which
specify cooperative player-characters only.

(Similar damage occurs when cooperative players used to playing
cooperative player-characters ignore pre-existing social contracts which
specify cooperative players should play competing player-characters.)

As always, I am not in any way addressing whether one style is superior
to the other.

I am addressing only the importance of adhering to the social contract --
and the dangers to a group when one doesn't.

Doctor Xero

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hey, Doctor.  Welcome to the Forge.

[joshua neff]

Absolutely, DX. And I'm sorry if I misinterpreted some of your posts before.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Wait a minute!  No, no, no!  I was being SNARKY!

For God's sake.... The man just encapsulated the basic understanding of how social agenda is vital to character motivation -- an encapsulation  and understanding that everyone else in the discussion already possesed -- and raises it like its the bloody Grail!  Excuse me?

Josh, you didn't misrepresent anything!  If you look back at the Doctor's post on pages 2 and 3 of this thread, you will Dr. X constantly conflating PC's working against each other as leading directly to players fighting each other.  It's right there in the posts.  Go read them again.  

Here's one magic trick I found with little effort:

"I personally prefer, for myself, with no universal statements about what anyone else is allowed to prefer, in my own tastes, personally, ~I~ prefer cooperative PC gaming over competitive PC playing, especially when I am acting as a game master.  For a good example of the sort of situations I try to avoid, take a look at almost any Knights of the Dinner Table comic book."

The fact that he "personally" doesn't like styles of play where PCs are competative has nothing to do with the fact that he somehow elides competive PCs into the fighting, annoying players from KotDT.  How was such a counterintuitive leap possible?  Only Dr. Xero knows -- and that's why everybody kept going to bat against him.

This was always the issue: not whether or not he liked a certain style of play, but his insistant, sometimes explcit, sometimes implicit, joining of PCs working at cross-purposes with a competition beween players. And, moreover, not only competetion between players, but, by dragging in KotDt and other concerns, equating people playing competative PCs with crude, obnoxious and annoyingly abusive players.

You interpreted his statement absolutely spot on until the top of page 4 when he took out the concerns about players fighting and left it as saying, "I don't like games where PCs fight." Well, bully for him. But it was a little late in the discussion to let all of his concerns about the behavior of the *players* slip away without comment.  If he had wanted to back-pedal a bit, fine.  But he should have said something, like, "I realize I've been overstating my case..."  Or perhaps he hadn't noticed he'd been overstating his case.  Either way, it was on his head.

When he finally acknowledged that there are permutation possible, some workable, some unworkable, between combinations of PC and Player cometition, he only reached a conclusion that everyone else here already has.  Hence, "Welcome to The Forge."

The fact the he seemed really revitalized to have found this treasure, after already high-handing everybody with lectures about how to communicate when his own communication had become slippery, at best.  This is a man who in his first post on the dangers of PC / Player rivalry says, "and/or" in terms of combination, but it's just my taste.  Then in the following post wrote, "I have to agree with RDU Neil about the destructiveness of games which encourage backstabbing. I've seen seven gaming groups ruined by players who used these games as excuses for ill treatment of friends camoflauged as friendly rivalry."  Later he wrote, "the notion that gaming groups can be ruined when certain players decide to engage in sneaky PC behavior or outright PC treachery while playing in a gaming group where such PC behavior violates accepted parameters of group behavior."  Every post suggesting there are very enjoyable ways of having the PCs work at a cross purpose where constantly shuffled under the rubric of "the notion of gaming groups."  He certainly paid lip service to the fact that people might have fun building a group with "backstabbing" PCs -- but the truth is, that's not what anyone else was really talking about.  And all efforts to introduce a new point of view on this matter were rebuffed with a general "Well, in my experience, it doesn't work."  This despite the fact that the behaviors he was describing (either from the PCs or the Players) didn't at all fit the behaviors everyone was describing.

I truly think this all belongs under my current obsession of "Getting It."  Six people say, "No, I don't think you understand what we're talking about."  One guy says, "No, I know exactly what you're talking about, stop telling me I'm wrong for not enjoying that style of play."

I mean, here's a quote from the good Dr. "I have no trouble imagining it -- I have played in Vampire: The Masquerade and other competitive RPG playing. I have no trouble envisioning it."  Is the playing style of Vampire *anything* like Alyria?  Nope.  But Doc's played the nonsense that can be V:tM, and so knows he's not going to like that.

The fact that he never once entertained the possibility that, no, he really didn't fully get what everyone was saying (and agreeing upon) and approach the conversation with curiosity instead of digging trenches was annoying enough.  And then had the gall to come back and lecture people on how to disagree with him because it was just his opinion that he didn't like games that turned players into the characters form KotDT.  And then shows up with a treasure from Mike that certainly wasn't news to anyone here -- but he felt somehow was finishing his point...

No.  I was being snarky, sarchastic, and no one owes the man apology.

Christopher

[Doctor Xero]

Here's one magic trick I found with little effort:
"I personally prefer, for myself, with no universal statements about what anyone else is allowed to prefer, in my own tastes, personally, ~I~ prefer cooperative PC gaming over competitive PC playing, especially when I am acting as a game master.  For a good example of the sort of situations I try to avoid, take a look at almost any Knights of the Dinner Table comic book."
The fact that he "personally" doesn't like styles of play where PCs are competative has nothing to do with the fact that he somehow elides competive PCs into the fighting, annoying players from KotDT.  

You do perform a good magic trick at transforming my words into something else, Chris.

How you can choose to misread my writings this way is beyond me, Chris, and more than a little offensive.

In the example you chose, I went out of my way to point out that these are purely personal tastes, and then I provided an example of the situations which ~I~ avoid -- nothing more.  Nowhere do I state that this example is representative of any type of competitive or cooperative play!

So why do you choose to attribute such a ridiculous conflation?

That you choose to infer it does not mean that I implied it, Chris.  It really only seems to indicate that you are going out of your way to find excuses to find your own interpretations even when they don't exist.

This was always the issue: not whether or not he liked a certain style of play, but his insistant, sometimes explcit, sometimes implicit, joining of PCs working at cross-purposes with a competition beween players.

Your choice to infer does not mean I implied it, Chris.

That's why I always used the tag "PC" to specify which kind of competition I was referencing.

The sort of subliminal implications you accuse me of are not my style, Chris, and you will find they are out of character in comparison to my other postings on The Forge.

Then in the following post wrote, "I have to agree with RDU Neil about the destructiveness of games which encourage backstabbing. I've seen seven gaming groups ruined by players who used these games as excuses for ill treatment of friends camoflauged as friendly rivalry."  Later he wrote, "the notion that gaming groups can be ruined when certain players decide to engage in sneaky PC behavior or outright PC treachery while playing in a gaming group where such PC behavior violates accepted parameters of group behavior."

I was going to point out counter-examples to your strange assertions, Chris, but you've done it for me.

Thank you.

The fact that he never once entertained the possibility that, no, he really didn't fully get what everyone was saying (and agreeing upon) and approach the conversation with curiosity instead of digging trenches was annoying enough.

With some of the examples you gave in your post, Chris, you contradict yourself here.  No, I demonstrated repeatedly that I understood what others were saying.  However,

I simply found it annoying that words were being put in my mouth.  So I tried to set the record straight.  If I erred in being too stubborn about this, I apologize to anyone I inconvenienced, but stubbornness is less offensive than putting words into other people's mouths (as you have done here yet again, Chris, with your phantom implications and the illusory joinings you claim to find).

I have no idea why you choose to do this, Chris, but I'd prefer you stop.

Doctor Xero

[Christopher Kubasik]

Okey-dokey.

Christopher

[Doctor Xero]

And I'm sorry if I misinterpreted some of your posts before.

Actually, I've just realized I've made one serious mistake.

I have just gone through the posts on this topic painstakingly, and in every case it was Chris Kubasik who misread -- repeatedly and consistently -- my posts.

You and M.J. may have made minor miscommunications, but that happens all the time, and it's nothing any of us should become worked up about.  I make minor miscommunications as well, and I hope you won't hold those against me.

Only Chris Kusbasik kept putting words in my mouth and then criticizing me for the things I'd never said.

With this realization, I apologize to everyone else for generalizing the actions of this one individual to the entirety of those who posted on this topic and for letting my frustration seep into some of my postings on other topics.

And my sympathies to Ross for the derailing of his topic.

Doctor Xero

[Christopher Kubasik]

Wow, Doc, by the time you were complaining about everyone putting words in your mouth I had made one, and only one, post about your statements.

Yet somehow they echoed "repeatedly and consistently" throughout the thread.

My words have the power of Moses.

I am a lucky man.