One of the basic mechanics of Nobilis is that at the end of every play session, the Familia (associated PC's) get a Dynasty Point (or DP, generic do-anything divine energy) with the sole condition that they all had fun.

Last night, as I always do at the end of a Nobilis session, I said, "So, did everyone have fun?"

One of the players said, "Actually, I was kinda bored." I was a little taken aback. I recovered quickly, however, and we started talking about why this player was bored, what I could do to help, and we got the game back on an even keel.

This morning I was debating whether or not to award the DP anyways. Then it hit me... this was part of the design. Rather that piping up at the end of the session, this system rewards players for speaking up early when things are going wrong. If that player had said, "Hey, look, we've been hunting down clues for two and a half sessions now, and I feel like we're running around in circles. What can we do to get back on track?" the game would have been improved.

So I'm not going to award the DP. I'll remind the players about the mechanic at the beginning of the next session, and remind them of their responsibility to speak up if they're not having fun BEFORE the end of the session.

Hi Fred,

That's a good insight. If they want DPs, they need to communicate more about having fun during play itself.

Here's my question: what did the player say, or rather, what did the group discuss, upon his revelation? Do I understand that he said, as you wrote,

"Hey, look, we've been hunting down clues for two and a half sessions now, and I feel like we're running around in circles. What can we do to get back on track?"

I'm not that familiar with the Nobilis reward system but I will comment on something I've learned from studying corporate compensation practices: People will do what it is you are rewarding them to do...so be very careful that you're rewarding the right behavior. The corrollary to this is that people's behavior also follows the path of least resistance. Which means that while people will do what it is you reward them to do, they are very adept at finding the easiest least-effort way of getting credit for doing it.

This mechanic (as you've described it) doesn't reward players for having fun. It rewards them for saying that they had fun. It also doesn't reward them for piping up mid game to offer input...they get nothing more for doing that than they would by taking the much easier route of just lying at the end of the session.

So what the mechanic (again as described as I don't know the full text) actually rewards is players lying to the GM about how much fun they had.

What you are really interested in, however, is player participation in a) alerting you when they aren't having fun and b) helping find a solution that is more fun.

I think that what would work better is to award the Dynasty Point directly for a and b. When a player pipes up and says "Hey look we've been hunting down clues...what can we do to get back on track" have a brief pow wow session with the players then and their. If they can all agree on what would be more fun award the DP then.

If at the end of the session they indicate that they did not have fun get them to indicate what they would find more fun or more interesting. If you can incorporate that into your suggestions for the following session and it works well, award the DP then.


I think that would have better results. It meets the 2 most important criteria for effective compensation. The reward should occur timely enough and tied to a recognizable action that you want the individual to duplicate, and the action should be one that the person can exert direct influence on through their own efforts. Waiting until the end of the session removes much of the timeliness of the reward and whether someone did or didn't have something as vague as "fun" is not really a directly controlable variable. But whether someone does take the time and make the effort to participate in shaping the direction of play IS something that is both recognizeable and measurable.

Hi Fred,
I actually wish I could've been there for that conversation. Sorry that my F2F game was scheduled on Monday. Originally, I had marked
myself down as unavailable to play on Monday night, but this Monday seemed to be the only night that the majority of the group could
show up.

As a dose of instant karma, I went the wrong way around 495 and it wound up taking me an extra 30-45 minutes to get home. Sheesh.
I'm really dragging today as a result. I do wish I could've participate in that discussion though because, although I am enjoying the game,
I'm not enjoying it as much as I feel I could be.

My biggest personal obstacle in the game is figuring out what to do. I'm relatively new to Nobilis. I've read the whole book once and the players'
portions of it twice. There's a lot of information in that book and some of it didn't stick and I'm sure I'll find that even more hasn't stuck as time wears on. It did take me more than two reading of Ron's Sorcerer to finally "get it" on that one. So, while I'm not mentally deficient, I may not be the brightest bulb in the pack.

It sounds to me like you heard this already. But I really don't know what to do. Heaven's going to ram a highway through our backyard. Our
imperator is sorta "well, okay... you guys work it out..." and last game we didn't get much else going on that. We've all come up with ideas of what we could do to find out how we could stop/impede or otherwise delay what seems pretty well inevitable but there also seems to be a very strong "party" mentality going on.

So, if my Noble decided to skulk off and search through the Acomoniom Woods, how would/could he? Cages spent almost the entire first session "somewhere else" but it didn't seem like he got to play all that much (unless he was playing something through PM).

So, from a story standpoint, the game's hit me like a Call-of-Cthulhu-esque logjam. All the "investigators" *want* to do something. But they don't know where to start. IME, now is the time that the GM would start throwing out ideas or facilitating the brainstorming process. In a CoC game, the GM would be saying: "You know, there's this ancient tome in the library at Miskatonic U..." or "An old lady in that house up there is
rumored to know how to run those "evil spirits" off..."

But last game (again, I don't know about this one), we spent most of the time chatting back and forth about what we could do and why we should do it, sort of fishing for this kind of direction. After the game, your
advice on how to proceed was excellent. I'm surprised that the group didn't follow up on that better but I would've also liked that
direction a bit earlier in the evening.

Another difficulty is stance. This is a group issue, though, and not, IMO, a GM issue. When I showed up, I was expecting a heavier lean
towards a Narrativist stance. I met you on the Forge and thought that there would be more use of Author and even Director stances, which
I think would work really well for Nobilis considering the power levels involved.

So, I created a very conflicted character that I felt would be easy to really work into. First off, he's a ghost. A suicide who slit his wrists with a razor and then was made "Noble of Blades" but he reached an epiphany at the point of his death, realizing the mistake he'd made. He values life more now as a ghost than he ever did as a human even though his Power involves the taking of human life. He also is affiliated with the Dark as you suggested, which (balanced with their own predispositions) translates into the very essence of being human is the concept of free will.

For him, this is life itself and the ultimate expression of it is its abnegation.
Thus, he hates his ex-girlfriend who he feels made that choice on his behalf, pushing him towards abnegation. And he has fallen in love
with his other Anchor who has a fearlessness and fire that he could only imagine. He's also bonded his infant nephew.

I tried to come up with a lot for us to play with. We have the relationship between his ex and him. His new love and him (and her parents as well
as her corporeal suitors). And his sister (whose child he likely possesses from time to time) and him. I think these are some conflicts and issues that bring us pretty deep into the swimming pool to use Ron's analogy.

But they've been set aside for the storyline of heaven running a highway through our chancel. Which is fine, but had I known up front that
we weren't going to play Narr, I personally would've built a different character... and here's why.

It's the stance thing (getting back to what was originally my third point). I realized about a half-hour into the campaign that this was going to be Sim. We were going to be playing in a set-up storyline and going from there. This wasn't going to be a game about the Noble of Blades who made a terrible mistake. I was confused on the stances.

So, I went into Sim. Then there were a number of players who were confusing my character for me. It's a dark character. A highly conflicted character. There's no way he's going to want a highway to heaven
through his backyard. But it seemed a significant number of the group was resenting me for "not jumping on board".

So I was and am confused in terms of the group dynamic. It seems Sim. I'm in the IC channel. I'm IC. Yet getting snarked on in the OOC channel? It seems there is a fundamental disconnect happening within the Social Contract.

I expected Narr, even though it wasn't really discussed much. I got Sim. So now I'm playing Sim but I'm not really sure what some of the other group members are up to.

Again, this is something perhaps we, as a group, should discuss but not something that I could fault you or any of us for. When I'm in the
IC channel, I'm IC. I don't see why, or how, that translates over to OOC. I'm the first person to mock my own characters at times (just ask Mike H.).
Yep, the Noble of Blades is melancholic. But he is a suicide... And honestly is pretty ticked that everyone else gets to eat chocolate but him. :)

Again, I wish I could've been a part of that conversation online. I'm not trying to bash you or jump on you here. So please don't take it that
way. I do think that there are some things about the game that could improve my enjoyment of it. Others could be echoing my sentiments or
not. Either way, it's what the group wants that finalizes it, IMO.

Just one last thing, though, if it's not too much to pile on you. Is it really important to play scenes through PM? Mike doesn't do it in his ShadowWorld HeroQuest game and I actually prefer that way. Last game, you went PM with two players for a while and the chat room just went
idle. I though I'd gotten booted off IRC. Personally, I like reading what other people are up to. It passes the time while I wait my "turn"
so to speak. Also, Bonnie got real mixed up over whatever the imperator told her, causing you to correct her assumption OOC. If we'd all been
privy to the information, I don't think that would've happened. As it was it ate up about 15 minutes of playtime.

So, as a recap (in case anyone just wants to scan to the bottom), I'd like it, if you plan to keep taking us in a Sim direction, if you'd help us out in the OOC channel during play. Please give us some ideas. I'm about the median in terms of setting knowledge and if the well is running dry on me... Also, I think we should look at Creative Agendas/Social Contract as a group. We sort of went over "Rules of Play" Social Contract stuff like don't swear at each other and keeping both hands on the keyboard but we never discussed what we expected out of the game.

I think that could be beneficial. And, lastly, PMing may be cool for one or two players who are involved but for me it's just dead air. Is it really something that's so important that the rest of the group honestly should not know?

And, in closing, please take all this with a grain of salt. I'm not trying to floor you. I'm trying to help. I respect the heck out of you because you're willing to even run Nobilis. I've always been intimidated by it. But playing in your game and seeing how you're running it is really getting my brainpan going on being able to maybe run it in a tabletop environment one day. I appreciate what you're doing and, even though this is probably longer than it should be (or needs to be; which is the story of ALL my posts), I am learning from you and am highly attentive to all you're doing. So, thanks. And I, for one, would like to try and help out. Just let me know how.

Scott

Sorry that last post was so long. I got strapped for time, as it was, and had to cut out for a few. So, although this was intended to be in the last post, it'll just be one heckuva postscript.

As far as the Dynasty Point for having fun, I'd have to say I'm siding with Ralph on it at the moment. Again, for a number of long and drawn out reasons that I'm going to be more than happy to type out here...

I think it does reward players for just saying they had fun. But in a different way than Ralph states.

Fun is relative. Was the session two Mondays ago fun? Yeah. Overall, I'd say it was fun. It was more fun than what I would've done (clean my room). But was it more fun than, say, watching Army of Darkness? Or playing a game of Risk 2210? I think the examples are pretty clear. Fun is completely relative. Awarding a group on the basis of whether or not they found something fun isn't really valid, IMO.

There were points of the game that I was having a really good time. High points, if you will. There were also points where I wasn't having a really good time. Based on where those points fell in regards to the end of the game, my response might've been skewed either way.

I think it's also important to point out that these awards are for the entire *group* as well. Not just the individual players. So, if Bonnie and Chains had been expressing displeasure at my character's unwillingness to lay down and let the Chancel be run through by St. Peter's Subway more towards the end, my reply might've been different just because of the residuals of being "the guy" that the group is getting snarky over.

Beyond that, I think it's also important to take into effect that for someone to deny the group that point that person would've had to have had a really rotten time. As Ralph points out, very few people are going to chime in against the group. Most will just sort of shrug and say. "Yeah, it was pretty cool." Which gives you, the GM, the wrong impression, IMO, especially over a modem.

And then, in a final note, we need to consider the group dynamic. I agree that the assumed effect of the rule is that people will speak up during the game when they aren't happy. But I don't think that's necessarily what the in-game effect would be.

My take on the dynasty point rule is that it probably works okay F2F. In that situation, you could look across the table and see that Bob wasn't having a good time and ask him about it. IME, most players need that kind of prompt to know it's okay to say "I'm not having a good time." But online. "Sure, it was okay" falls into the same box as "Yeah, it was cool" and neither of them tell any of us much.

And then there's Rule #5: "During play, we should avoid talking about anything but the game, even OOCly." I understand why that's there. I understand it's purpose. But I also think it stymies a group dynamic. Personally, I don't care what people talk about OOC, as long as it's not plain bile focused at another participant. Especially in a chat room, I think OOC chat is pretty important. If all I ever do is talk to the other participants in character or about things that are happening in the game, am I going to feel comfortable speaking up when I'm not having a good time and it seems they are or are just being mum about it?

And when should players talk about problems? If the only time they're asked about it is at the end of the game and, functionally, they're penalized for answering honestly, isn't that kind of problematic? I think so.

As you can see above, there are issues that I had with the game. Not deal breakers, mind you, but definitely issues that lessened my enjoyment of the game. Would I say that "I didn't have fun..." at the expense of losing the only currency of advancement available to the group as a whole?

Definitely not.

Now whether that's a debate for how functional the mechanic itself is or a debate for the social psychology of a group of near total strangers is fair game. I have no answers on the tip of my tongue.

But I'm speaking here as a participant of the game and an observant. I presented what I found less enjoyable and what I hoped to be constructive suggestions as to how they could be resolved. Usually when we finish, it's beyond time for me to go to bed for work the next morning. I don't have time for long discussions such as this to state what I see as a potential problem and then work towards a solution. But then, are the mere presence of bumps in the road reason enough to say I'm not having a good time? Do I really want the rest of the group to dislike me (more than they already do) because there are a couple of things I need to air out? And, even more, can I really get through this kind of discussion in a chat room in the 15 minutes I have to still get 5 hours of sleep tonight?

I hope this has helped. I also hope it has added a different perspective on the complications that this mechanic introduces to roleplaying in the online environment.

Again, sorry for the lengthy post but, if I didn't care, I just wouldn't show up.

Scott

Wow, some of this feels really familiar to my online Nobilis game...

I find Nobilis a little tricky to run, as much as I love it, because there are just *so* many ways things could go, and it's hard to find a default structure for a Nobilis game.

In particular, it's tricky because my game (and most games I read about online) have several different levels of game:

--the Excrucian War
--the big picture cosmology stuff, with Heaven and Hell and the World Ash, and your Imperator's place in it all
--the society of Nobles, with rival Familias and Cammorrans and nettle rites
--the Familia-level plot, with Nobles trying to get along with each other
--the individual Noble, who in the process of Chargen has created his or her own issues, dependent NPC's, plot hooks...

So that's at least five separate levels, and the Noble PC's are empowered to address and explore any of these levels almost at will. I think people get inhibited by the sense of limitlessness. That seemed to get better in my game once people got more comfortable with the story and as I got more comfortable using Bangs. (A brief aside: Bangs seem to work great for Nobilis!)

I haven't found any great solution for this, but I've tried lots of things. Since my game runs on a forum, I made use of the "Polls" feature to get anonymous feedback. That was actually fairly helpful, in that people clearly indicated that they wanted more interaction with their pet NPC's and a little less romantic byplay. That may not be much, but it was more constructive feedback than I've gotten by asking for it directly, so there you are.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Here's my question: what did the player say, or rather, what did the group discuss, upon his revelation? Do I understand that he said, as you wrote,
.... what did everyone else say? What observations or commitments did you make? Are you inspired about stuff you can do differently as GM for next time, and do you think that they are similarly inspired about stuff they can do differently as players?

Ron Edwards wrote: Finally, in many cases, observations such as this comment are made well out of the context of play, usually at a one-to-one level, and they often turn into tense, near-hostile accusations among members of a group. It seems to me that turning into it into a formalized reward mechanism helped keep this from happening among your group. What are your thoughts on that?

Valamir wrote: People will do what it is you are rewarding them to do....

DannyK wrote: .... several different levels of game:

--the Excrucian War
--the big picture cosmology stuff, with Heaven and Hell and the World Ash, and your Imperator's place in it all
--the society of Nobles, with rival Familias and Cammorrans and nettle rites
--the Familia-level plot, with Nobles trying to get along with each other
--the individual Noble, who in the process of Chargen has created his or her own issues, dependent NPC's, plot hooks...

So that's at least five separate levels, and the Noble PC's are empowered to address and explore any of these levels almost at will..

Vaxalon wrote:
I offered a suggestion to tell them where the clues they were slowly finding their way towards were located, and allow them to figure out how their characters would find them. -- basically a bold move into director stance. That was rejected, but they did allow me to point out some connections between clues they had found, and they took that and decided to move forward on that clue. I promised that in following that clue would result in real progress towards their (admittedly somewhat nebulous) goal.

There is a valid point here about using PMs. I believe you[Vaxalon] agreed to change that to multiple channels. So no problem there.

You did say that running three different threads at a time was your upper limit. When there are potentially six players there at a time, that means there is sure to be somebody doing nothing. This is why when you created a PC specific sublot, I jumped in as well. I wanted to make sure I was involved in some sort of action. I'm not sure how you keep the game interesting for everyone when you initiate these kind of subplots. Of course, some people actually prefer this kind of character exploration, frex Scripty. I appreciate the catch 22 this puts you in.

For my part, I tried to create a situation where the Familia worked in small groups on different aspects of the plot, something I see as ideal. People seemed receptive at the time, but it died as soon as the next session started. No big deal, you can't force people to play in a way they don't want to. I think the largest problem is for people to get comfortable in the setting. The best solution I can come up with is for you to run a short adventurette for each character, allowing the player to become comfortable with the character and what methods are used to solve problems in Nobilis. Assuming you devote no extra time (and I don't expect you to) this will entail a few sessions where half the people will not be playing. Not ideal.

There will be more to this post, but I have to abandon this computer

I also wanted to mention my feelings on the reward mechanic. I admit that I would be one of the players who would say nothing rather than make the group lose out on points. This is because I try to effect changes through my play style, rather than OOC discussion. I'm not sure if this evens things out, but in the end, I don't feel that the mechanic really works. Have I enjoyed these past three sessions? Maybe. I know my character has seen a lot of play, most of it out of sight of the rest of the Familia. This is okay by me, Cages is the independant type anyway. My problem stems from the fact that the group as a whole is not getting anywhere, not because we aren't employing the correct methods, but because we aren't employing any methods whatsoever. Most of the players seems to search for a solution by doing Divination after Divination. If they find this fufilling, then fine. (I don't think they do, by the way, because even though Revelation had his bit with the artist, he still felt bored) For me, an enjoyable session involves both my character playing a role and a marked development in the plot. The latter has failed to occur, since nothing has changed from the initial session.

suffusionofyellow wrote: For me, an enjoyable session involves both my character playing a role and a marked development in the plot.

I most enjoy seeing the ways in which my characters interact with other characters. An enjoyable session is one where I feel like I've interacted well as the character.

I think this is at least part of the reason that the group turtled into "party" mode; I for one tend to be unhappy when the only people I get to interact with are NPCs, mostly because they tend to be less nuanced and interesting than PCs, and less continuous, and I feel like I'm hogging screen time that I would do better to share.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: I most enjoy seeing the ways in which my characters interact with other characters. An enjoyable session is one where I feel like I've interacted well as the character.

I'm Spring. More thought later; that example of play I just wrote tired me out.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: I most enjoy seeing the ways in which my characters interact with other characters. An enjoyable session is one where I feel like I've interacted well as the character.

Scripty wrote: As in, could I have just said "Next scene, I track down the Middle-Eastern lawyer who had the revelation of justice and am swirling around his house observing him... (Hopefully he doesn't have any mystical protections against ghosts or anything. :>)" Is that okay to do or not? Did anyone do anything like this last session?

Update:

I think that all this discussion is really getting us somewhere good. I can still sense that the group is groping around in the dark a little bit, but at the last session we seemed to be much more explicit about our intentions, and the session was a lot of fun, even though we were down to only three players (myself, Cages, and Revelation).

Hey Shreyas...
Even though computer problems cut my participation in the game short by about 45 mins to an hour and even though I wasn't involved with the one scene that was being played at the time (having felt that it would be better for me to observe and catch up on where the story had gone), I was there. And attentive. Radiant Jones... Locus Ptah... Crocodile-headed guards... River of Souls needing to go through the Gates of Dusk and the Gates of Dawn.. etc. etc. To use one of Ron's analogies from his Sorcerer game, I was participating as an audience and also taking notes for when my character becomes active again. I think some of my OOC comments reflected that. I'd hoped to play a bit towards the end of the session but my computer, as it worked out, had other plans.

Although it may not have seemed like I was there... I was. I don't appreciate that my attendance and meager participation due to what I described above is being not only diminished but (gulp) ignored entirely.

Scott

Hey Scott,

You'll notice that I was identifying with IC presence above; I'm sorry I wasn't more explicit about that.

Sorry I missed that distinction, Shreyas, but even going on a contextual basis I still can't derive it from what you had written. I am still in the game (unless you or Fred or the others have something to add about that) and was present, although I felt it would be presumptuous for me to jump into the game without understanding where the story had left off last session. From what I read above, it sounded like the group had whittled down to you three players and Fred. The impression given those following this thread would be that I came, I bitched and I bailed.

Which is not the case.

I am a participant in this group and an active one at that. I understand (now) that you were talking about the players who participated in the scene last Monday prior to my computer crashing multiple times. That's fine. But this is not clear in your statement.

If it were, such as including "Blades was there but lurked before having some problems with his connection or whatnot" or anything else like that, I would have felt no need to respond. I agree that these discussions have seemed to have a positive effect on the game.

As it stands, I felt excluded by your statement and, rereading it again, I don't think that's a far stretch of linguistic scrying. Blaming the context doesn't change what the post says, whether you meant it or not, it just further presses the issue back upon me because now, not only was I functionally absent by your post (which I wasn't) but now I'm too stupid to read between the lines to derive the "true" meaning of what you said in the first place.

In summary, I agree with what you said. The game did seem to have a different tone and communication between Fred and the rest of us seems much more open. I don't appreciate not being mentioned in the list of participants, although I'm not presuming that this omission was intentional. Still, your last post didn't make me feel any better about it...

I guess it all hinges on what the interpretation of players is...

Personally, I thought it an enlightened course of action to (a) not steal spotlight time from you guys by forcing myself into a scene I knew nothing about and (b) not putting any of you in a position to give me a rundown of "the plot up 'til now" and slow down play with questions that (had I not missed last session) I would've likely known the answer to. If that excludes me from the list of active participants, perhaps I should focus on being more selfish as a player??

Scott

You're right, I omitted you unintentionally. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the group had dwindled to three players! As far as I'm aware, all the original participants are still playing, and Monday was just a day when a lot of us had technical issues. I'm glad that you did stop by and hang out with us, even though you didn't feel that you wanted to bring Blades into the in-character interaction.

There was a longer post here, but it read as confrontational, and I don't really want to be having a confrontation, particularly with someone I respect and enjoy gaming with.

Thanks. I didn't mean to be confrontational either. Sorry if I came across that way.

Also, sorry if I detracted attention from your main point, with which we are both in total agreement: that the game is going much better now due in no small part to the discussions on this thread.

See you next Monday.