I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this...If it isn't and a moderator wants to move it, or whatever, please feel free to do so...

I've been starting to read through things, motivated by the fact that I am looking to recruit some new players.

The biggest problem I have with recruiting new players is communicating my play style. I'm also trying to decide what system to run (currently primarily considering Fudge, but The Riddle of Steel has some appealing points).

I think from what I understand of GNS so far is that I am primarily Simulationist but with a strong desire for Narativism. I mostly reject Gamism (though I can enjoy Gamism sometimes). Of course as a GM, I have to work with my players also.

I like to run games in a rich setting that has room for players to explore and find their own interests. I also enjoy running tactical combats. I don't tend to enjoy running political intrigue (I'm thinking I'm turned off by apparent Gamist attudes in politics). I don't want to drive a story all by myself. Since I don't have the time, I tend to like using other people's settings (with Glorantha being one of my long time favorites, but currently I'm looking at Tekumel).

One thing I really want to experiment with is some explicit mechanics for giving the players more authority. I wish I had been more persistent in looking for a Universalis demo at GenCon. I'm intrigued by the possibilities of using Universalis as a tool to establish player interests.

I'm also struggling some with how to put trust in my players so that giving them more authority will be successeful. One of the reasons I GM is that I hate being on the losing side of Gamism which has so dominated my previous play experience. I have also had Gamist players trample games I've run (in fact, our most recent campaign, a D20 campaign collapsed when Gamism reared it's head).

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of D20 Gamism, but there must be plenty of players out there looking for something different...

Thanks for any thoughts and encouragement...

Frank

I've wrestled with (and still wrestle with) the same questions. And folks have gifted me with a lot of advice. So I'll try to paraphrase some of it back: What you want to play has nothing to do with what Creative Agenda you're playing in. If everybody at the table intensely wants to play Narrativist, and to tell stories centering around themes, but somehow week after week they end up doing meaningless dungeon crawls and killing bunches of orcs then they are playing a Gamist Creative Agenda?

How can you tell? Because when the unconsidered decision of "Do we follow story or maintain our tactics?" comes up, they answer for tactics every time. Not because they consciously want to, but because they believe, or have been trained, on some level that tactics trumps story. That story gets to happen only after tactical concerns have been addressed.

The rules system can seriously influence those unconsidered decisions. Ignore it at your peril. I tried (indeed am still trying) to run Narrativist Amber, for instance, with a group that intensely wants to do it... but somehow, whenever I look back at what has actually been decided, it's all a mix of Sim and Gamist, without a Premise (much less the addressing of one) in sight. And that's with everybody consciously on-board with the process. You've already pointed out how one or two people who are in synch with the game system (i.e. deliberate gamists in D20) get disproportionate power to dictate what is important.

So... don't know whether that will provide insight or confusion. But it's the advice I've got, right here, today.

Hi Frank,

Welcome to the Forge!

I'd like to keep this thread here in Actual Play, which will do best if you post a bit about the games that you've played most recently, and how they did or didn't satsify you.

As food for thought, consider that the "fear of Gamism" is actually largely unnecessary unless there are people you're playing with who are committed to it - in which case no rules-based "defense" is going to work. I think that many Simulationist-leaning habits are practiced, by some people, as an attempt at anti-Gamist defense, and that such an effort is largely futile. (This is distinct from a dedicated Simulationist approach, which by contrast has many joyous qualities.)

Instead, the solution is to be in play with folks who are on-board, up-front, with your Creative Agenda (and you with theirs), of whatever stripe.

So again, what game systems and scope of play are we talking about? Lots of players, or a few? Related to one another, or any romantic connections among them? Basic age range? Have you played a single game for a long time, or bounced around a bit?

Best,
Ron

Ok, to start to try and answer the questions...

My most recent campaign was D20 using Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed which I ran for about 9 months. Players averaged 7 per session. Ages ranged from 2 kids aged 10ish to the oldest at 44 or so. The two most committed players are a young couple (in their 20s). I think the wife is there mostly to allow her husband to play. She is very hard to engage in play, in part due to psychological issues (I'm not sure what here condition is and haven't really delved into it). One of the kids has been very unengaged and shows up with her father. I'm not sure what her agenda is (I fear it's mostly daddy's agenda, but she also isn't exhibiting "I don't want to be here" behaviors - mostly I think she's intimidated by the adults). Daddy is one of the most Gamist players. The other kid is very engaged and tends to play Gamist at some level. He has also been nicknamed "the character of the week player" for his frequent character changes (either showing up with a new character and abandoning an old one, or letting an old character die). His mother is probably a Narativist with Similationist overtones but has become way less available (she's very politically active). The next player has played Gamist, playing the primary spell caster, but expressed frustration at having to do so (so here's where System is coming into play in part, plus I'm sure my style hasn't helped even if some of my style is defensive). The last player has only played a few sessions and started off with a "let's play a piss everyone off character" followed by a rather Gamist character.

My approach to the game was to try and present balanced encounters (which I think D20 actually helps far more than any previous incarnation of D&D), but the efforts of encounter prep sucked so much of my energy that I had little to spare on developing the world etc. An uninspiring [to me] setting contributed to this (I used the Diamond Throne setting that is default for Arcana Unearthed). The biggest frustration beyond the prep time was the acknowledgement that the primary spell caster dominated the tactical encounters. I tried to find out character motivations but had trouble getting them. The spell caster had an interesting background that I just couldn't get into. The final session he suddenly decided it was time to force his background to come into play which resulted in a serious butting of heads (he had not even indicated availability for the session until the last minute, so I had prepared something entirely different) as he decided to teleport back to town (I hate teleportation...) to pursue his agenda. Daddy, who had stonewalled on the previous adventure joined him in this 90 degree turn. In a system where I felt comfortable winging things, I would have been very willing to accodate them (so one of my biggest demands on a system is that it be a lot more open to winging encounters - however it might accomplish that). Fortunately daddy did finally suggest a compromise that I send the spell caster back to the planned adventure as an information source. That final session was frustrating in a lot of ways (as I had tried hard to counter the dominance of the spell caster - and failed) though the newest player did shine in the end by taking the final encounter which required use of a robe and another item previously and convincing some natives that he was their king returned.

My ideal group size is 6 people, but I end up recruiting more players to maintain a decent number of players at sessions. I have yet to run a campaign that was so enthralling that I didn't have to worry about folks not showing up. I often steal modules from other games to use as a basis for adventure settings, though I also run some less structured sessions.

My previous campaign was running a college friend's home brew (which is probably a fantasy heartbreaker). It ran for about 5 months though never with very good attendance. I used the Talislanta setting and started with a couple Talislanta fans but they left after two or three sessionscomplaining about the hack 'n' slash (but also were driving quite a distance to get there) and lack of Talislanta focus. The spell caster from the D20 campaign and one other player were the only consistent players throughout the 5 or 6 sessions we managed. The system was certainly a Simulationist defense against Gameism (and probably succeeded better than many due to being developed in a very demanding environment). Unfortunately, while there is a lot that I like about the system, it also is very weak in character development (it's basically a combat system and a magic system, with a skill system added on by me). I also found the Talislanta setting very shallow though with a lot of potential, but I never really had a chance to develop the setting (I think there is enough there for me to take and run with). Sometime I'd love to talk to other game designers about the system (but now is not the time) and see where folks might run with some of the best aspects of it - there's some seeds that deserve proper planting and nurture.

Digging into my past, one of my favorite campaigns was a Glorantha/RuneQuest campaign with 2 very dedicated players and several less dedicated players. One of the two dedicated players was a Glorantha fan and the other dedicated player really enjoyed digging into the setting. We had some very enjoyable unstructured sessions where they dealt with random encounters (talking to, escaping from, or fighting). Most of the "role play" was between the PCs (as the Humakt chided the "tomb robbing" Lankhor Mhy for example). The players and I shared responsibilty for deciding where to go next once we got rolling (I would present them with adventure opportunities some times, and sometimes they would say "I want to investigate X").

Before the homebrew/Talislanta game, I tried a GURPS Talislanta game, and abandoned that after a single session. Several years before that I had tried GURPS another time and wasn't very successeful. I've also played some Everway and really like the character generation, or at least the art driven back story development, though the setting and play mechanics just didn't do it for me. The character development may also be too open ended, though I am attracted to the idea that players are more equal in developing the campaign (but how do you corral things into a consistent setting?). I tried to run Everway combat round by round. I don't lilk Karmic resolution (as a general mechanism - Karmic resolution is fine for non-important tasks though), and the Everway Fortune resolution is way too subjective for my tastes (I really wish I had found the time to play Everway with Jonathan Tweet at Origins to see how he envisioned the game).

I hope that's enough of a start to get everyone asking the right questions and me providing the right answers.

Frank
(who wishes there was a good GNS "test" for whatever it would be worth)

Frank wrote: (T)he efforts of encounter prep sucked so much of my energy that I had little to spare on developing the world etc.

But I didn't really enjoy that aspect, or at least not as much as other aspects. I think mostly I'm good at it because I've had to adapt to Gamist groups. I know I don't like playing Gamist (which is why I really don't enjoy playing most of the time). Part of why I don't like it also comes to how easy it is for me to see through the system. In D&D (and Arcana Unearthed is basically D&D with the serial numbers filed off, and in fact, the way I used it, it was a fantasy heartbreaker), when the spell casters get enough uses of Fireball, they dominate the game. When they run out of fireballs, the party rests. The fighters purpose is to keep the enemies off the mage, and perhaps to herd them into being more efficiently slain by the fireballs.

The games and sessions I have enjoyed the most were not all about the challenge.

At least that's the way I read my interests. I guess I could be horribly wrong.

I wanted to accomodate the player who wanted to teleport back to town, but I also didn't want to flush all that prep down the drain.

Frank

Hiya,

I'm taking you at your word that you have accommodated Gamist expectations during play, without being inclined to do so and without enjoying it a whole lot. So yeah, let's set aside the Gamist stuff.

But let's set aside the others too. I think we should not focus on labelling you, but rather on really finding what you have enjoyed, and why and how.

In fact, that's my question. Please let me know about a single session, in your entire history of role-playing, which was 100% satisfactory to you, especially in terms of everyone else at the table and your interactions with them, with the imaginary events of play being considered in that context.

Best,
Ron

Hmm, very fair question, now to dig deeply into my gaming history... I'm not sure if I've ever had a session that was 100% satisfactory (though I guess it gets a little easier if we discount my worying about one or two players who might not have been engaged by the session).

The first session that comes to mind was in an SF (Traveler based) game. The players had a contact with aliens. We spent most of the session working out how to establish communications from the ground up. I don't remember many details (mostly because I'm not sure we ever had to roll dice), but I remember a very engaging several hours of discussion (of course one of my questions is if this really was roleplay). I think one thing that was part of my sasisfaction was the cooperation between the players and me in coming up with the solution.

Hnmm, one thing I think I get from this thought exericise is that what I really want is two or three totally engaged players. I tend to surround myself with lots of players, but I'm thinking that all my best sessions have been with just a few players.

I'm trying to think if I've had a more recent AHA! session... (I really haven't had that much gaming in the past 15 years since I got out of college).

Frank

The bit about the long collaborative problem solving got me really thinking about my past gaming. I think that prior to coming to the Forge, I never really questioned that the purpose of RPGs was to have a GM present problems that the players could hopefully solve. It was really just a puzzle solving medium. Sadly, the times that we couldn't figure out any elegant solution and we either just resorted to inflicting mass damage or the games fell apart, pretty substantially outnumber the successes.

I think that at least some of my fellows in these games believe(d) that it was about a story being told or a role being played, but I think that's a misunderstanding of what we were doing.

Since I've been focussing on "Forge" games this focus has shifted pretty substantially toward trying cool new ideas and building cool stories.

Frank, saving your previous best experiences for later, and ignoring what you think RPGs can or should deliver, can you isolate what a perfect RP experience would be like -- even if you have never had such an experience? Try to reference your past experiences as little as possible.

Separate question: In this discussion (and in other discussions that we've had in person) trust has come up as an issue. What is it that someone would do to break or violate your trust? If you're keeping them in a sense at arm's length, what slight are you protecting yourself from? I suggested Universalis as a good trust-building exercise for you, but that might actually not be right if I missed the point previously.

Chris

The bit about the long collaborative problem solving got me really thinking about my past gaming. I think that prior to coming to the Forge, I never really questioned that the purpose of RPGs was to have a GM present problems that the players could hopefully solve. It was really just a puzzle solving medium. Sadly, the times that we couldn't figure out any elegant solution and we either just resorted to inflicting mass damage or the games fell apart, pretty substantially outnumber the successes.

I think that at least some of my fellows in these games believe(d) that it was about a story being told or a role being played, but I think that's a misunderstanding of what we were doing.

Frank, saving your previous best experiences for later, and ignoring what you think RPGs can or should deliver, can you isolate what a perfect RP experience would be like -- even if you have never had such an experience? Try to reference your past experiences as little as possible.

Separate question: In this discussion (and in other discussions that we've had in person) trust has come up as an issue. What is it that someone would do to break or violate your trust? If you're keeping them in a sense at arm's length, what slight are you protecting yourself from? I suggested Universalis as a good trust-building exercise for you, but that might actually not be right if I missed the point previously.

For the record, I didn't mean formal puzzles. I meant situations in which a particular series of actions would produce some favorable result. (e.g. you have to talk to the prostitute to learn about the john to find out that he wasn't the guy you're looking for so that you even look for someone else who turns out to be the night guy at 7-11 who is actually blackmailing the john because he banged his wife and got the goods on him but when you find out where he lives, it turns out that his apartment is full of flamable substances so you can't just go in shooting...only you never thought to tail the john's prostitute.)

Frank wrote: I think it's a combination of socialization, creativity, and cooperative problem solving.

Frank wrote: Scheduling issues (not communicating availability and being late)

Frank wrote: Misplaced silliness (I guess this could be generalized to breaking mood - being overly serious in a silly game would be just as bad)

Frank wrote: Forcing competitiveness (I'm having trouble here - I think some competitiveness is valuable, so I don't know what I'm thinking here)

Frank wrote: Taking advantage of freedoms to benefit oneself and not the whole group (selfishness?)

For the record, I didn't mean formal puzzles. I meant situations in which a particular series of actions would produce some favorable result. (e.g. you have to talk to the prostitute to learn about the john to find out that he wasn't the guy you're looking for so that you even look for someone else who turns out to be the night guy at 7-11 who is actually blackmailing the john because he banged his wife and got the goods on him but when you find out where he lives, it turns out that his apartment is full of flamable substances so you can't just go in shooting...only you never thought to tail the john's prostitute.)

So I wonder how much of your issue is play style or focus on GNS placement rather than just hooking up with people you like. Do you like the folks that you're playing with? Have you ever gamed with non-gamers? Is there any opportunity for you to game as part of your church-youth work?

If you're having players who consistently don't show or show up late, I'd suggest playing games where that doesn't harm the game or firing them. I mostly don't have time enough to spend any of it waiting for people to show up. My mother plays in a group where some people are routinely two hours late she bitches but does nothing. I think I'd have my pistol out before the two hour mark :-)

I think this is indicative of the players not all being on the same page about the game. I'm taking this from my experience in education and child rearing, but it's also, I think, a natural response to being in a situation that you are not invested in through power. But is it a really common experience? And how does being GM help negate it for you? Also, who gets to pick the game's mood?

Frank wrote: Forcing competitiveness (I'm having trouble here - I think some competitiveness is valuable, so I don't know what I'm thinking here)

Do you have examples? Or is this really a subset of the next point?

What does benefit mean? Do you care who gets the magic items more or what gets done with them in the end? In general, I think the people I play with care about the fun that I have. Is that not your impression of the games you've been involved with?

Certainly, being isolated socially in a game is unacceptable. And I guess it's impossible if you're the GM. But I think I'd rather whack the root cause rather than lose flexibility. I'd want to know what they thought was going on and why they thought it was OK. I guess it sounds from your brief description like they're snotty teenagers exerting clique power. But I'm assuming that's not the case, else you'd just realize hey, we're grownup now -- that's not a problem anymore.

OK, I still think you should play Universalis. The wonder of a good Uni session comes primarily from your inability to mistrust the other players (in any meaningful way) and seeing how much the outcome rocks. I like the fact that everyone else is GM all attending to my play (except when that's switched around :-).

Hi Frank - welcome, again, to the Forge!

Your posts communicate a whole bunch of different messages to me. Universalis, while eminently worth playing in general, is not going to solve your problems all by itself. Your idea seems to be that if everyone gets together and gets on the same page to create a world, backstory, and characters, then the high level of engagement you fantasize about will be present. This may or may not be so though. If people bring the same attitutes to the Universalis game that they bring to the big game, the degree of investment everyone has is going to be varied and different from the start. And if people don't work creatively with other people's content, you may still have fun, but you'll get a setting that a lot of you may never want to play again - psionic samurai hobbits engaged in courtly intrigue with undead pokemon, or the like.

It seems to me that you've spent a lot of time getting good at one kind of 'casual gaming' - big groups, conflicting agendas, varying levels of player interest, a GM-ringmaster who can kind of keep things moving in spite of this - and can provide a decent sort of low-grade (and maybe for one or two people high-grade) entertainment through that. That's a skill not everyone has, so it's cool that you've developed it. But it also strikes me that you're looking for something more out of RPGs which that kind of game ultimately will only provide in rare, tantalizing moments, that hint at something that 'could be so much cooler, if only...' And then you're fishing about for how to get it by putting together pieces of what seemed cool elsewhere and wondering how they'll fit together.

In other words, you're looking to 'take it to the next level.' I believe you're right to look to the Big Model's concept of Creative Agenda to help you do that - but hold off on the CA labels for now, as others have said. The question you have to ask first is: what kind of experiences, what kind of pleasures do you want out of your gaming? Your posts indicate you want a whole lot of things. You may not be able to get them all at once, but you can get some of them up front and all of them over time if you focus (a) your group on a common creative goal which is (b) manageable and coherent. Note that 'your group' can be 'your several groups who do different things.' You don't have to do everything at once.

Your posts likewise suggest that you've tried to do this some already, and you've discovered that it's really hard to do this with a group that has trust issues, that is unreliable, that is all over the board in terms of different play styles and goals, and so on. This is true! The conclusion is: you've got to put some work into changing (which almost certainly means shrinking) your group into a more cohesive unit. You need to provide some leadership, in other words. You may not be able or comfortable to do this yourself; if not, find one or two other players who you do trust and talk things out with them so that you can all get to something you want to do together.

Let me reflect some of your comments back to you with some observations of my own:

----------------

"I like to run games in a rich setting that has room for players to explore and find their own interests." As examples of such settings you mention several of my faves, including Glorantha, Tekumel, Talislanta, and Everway.

The 'rich setting that has room for players to explore' thing, believe it or not, is already setting yourself up for trouble, when combined with the big group with the varying interest levels. You can do it to a limited degree with all the settings you mention, but to really make that approach work, you have to have players who are interested in exploring that setting! If you don't have people who are, then you have a couple of choices. You can try to hook people into a competitive scenario and hope they latch on to the setting elements and color you're grooving on, making a focus on exploration a plausible later goal of the game; or you can try to provide a compelling narrative, getting them hooked into a complicated web of intrigue and momentous individual decisions, ditto. Nothing wrong with that - if, what you really want, at the end of the day, is to explore the imaginative content of the magisterial creations of Barker or Stafford, or engross yourself in the minutia of the Cthulhu mythos, or what have you, and your players want that too. It is unlikely, though, that if you don't set up the exploration of setting as a theme up front, that more than one or two of your players will ever get really, really into it.

I won't say this never happens - it does, sometimes. But to just sort of throw a rich setting out there to explore often confuses people - especially if they're just following their own interests. What are those interests? If they're there to kill monsters and get treasure, the setting winds up being mostly annoying except when it relates directly to the challenge. If they're there to make narrative decisions - two lovers desire your hand in marriage, and you can choose only one, e.g. - again, the setting is only going to become interesting insofar as it informs, enriches, or complicates those choices.

The idea of a world, especially a rich world that is alien from what most of your players are familiar with, as a 'big sandbox' utterly open to any kind of player input does not help people find what they really want out of their game. This is a myth. If you're running dungeons, than a big map with three towns and five dungeons ready to go can be more fun, because the players are getting involved in higher-level decisions about the challenges they're going to face. If it's not clear at all what you're going to do, then the big sandbox just makes things worse. One guy wants to find out what's behind the mountain and research the history when he gets there, another guy wants to find his cousin who betrayed him and get revenge, and a third guy wants to collect heads and treasure.

---------------------

You enjoy running tactical combats, but you don't like being on the losing side of Gamism. Hence you GM a lot. You seem to have figured this out already, but, brother, don't play 3e D&D. Good players in a 3e game will hand you your ass on a regular basis, and you'll constantly have to recalibrate the challenges - as you found yourself spending all your time doing in the AU game you played.

Lots of old school D&D players dislike this element of 3e; the Castles & Crusades folks claim they have the answer, which for all I know they may. But I think that the GM is involved in Step on Up in 3e in a much bigger way than in any previous edition of the game; you can fail at running a combat dramatically, and it reflects poorly on you if you do. GMs have less control over how things go in 3e than they used to. If you like Gamism which leaves the GM out of the competition, where the GM is mostly a kind of facilitator for player challenge, get a different game - there are lots of them from the seventies and eighties which will accomodate your needs. But I'm not sure this is even really what you're looking for...see below...

---------------

I think you're really answering your own question with your accounts of the satisfying Runequest and Traveller games. You need small groups of engaged players, not big groups of less engaged ones. Both of these games sound like they used a fixed goal, or a player choice of different fixed goals, (here's these mysterious places and problems that need solving) to enable long hours of enjoyable Simulationist play (exploration, investigation, in-character problem solving and role-playing, lots of time asking 'how can we accomplish this?' questions).

If you like this, you should be a pretty happy camper. Lots of the old games facilitate this kind of play well, and there are lots of experienced gamers who like this kind of play out there, and are good at it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try new things, but here you are, saying 'this was fun'!, and then not doing what you need to do to get that kind of fun again! Take the three most engaged players from your current group, get some shared imaginative content you like, lay down the foundation of loose goals, and have fun exploring!

This diagnosis also fits with your taste in settings, BTW, though all of those settings can certainly be used for other kinds of play as well. But if you're really interested in exploring the setting, as opposed to using it to enable, say, clan-versus-religion personal conflicts on Tekumel, or reinterpretation of myths on Glorantha, or whatever, then it seems like this is what you really want to be doing.

Try some new things as well, by all means! But do notice that in the past most of your fun seems to have come from this small-group, jointly engaged Simulationist approach.

---------------

I don't know if that was helpful or not, but if it wasn't, maybe your responses to these questions and reflections will make things clearer.

Your posts communicate a whole bunch of different messages to me. Universalis, while eminently worth playing in general, is not going to solve your problems all by itself. Your idea seems to be that if everyone gets together and gets on the same page to create a world, backstory, and characters, then the high level of engagement you fantasize about will be present. This may or may not be so though. If people bring the same attitutes to the Universalis game that they bring to the big game, the degree of investment everyone has is going to be varied and different from the start. And if people don't work creatively with other people's content, you may still have fun, but you'll get a setting that a lot of you may never want to play again - psionic samurai hobbits engaged in courtly intrigue with undead pokemon, or the like.

It seems to me that you've spent a lot of time getting good at one kind of 'casual gaming' - big groups, conflicting agendas, varying levels of player interest, a GM-ringmaster who can kind of keep things moving in spite of this - and can provide a decent sort of low-grade (and maybe for one or two people high-grade) entertainment through that. That's a skill not everyone has, so it's cool that you've developed it. But it also strikes me that you're looking for something more out of RPGs which that kind of game ultimately will only provide in rare, tantalizing moments, that hint at something that 'could be so much cooler, if only...' And then you're fishing about for how to get it by putting together pieces of what seemed cool elsewhere and wondering how they'll fit together.

In other words, you're looking to 'take it to the next level.' I believe you're right to look to the Big Model's concept of Creative Agenda to help you do that - but hold off on the CA labels for now, as others have said. The question you have to ask first is: what kind of experiences, what kind of pleasures do you want out of your gaming? Your posts indicate you want a whole lot of things. You may not be able to get them all at once, but you can get some of them up front and all of them over time if you focus (a) your group on a common creative goal which is (b) manageable and coherent. Note that 'your group' can be 'your several groups who do different things.' You don't have to do everything at once.

Your posts likewise suggest that you've tried to do this some already, and you've discovered that it's really hard to do this with a group that has trust issues, that is unreliable, that is all over the board in terms of different play styles and goals, and so on. This is true! The conclusion is: you've got to put some work into changing (which almost certainly means shrinking) your group into a more cohesive unit. You need to provide some leadership, in other words. You may not be able or comfortable to do this yourself; if not, find one or two other players who you do trust and talk things out with them so that you can all get to something you want to do together.

"I like to run games in a rich setting that has room for players to explore and find their own interests." As examples of such settings you mention several of my faves, including Glorantha, Tekumel, Talislanta, and Everway.

The 'rich setting that has room for players to explore' thing, believe it or not, is already setting yourself up for trouble, when combined with the big group with the varying interest levels. You can do it to a limited degree with all the settings you mention, but to really make that approach work, you have to have players who are interested in exploring that setting!

I won't say this never happens - it does, sometimes. But to just sort of throw a rich setting out there to explore often confuses people - especially if they're just following their own interests. What are those interests? If they're there to kill monsters and get treasure, the setting winds up being mostly annoying except when it relates directly to the challenge. If they're there to make narrative decisions - two lovers desire your hand in marriage, and you can choose only one, e.g. - again, the setting is only going to become interesting insofar as it informs, enriches, or complicates those choices.

You enjoy running tactical combats, but you don't like being on the losing side of Gamism. Hence you GM a lot. You seem to have figured this out already, but, brother, don't play 3e D&D. Good players in a 3e game will hand you your ass on a regular basis, and you'll constantly have to recalibrate the challenges - as you found yourself spending all your time doing in the AU game you played.

I think you're really answering your own question with your accounts of the satisfying Runequest and Traveller games. You need small groups of engaged players, not big groups of less engaged ones. Both of these games sound like they used a fixed goal, or a player choice of different fixed goals, (here's these mysterious places and problems that need solving) to enable long hours of enjoyable Simulationist play (exploration, investigation, in-character problem solving and role-playing, lots of time asking 'how can we accomplish this?' questions).

If you like this, you should be a pretty happy camper. Lots of the old games facilitate this kind of play well, and there are lots of experienced gamers who like this kind of play out there, and are good at it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try new things, but here you are, saying 'this was fun'!, and then not doing what you need to do to get that kind of fun again! Take the three most engaged players from your current group, get some shared imaginative content you like, lay down the foundation of loose goals, and have fun exploring!

Try some new things as well, by all means! But do notice that in the past most of your fun seems to have come from this small-group, jointly engaged Simulationist approach.

I don't know if that was helpful or not, but if it wasn't, maybe your responses to these questions and reflections will make things clearer.

The kid who played the character of the week holds promise. He asked if he could borrow some Tekumel material to read up on. He will need some coaching, but he holds enough promise I think I'm willing to do that coaching. His mother will be an asset to the game when she is available again.

Hi Frank,

Are you sure about that? Why not have just two?

Yeah. Just two. You know you would prefer small groups. Why not get a great game going with these guys, and let word of mouth add one or two more over time, and then close entry?

Best,
Ron

It's an interesting thought. Of course it would sort of be three (including the wife). The question I need to answer for myself is whether these two/three will result in a game that is better than not playing. Probably the answer is yes. I did have a heck of a good time running Another Fine Mess with just these players (and I had a good time running demos of Rune Quest and a friend's homebrew for the husband and wife).

I don't expect any of these players to really generate contacts with other players outside the influence the kid has on his mother. Of course the mother is pretty likely to play if her schedule allows, and she will be a most welcome player. There's a possibility she might drag along their housemate.

I guess I would be more confident if I could understand the players interests better. But then perhaps I don't need to completely understand it, and just deliver my best. These players are most definitely the most enthusiastic and dedicated players from the AU campaign, which suggests that their needs are being met pretty well (either that or there's disfunctional play going on that I'm not comprehending). Even the wife is being engaged on some level judging by her contributions to the discussions about the games.

Well, I'll be spending this weekend in simulationist preparation heaven, figuring out how to bash Fudge into shape for use with Tekumel...

Thanks for the ideas and encouragement.

Frank