From the Traveller thread in Actual Play:

"Lots of people don't like the pressure of having to come up with their own material. They just want to hang out or be entertained."

Vaxalon wrote: Thinking back on this, I can think of a few people I have met that fit this description, but not more than a half dozen in all my years of play... are there a lot of people out there like this?

Hi Fred,

That's a good topic. I think Robin Laws calls this the "Social Gamer," which I'm not sure is the best term because in some ways I think it's asocial relative to the activity at hand.*

I tend to be a little extreme about it - in the sense that I can hang out and socialize whenever I want, with a wide variety and large number of people to choose from. When I role-play, it's a specific activity for me with definite priorities, as a sub-set of my socializing, and so I make sure to do it with others who are similarly-inclined.

I recognize that my outlook isn't very common, at least based on Robin's Laws and others' comments, which indicate that, to many, maintaining a nice unthreatening social group takes higher priority than a fully-satisfying imaginative experience.

On the plus side, I've had several good experiences with people who were not playing at all, but enjoyed being present and appreciating both the process and imaginative product of play. But the fact that they were not playing and were, essentially, "backstage pass" participants, made all the difference.

Best,
Ron

* But who am I to talk about terms being "just right" ...

(finally, I make a good topic!)

I think this kind of gamer is someone that authors and GM's need to keep in mind.

I'd actually disagree, Fred. I think this type of gamer is exactly the sort who should be entirely ignored. Games should be designed around the desires of the active engaged gamers not the distracted just hanging out slackers.

And slackers to me is what they are.

If the social activity was playing city league softball and you had a couple of players who just showed up to hang out you wouldn't put them on the field unless you were desperate for warm bodies. You'd want people there who were there to play ball. Not necessarily "win"...that's different. But definitely there to be engaged and play hard.

If you're a dedicated golfer looking for a fourth member to your foursome you wouldn't be satisfied with some hack who was just there to drink beer and do donuts in the golf cart. He may not be that great of a golfer but you'd want him to take the game seriously and actually be committed to playing it.

Same with starting a garage band, or a bridge club, or nearly any other activity which is a combination of social gathering and skilled effort.

People who just showed up and barely participated would be called slackers in those situations...I call them slackers at the RPG table too. Just because everyone is just sitting around a table talking one should still expect them to be alert, engaged, committed, and participating.

I've walked out of groups that catered to slackers, and if it were my group I'd show them the door if my efforts to engage them proved fruitless.

So no, I don't think designers should keep these guys in mind at all...

...EXCEPT...to the extent that some of the slackers may not actually be slackers but just folks completely bored with the lack of purpose and reason in the games they've been playing and are wanting something more to connect to and not finding it in traditional play. Designers SHOULD be trying to reach those types and discovering what that something more might be and delivering it.

In my experience, at least half of all gamers are primarily there for the social experience and couldn't care less about the game, so they're a pretty sizable group. I try to screen the people I play with to make sure they have the same goals I do, so I haven't had a lot of these people around recently except at conventions.

Valamir, I'm not sure I'd be quite so critical of these people. Being uninterested in the game isn't inherently bad - it just conflicts with your goals. You and they can't enjoy the same game. I suspect they'd call you a gaming snob or something along those lines.

Some bowling leagues or bridge clubs do actually make room for these people without affecting the overall event. My high school chess club had only three people who really liked to play chess in it, and so there were two "circles of participation." Most of the club didn't compete in tournaments and when a serious guy wanted to work on his game, he didn't do it by playing against a casual guy. I know of bowling leagues that do that too - anyone can join and practice with the team, but not everyone competes. Or think about the Boston Marathon. Some people show up to break world records; others are there to jog along with their friends and see if they can make it or not (though any marathon runner has to be at least somewhat serious).

The fact that these games have clear winners and losers helps make a natural division. RPGs lack anything this clear, so people have to be willing to be the bad guy in dealing with the problem, and many people aren't up to doing that. Furthermore, a bowling league will have dozens of people who break up into sub-games, but I've never known any RPG group that was more than two sub-groups at a time. (In the case of this large group, it was basically divided along "hard core" versus "social gamer" lines). But most people are forced to either kick the slackers out or tolerate them. (Kicking them out is generally preferable).

Anyway... the problem with designing rules or scenarios intended for the social people is that they don't really care about the game, they care about the social environment. So a game designed with them in mind wouldn't be any more (or less) interesting for them, but it would bore the hell out of your hard core gamers.

Well, there's a difference, I think, between people who just LIE there, and people who are only making a minimal contribution.

This kind of player rolls the dice when it's his turn, knows the rules, and stays focused on the game... but he's either not very creative or doesn't share the fruits of his creativity. He's not very good at writing a backstory, doesn't engage in RP with NPC's, and his characters usually hang out with someone who's more active.

I'm thinking these people are enjoying the game. For the golf analogy, he's like the caddy; he's got a job to do at the table, but he's not the focus of attention. He's not being disruptive. Your examples aren't the kind of people I'm talking about.

It seems that it is counter-productive to design games that are "slacker"-friendly. What about games that are "slacker"-hostile?

Games with rules that make it difficult to engage in "slacker" activities assuming that you follow the system as written. Of course nothing makes people follow these rules, but is it worth giving some consideration to designing games with this in mind.

It is probably not something that all games would benefit from, but would it be a good thing for some games?

One idea that i have been kicking around for something is a game in which all talking from the players (non-GM) is in character. Any out of character discussion must be done through passing notes...

Thomas

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Fred,

That's a good topic. I think Robin Laws calls this the "Social Gamer," which I'm not sure is the best term because in some ways I think it's asocial relative to the activity at hand.*
*snip*

I'm thinking these people are enjoying the game. For the golf analogy, he's like the caddy; he's got a job to do at the table, but he's not the focus of attention. He's not being disruptive. Your examples aren't the kind of people I'm talking about.

LordSmerf wrote:
One idea that i have been kicking around for something is a game in which all talking from the players (non-GM) is in character. Any out of character discussion must be done through passing notes...

The old Star Wars from West End Games did a lot to reduce the amount of "work" a player had to do. A gamemaster could hand out character sheets, explain the rules, and be off and running without any "work" from the PC's.

I found it to be an excellent vehicle for introducing people to RPG's. Everyone knew the gameworld, the rules were incredibly simple, and the character creation (if you used the templates) was dead easy.

Now it's a truism of marketing, that there are two ways to grow your business... you can either take customers from your competitors, or you can gather new ones from people who aren't buying your kind of product in the first place. That's why the folks at WotC are working up yet another "basic" version of DnD, in order to create an "entry level" product and expand their customer base - it's the only way they can grow at this point.

So here's what I think:

Any game that's going to be popular with people outside the existing gamer market, has to be a lot like D6SW, in that it has to be playable without a lot of work on the part of new players.

"...has to be playable without a lot of work on the part of new players."

I think this still misses resolving the prob. Reducing the work wont make people think the work isn't work. And certainly in this age of playstations, etc, they aren't going to readily think 'hey, so its a bit of work...I'll do it because really I don't have any other options if I want to play something like this'.

Really I think you need to have a design that relies on work to operate that the larger demographic (the big demo you want) doesn't percieve as work. If an RPG design coud operate through people running around in a field throwing a ball around, for example, you'd be golden.

Well, at that point you're kind of talking about some varieties of LARP.

I'm not saying that RPG's shouldn't have work in them, what I'm saying is that the first play session should have a payoff with a minimal amount of it, if you want to grab peoples attention who don't normally game.

Some authors, probably lots of authors, don't want to grab peoples attention who don't normally game.

Vaxalon wrote: Well, at that point you're kind of talking about some varieties of LARP.

I'm not saying that RPG's shouldn't have work in them, what I'm saying is that the first play session should have a payoff with a minimal amount of it, if you want to grab peoples attention who don't normally game.

Some authors, probably lots of authors, don't want to grab peoples attention who don't normally game.

"Lots of people don't like the pressure of having to come up with their own material. They just want to hang out or be entertained."

A few things. First, this was all covered very well in the "big five" on how the social nature of gaming takes it's effects. I highly recommend going over those. Anybody have a link, again? Is it in a sticky somewhere or something? This includes the well debated idea of making games more accessible to larger numbers of people. Comes down to goals.

Anyhow, there definitely is a spectrum of this effect as Lorenzo points out. I had one player who was there because of their spouse, and who would actually fall asleep during play. The specific level of commitment required varies as well as has been noted.

With regards to other activities, some mentioned were bowling, cards, etc. In all of these, you aren't considered to be playing if you don't actuall perform all of the mechanical requirements. But these are very clear. In RPGs, it's not so clear. If all the player does is grunt when their character is spoken to, does that constitute full participation? In some groups it might. In others no. Also, in all of the activities mentioned, if one player doesn't participate, the activity doesn't stop. One can bowl as easily by oneself as with others. For bridge it might mean one less table. RPGs are collaborative by nature, and a non-participant has a much larger effect.

Mike

That's The Infamous Five, the series of threads and thread-spawn that marks the most significant developmental step of the Forge as a site.

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: With regards to other activities, some mentioned were bowling, cards, etc. In all of these, you aren't considered to be playing if you don't actuall perform all of the mechanical requirements.

Vaxalon wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: With regards to other activities, some mentioned were bowling, cards, etc. In all of these, you aren't considered to be playing if you don't actuall perform all of the mechanical requirements.

That hasn't been my experience, at least not with bowling.

Uh, you can say that they're "going bowling" but they're not participating in actual bowling. Yes, this is socializing with these people, and that's not a problem. But nobody would mistake them for having a score or something.

As Ron said, having people there as audience, or even as helpers for the GM, whatever is fine. It's when you have somebody putatively there to bowl, who only picks up the ball and drops it in the gutter every time intentionally that you might have the problem. In RPGs, the definition of participation may be loose enough that some players think that they're participating if they do the equivalent of dropping the ball in the gutter every time. In actual bowling, nobody would mistake that for actual participation. Rather, the player knows precisely what level is required of him to be considered a participant. Sure there's levels of competitiveness, but if he isn't rolling the ball down the lane trying at least a little to hit the pins, he's not bowling. He might be socializing, but he's not adding anything directly to the activity per se. In fact, it might be better if he just kept score, or acted as audience (certainly would cost less in lane fees).

I would equate this to the player that rolls the dice when it's his turn, laughs at the Monty Python quotes, and springs for pizza once in a while, whose character is nothing more than a pile of numbers, and which never interacts with PC's. He's interacting on a minor level in order to justify his presence at an event where he has fun and doesn't prevent others from having fun.

Well, that's the question? It's not well laid out. Is this player actually participating, or just rolling his ball down the gutter? No way to know in RPGs, because, yeah, he's fulfiling some minimum requirement. But is it the same requirement that everybody has? It's just not clear cut.

As long as I don't have a whole tableful of them, people like this are welcome at my games.

You seem to be under some impression that I think that these people aren't participants or something. That's Ralph. My point was not that they aren't participating (these guys in the analogy are rolling the ball down the lane, but not bothering to aim at all, really), but that it's harder to tell in an RPG if someone is validly participating in the activity itself. Because it's a lot less clear than whether or not they're rolling the ball down the lane. I mean, sure they might be rolling dice, but what if the game in question needs them to choose the maneuver for their attack, and they don't do that?

Player: "I got a 4."
GM: "What kind of attack were you using."
Player: " I dunno, pick one."

Is that participation? If the GM doesn't mind filling in the choice, then maybe, for that group. But I think it would be just as valid for another group to say that this wasn't really participating.

And what about my player who would fall asleep? Surely you have some standard for what counts as participation (not using a chainsaw in the midst of play)? The thing is that it can only be local to you in RPGs. There is no general standard.

In any case, even if we do say it's all bowling, there are different groups with different standards, no? Some are in leagues, and very serious about their bowling - you don't have any problem with people having different standards than you, do you?

What does this mean about how to design a game? Well, you can design for the more serious group, or the less serious group. But doing a Least Common Denominator sort of thing isnt' really going to make the lax player OK with the serious ones, and will likely be something that the serious ones don't want to play at all.

I'm not saying that this means these games shouldn't be made at all. In fact, the Infamous Five say that one should, if one wants to get more people playing. But this doesn't mean that this is the only direction to go in with respect to design. One can design just as validly for the "serious" niche as well.

Mike

I agree one hundred percent.

I have an anecdote that underscores the different standards; it specifically connects to Mike's comment about the player who fell asleep.

In one of E. R. Jones' games, the player characters made camp, and one of the players said, "My character goes to bed." The player promptly passed out at the table.

Everyone ignored him, went about the stuff they wanted to do in camp. It was probably an hour later that they were finishing up that part of the game, and someone said they were going to break camp and resume their journey.

The sleeping player promptly woke up and asked what was happening and what the plans were for the next day.

The referee gave him a substantial points award for great role playing.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: . . . the player characters made camp, and one of the players said, "My character goes to bed." The player promptly passed out at the table.

Ron Edwards wrote: I think Robin Laws calls this the "Social Gamer," which I'm not sure is the best term because in some ways I think it's asocial relative to the activity at hand.* .

There's a term used in psychology: "social loafing." Basically, it means that when there's a group of people all faced with a situation, everyone in the group is less likely to take action than each would individually. For example, an injured person is more likely to get helped if there's only *one* other person nearby than if there's a crowd.

If you think of a typical gaming group this way, you can see how this effect will (even without anyone desiring it) cause some players to fade into the background. Of course, this effect vanishes if people are called out individually -- remember the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where the little girl breaks up the mob by calling people out by name?

To take it a step further, this may explain the effectiveness of the "party-less" model of gaming typified by Sorcerer, where each character is his own player's responsibility and may be acting independently of every other character.

Social loafing? They use that as a term? Wow, way to use polarised terminology...it's sort of like calling what people drive to work in a non flying machine. That accident example is one where everyone chokes because they don't know who's responsible for what and everyones so well trained to behave they'll do nothing rather than cross any lines of rank ("Perhaps I should call an ambulance...wait, what if that's not the right thing to do...I'm not certain, I don't want to make things worse! etc"). Which all goes away if there's only one other person, of course.

It's quite easy for a 'lazy' player to be one who doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to be doing.

Vaxalon wrote: From the Traveller thread in Actual Play:

"Lots of people don't like the pressure of having to come up with their own material. They just want to hang out or be entertained."

Thinking back on this, I can think of a few people I have met that fit this description, but not more than a half dozen in all my years of play... are there a lot of people out there like this?

Vaxalon wrote: I think this kind of gamer is someone that authors and GM's need to keep in mind.

Valamir wrote: I'd actually disagree, Fred. I think this type of gamer is exactly the sort who should be entirely ignored. Games should be designed around the desires of the active engaged gamers not the distracted just hanging out slackers.
---snip!--
If the social activity was playing city league softball and you had a couple of players who just showed up to hang out you wouldn't put them on the field unless you were desperate for warm bodies.

Vaxalon wrote: Well, there's a difference, I think, between people who just LIE there, and people who are only making a minimal contribution.

This kind of player rolls the dice when it's his turn, knows the rules, and stays focused on the game... but he's either not very creative or doesn't share the fruits of his creativity. He's not very good at writing a backstory, doesn't engage in RP with NPC's, and his characters usually hang out with someone who's more active.

Lorenzo Rubbo-Ferraro wrote: I think there is a legitimate place for those who want to be entertained though. I GM for kids and they are extremely enthusiastic about playing, they want to be entertained and play a part in a cool story.
---snip!--
To me they are a different kettle of fish to the unenthusiastic slacker.

Noon wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: Well, at that point you're kind of talking about some varieties of LARP.

I was more lamenting that we couldn't rip off what makes sports games work, to make a typical RPG work (perhaps an atypical one, though)

Vaxalon wrote: Every game I have been to, there has been at least one person out of the group of six or eight that have said, "Oh, I'll just keep score." Someone who, for whatever reason, wasn't prepared to actually roll the ball, but participated at a lesser level.

Doctor Xero wrote: This is why game-masterless play and strong author stance make little sense to me : when I want to be game-masterless or author not actor, I sit at my computer writing my stories rather than direct my creative energies into something as ephemeral or closed as a game.

Doctor Xero wrote:

Noon wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: Well, at that point you're kind of talking about some varieties of LARP.

I was more lamenting that we couldn't rip off what makes sports games work, to make a typical RPG work (perhaps an atypical one, though)

Actually, I know a lot of people who enjoy intellectual and creative exercises but find boring or out-and-out hate the exercises necessary to maintain a high caliber physical ability. They would find playing sports far more "work" than playing RPGs and enjoy even the paperwork involved.

Vaxalon wrote: GM-less play is like stone soup. The contributors don't, by themselves, have enough creative energy to do the whole job, but when they pool their talents they can make something that's greater than the sum of its parts.