I’ve been playing in a game of d20Star Wars for a couple of months now. I’d like to offer it up for analysis in order to advance my own understanding.

The game was supposed to be an introductory one for newbies at the club I’m going to, but (a) it’s dragged on for longer than I expected and (b) apart from me, it comprises only people who already know each other and have played together before. That it’s dragged on is not the issue: this isn’t a plea for help in that sense. I’m continuing to attend because I’m fascinated by it in the light of what I’ve learned here at the Forge.

The games go like this: we sit around and wait for the GM to throw us the latest development in the plot, to which we then react. About once a session, we get a fight of some sort. Meanwhile, people either chat amongst themselves or indulge in first-person acting scenes. Do you know what I mean by the last? People make up dialogue in character, none of which seems to serve any purpose except for saying eg ‘this is how a Gungan speaks’. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s excruciating. This behaviour seems to be expected and normal among the group. It seems to be almost the only input we have apart from reacting to the GMs plot. I’m pretty sure that my input (of this sort) is well-received and appreciated—while at the same time I find it tedious.

I’ve found myself at the point of Turnin’ several times (my droid’s finger was hovering over the button to blow up a group of PCs at one point). This is not normal behaviour for me at all and I’ve resisted it, but I take it that the very fact that it’s happening is a sign that nothing’s going on that I’m interested in. It’s not just me, either. And yet, people continue to play. Amazing. One fellow sits there week after week doing almost nothing (and being given almost nothing to do).

Generally speaking, the game appears to be incoherent or poorly-realised Sim. I’d say that a good half of our three-hour sessions are taken up by discussion of the SW universe and canon. But it certainly doesn’t feel like Star Wars. There’s some Gamism going on — good tactics are cheered and effective character builds are given respect. But the challenges are few and far between, and there is a lot of lip-service paid to ‘roleplaying’ (I was told at the start that ‘We don’t use the system much’). Narrativism in the Forge sense is absent as far as I can tell — the ‘roleplaying’ consists entirely of the IC acting I mentioned. There are no real thematic choices.

So exactly what’s going on here? I find the game quite hard to put into words, but if people here are interested enough to discuss it, I would love to get a closer analysis. Is it just habit that keeps these people playing? Why, despite the fact that I’m bored, are my contributions welcomed? Is there any significance to the fact that most of these people play together in LARPs?

"The fool learns from his own mistakes, the wise man learns from others'."

I'm certainly interested in the analysis. I know of a group like this.
The group I run on Mondays doesn't show this behaviour. All of these players belong to a group on Sundays that does something very much like you describe, and on the rare occasions I'm not GM on Mondays, it tends to go like this too.
Monday: A group of 6, 3 of which are in the Sunday group.
Sunday: a group of 5, 3 of which are in the Monday group (obviously)

ISTR a syndrome recognised on the boards, where over time a group is disatisfied with play by the rules, and gradually drifts towards systemless play, especially a group that has been together a long time. That's part of what goes on with the Sunday group - what causes that again?
Also, there's a problem with the main Sunday GM, in that a) he doesn't prepare, b) he has a very poor attention span - they compensate for not having anything ready by siezing any opportunity for and covertly encouraging out-of-game discussions - not the healthy sort, but the sort that derail play in a bad way.
He also tends to run games using systems he doesn't actually like. He likes superheroes, so he naturally runs Champions, but the heroes never get into fights or use the system much for anything (a BIG frustration for one of the players) - when they do get into an action scene, he doesn't bother with the turn sequence, and narrates a lot of stuff. In D&D3, the other big game, he similarly bypasses the system.
Does this sort of thing go on in your Star Wars game?

I'm not sure. I recall that when I asked the GM (Megan) whether she'd ever played with the WEG system, she said 'Yes, but this is better.' Nobody has expressed outright dissatisfaction with the rules, and a couple of people seem quite expert with them. They're just rarely used.

While I've seen Megan prepping half an hour before the game, she usually seems to have enough prep--in a sense. The side discussions go on when she is occupied with one or two players (ie nobody is very much engaged with anybody else's sub-plot).

There are seven players involved, some of whom get sub -plots more regularly than others. Mind you, the sub-plots are not at all character-based; they are simple portions of the main plot (eg someone must go to a certain bar etc). The dreaded question 'Is there anything you want to do?' comes up frequently.

Hey droog!

I suffered through a situation like yours for yeeeears.  When the “campaign” started it was when 2E was just coming out.  There were new supplements (new things to learn and discover) with the rich heady air of lots of new “possibilities.”  The problem was that we were completely deprotagonized.  Nothing we did really affected much of anything (the “plot” was going to proceed along the GM’s path virtually no matter what we did) with the added insult that conflicts were as scarce as a politician’s integrity.  So we had few opportunities to address conflict (make effective decisions) and even then our decisions were almost without substantial or noticeable effect.  Finally when a combat did pop up the pacing was glaaaaaaaaaaaacial.  So the original promise of “possibilities” eventually faded away as the game ground relentlessly on with players reading during the game, having lots of outside conversations (almost all of them not game related), playing “magic”, knitting, drawing while all we could effectively do was add color.  So I would show up, find a space on the floor and basically doze off with an ear half tuned for something that might require attention.  There was a fair amount of social interaction, but not much game action.

Why did I stay?  Routine I guess.  About a year before I dropped out a friend of mine found this unbelievably awesome game and he begged me for a year to go to that game with him.  But I always demurred and sleepwalked my way to, through and fro.  Finally when the attendance began to fall and thus the variety of social interaction declined with the decrease in player I tried that “new” game my friend was telling me about.  That was seven years ago and I never turned back.  That “new” game is the one and only game I play now and it still rocks my planet.  I can’t play or even endure sitting at a game like you described anymore…and I’m not the only one in my group that feels that way.  Virtually every player that became a core member of our group eventually stopped playing other “sim” games.  We actually lament that because our gaming schedule is so inconsistent and it would be nice to find a “fix” elsewhere.  One player still will happily join an openly gamist venue, but not if it conflicted with our “sim” game.

I have often wondered, in retrospect, why I locked myself into a very frustrating game.  What was the draw?  Some of it was based in my personality.  But part of it was my previous gaming experiences.  Up to and including the penultimate gaming group I had never had a really enjoyable experience.  Actually it was much like Ron described in one of his essays about the rare flickering hope that is mostly or nearly consistently unmet.  I guess I didn’t believe that there could actually be a fun Role-playing experience.  So these people I gamed with were friends with whom I could see on a stable basis while the regularity of the game substituted for much desired structure in my life at the time.

However, the strongest reason that I convinced myself to continue in that game with was duty.  I felt that if I left the game that I would be somehow be making a negative comment on the skill of our GM.  We became friends because he was GMing on a set and I wondered over saw what he was doing and then expressed a common interest.  What was a root though was that I was afraid that it would somehow undermine our friendship.  Why was that an issue?  Years later I discovered that he has a Narcissist personality disorder and that there was never really a friendship.  So my poorly understood unease about leaving having an impact on our relationship was sound.  See…we’d go out and do things but while he was exceptionally social he was a closed book.  We all just wrote off his peculiarities as that he was shallow and self-absorbed, being an actor type, but ultimately it turned out that he really didn’t have a functioning ego/personality.  Thus leaving the game would have affected our relationship as that was the underpinning.  However, as it turned out there was nothing to lose.  He was an emotional vampire who thrived on, nay, required attention (as a junky needs heroin) to function as a person and ran his game to bring in a captive audience.  So he’d call us players and send out emails to pull us in and be all personable when we were at his game, but he gave nothing – including allowing us effective input into the game.  We were “played” one end and given nothing in return.

Even now, as I think about it, his NPC’s would do the most emotionally irrational and inconsistent things.  IOW his NPC’s weren’t emotionally logical – they didn’t make sense.  By way of analogy something akin to having an NPC who as a parent be virtually unaffected by the death of a child – and it was not because the NPC was evil or justified in this response in any way.  He was to emotional situations as a colorblind person is to color or a musician who is tone-deaf.  We’d get these weird agglomerations for NPC personalities that weren’t exactly flat (more like one trick ponies) but slightly discomfittingly emotionally inconsistent with the events that were unfolding.  It was like he vaguely felt that “something emotive” should be happening yet his timing and execution were not quite random, but functioned at low comprehension of how “others” feel or react.  Up reflection it seemed like he was stretching beyond his own understanding of how other people felt and thought and thus it felt clumsy at best and eerie at worst.  Though I do see that most of his NPC’s were much like himself – they’d have a big garish splash of “personality” while there was nothing underneath other than this something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on that was slightly offsetting.  (The NPC’s never evolved in any way!  Hmmmm…)

Sorry, I think this has drifted out of the territory you were interested in.  If there is something helps or you are curious about let me know.

I played a similar game to your experiences at Origins. After several excellent games of Call of Cthulhu, which, whilst there was plot, allowed for meaningful character interaction, choices and moral dilemmas, I made the mistake of trying a game of Vampire because I thought I'd like to give the new WoD system a run out.

Much of the game was interupted for tales of "how cool my home PC is", even by the GM, or lines such as "once I rolled 28 dice!" Even stranger this was interspersed with claims of hating powergamers and people who don't engage with the story. Much of the gaming was third person, which is not necessarily bad, but which lead to confusion when I tried to talk in character to other PCs or NPCs. The railroading was so complete that anytime we tried to move away from the plot a sniper shot an NPC. It was pretty depressing.

However many people seem to be really into it and claimed to have really enjoyed the game. So how could this be when I thought it was so useless?

Much of it, I guess is down to expectations. In my experience of conventions there are many undemanding gamers who are quite happy with this kind of fare. It's a kind of PC gaming, or perhaps more like Fighting Fantasy, where player choices aren't so much about decisions for their character or the story but whether they survive the current piece of plot or not. It doesn't require engagement or effort and is pretty similar to my experiences with computer games. Your games are for consumption rather than egagement.

You could always try to change your groups to different ways of gaming but I suggest you find a different one.

Silmenume wrote:
relentlessly on with players reading during the game, having lots of outside conversations (almost all of them not game related), playing “magic”, knitting, drawing while all we could effectively do was add 

GB wrote: However many people seem to be really into it and claimed to have really enjoyed the game. So how could this be when I thought it was so useless?

Much of it, I guess is down to expectations. <<snip>>  It doesn't require engagement or effort and is pretty similar to my experiences with computer games. Your games are for consumption rather than egagement.

I just want to stress, guys, that I'm not looking for advice on what to do about the situation. I'm there in the spirit of scientific research, and as soon as I'm done, I'm gone.

Okay, so:

Jay says it's a matter of diminished expectations and duty to friends. I can certainly see that in this case. Two of the players are the GM's sister and the sister's boyfriend. These people socialise together and play LARPs together.

Steve says it comes down to an expectation that games are for passive consumption rather than active creativity. Over at Vincent's blog somebody made a comparison between making things wiith Lego and playing with prefabricated play-objects. It seems to me that many kids actually prefer the plastic light-sabres. There are some larger conclusions to be drawn from this, I feel.

Judd says that it's a front for socialising. "So its sort of social. Demented and sad, but social, right?"

I think all of these are true. Unfortunately.

droog wrote: There are some larger conclusions to be drawn from this, I feel.

droog wrote:
The games go like this: we sit around and wait for the GM to throw us the latest development in the plot, to which we then react. About once a session, we get a fight of some sort. Meanwhile, people either chat amongst themselves or indulge in first-person acting scenes. Do you know what I mean by the last? People make up dialogue in character, none of which seems to serve any purpose except for saying eg ‘this is how a Gungan speaks’. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s excruciating. This behaviour seems to be expected and normal among the group. It seems to be almost the only input we have apart from reacting to the GMs plot. I’m pretty sure that my input (of this sort) is well-received and appreciated—while at the same time I find it tedious.

Larry wrote:
Knitting?! I have to say this is the first time I have ever heard of a game so non-engaging that players took to knitting to entertain themselves.

Adam wrote:
I have a player who routinely knits during games.

GB wrote:
I think the larger conclusion, and YMMV, is that [glow=green,1,400]capitalism makes lazy consumers out of us all[/glow], unless we care enough to do something about it.

Jaik wrote:
Sure, it sounds  a little sarcastic, but I think that this is what a lot of gamers EXPECT from a game.  I mean, what other way is there?  All the "How to GM" chapters say to do it that way.  All the "How to be a Player" chapters say to do it that way.  What's the matter with you?  You don't like to have badwrongfun, do you?

If these players participate in Mind's Eye Theater LARPs, perhaps my experience in such games can suggest a cause behind their behavior.

MET Larps have many players and few GMs, but GMs still "control the world," so to speak. Therefore, if you are to enjoy yourself at a MET LARP, your chief means of entertainment must be your interaction with the other players, not your impact on the big-picture Setting or Situation. That's why good acting is prized: it makes your interaction with other players more colorful.

In the best of MET LARPs, the GM is barely needed: all the interest comes from the changes to Character and Situation that arise out of this social interaction. It's a grand soap opera.

In the worst of MET LARPs, this social interaction isn't very interesting. It just passes the time until the GM drops by like a stranger on the doorstep to peddle some plot. The players pursue that plot until its energy is gone, at which time the GM withdraws to do the same to a different group of players, leaving the rest to return to their social interaction.

Your Star Wars game sounds a lot like a fraction of a MET LARP. If there were more players, with factions and loyalties and grudges to trade amongst themselves, all the "acting" you see might actually have an effect on Character and Situation. As it is, there are too few players for politics, so they're stuck in equilibrium. The GM, meanwhile, is mostly a stranger.

I have seen many a game like this. Even run. Even enjoyed. Nowadays, I'd rather write an essay on tax law. (And I'm talking about German tax law here.) I've been poking this thought for long. My girlfriend just started her very first game, in a round of "Das Schwarze Auge" which is much like that d20 game. They do a lot of IC dialogue that doesn't really serve a purpose. The question "is there anything you want to do?" comes up frequently. The GM doesn't really seem to have decided whether he wants to railroad his plot or react to the characters, for he switches between both approaches without a recognizable pattern. Sometimes he forces events on the characters in the most brutal way, including things that "break" the character, and then again sometimes he leaves them "to themselves". It sounds absolutely awful, and yet my girlfriend is enjoying herself.

Now as she listened to my recent rpg workshop at our local convention, she immediately said to me: "You know, I'm a casual gamer." So maybe she isn't a good example, because she's there just for the socializing. But.

Here is my conclusion to why so many people play that way, even though they don't like it: When you roleplay for the first time, the concept in and of itself is fascinating enough to make you have fun. Granted, there are limits. But if you never roleplayed before, it's like trying out a new toy. I meen, if you never played Badminton before, you might play awfully bad and still have fun, cause it's something new.

Especially with those IC dialogues, doing it for the first time is just cool. At least it was to me. It was something I had never tried before, something I could do for a while. Something that seemed more interesting than just fighting (because just fighting was like board games, so it wasn't new). I had tons of fun acting out IC dialogue, depicting my character and showing off with my cool setting knowledge. And then it started to get boring, because it was always the same. It had no meening. No matter what you talked about, it was just empty words.

I think the reason why many people still maintain to go on doing endless IC dialogue over nothing is a simple misperception: They think if they once had fun with it, they can do it again. It's like, hey, this used to be fun, and now it ain't, so I must be doing something wrong. I gotta keep on trying.

Of course, habit is an important factor in this. Also, the poor advice given on how to roleplay in many standard rulebooks. But consider: It once was fun. When you were a bloody beginner hungry for anything that was roleplaying. Before the Forge sophisticated you. That's a part of the riddle.

- Frank

Regarding the IC character dialogue:

Thinking back to the games I've run and played in, IC dialogue has indicated two apparently opposite situations. When the game's rocking - seriously; I've never played in a really, really good game where there wasn't plenty of in-character conversation and interaction going on. And when the game's sucking - at which point about the only fun thing to do is IC dialogue, 'cos it's always fun and you only need to get one or two other people involved to get it to work and you can choose them. You don't need the GM to engage, you don't need the guy reading The Complete One-Armed Falchion Wielder to concentrate and roll the bloody dice. In other words going to IC dialogue allows you to define and control your terms and cut those who aren't delivering fun out of the loop.

One more thing: if this style of play becomes dysfunciontal, as seems the case in said d20 group and was in many a group I have seen, that doesn't necessarily meen people are aware of that. Of course they know the game isn't fun, but not everyone analyzes his play in depth. For lack of interest or capability, they can't or won't figure out what's wrong with their game, and fix it.

The question remains why they keep playing then. Well, many don't. They quit. Others stay just to please the GM. Often you will find that the GM is the one who drives the group on, because he enjoys designing his plots and unfolding them in front of the players. If the players don't react "right", he won't draw the conclusion to change his style of play, but rather to try and change their behavior. He will see the game not as it is, but as it ought to be (from his point of view), because he's got it all planned. That's why he'll urge the others on. Plus, he's invested all that preperation time and read all those books, and doesn't want to waste that. People can be very stubborn.

- Frank

So, attempting to synthesise the last few posts, the excessive IC dialogue results from the players attempting to put their own mark on the game in the absence of opportunities for meaningful input. Possibly the players are attempting to play a miniature LARP at the table. And much of this stems from inability or unwillingness to face the problem and change their approach.

I have a great deal to thank the Forge for, it seems. Just a few years ago I (already) would not have enjoyed this game, but I would have simply put it down to 'bad GM' or 'crap system'. And perhaps I would have gone ahead and run a very similar game. Now I can understand more clearly how to attack the problem, at least when I run a game.

I feel sorry for these people. I feel like I'm looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope and they're so far away that I can't even shout out and help them. Then I feel patronising for feeling this way. It's like wanting to rip the plastic light-sabre out of a kid's hands and give him a bicycle pump.

I feel sorry for these people. I feel like I'm looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope and they're so far away that I can't even shout out and help them. Then I feel patronising for feeling this way.

Frank wrote: I think the reason why many people still maintain to go on doing endless IC dialogue over nothing is a simple misperception: They think if they once had fun with it, they can do it again. It's like, hey, this used to be fun, and now it ain't, so I must be doing something wrong. I gotta keep on trying.

greyorm wrote:
My god, Frank, this describes exactly my experience with one of the games I played in for a number years with my wife, until I decided to leave it because I was bored out of my skull. You may have heard me complain in the past about "Soap Opera Role-playing". The above is it. It is exactly what I've always referred to by that term. "Blahblah blahblah blahblahblah," pose, pose some more.

It is a very interesting phenomena to say the least. Based on the composition of who you have in the group and the fact that none of their one on one role play interaction seems to be aiding the overall plot, I'd say they are just using the RPG sessions as an excuse to socialize. After all RPG's are a very social event.

I often find the opposite happens in my group occasionally. Sometimes I have such plot involvement and so much stuff for the group to work through that it actually seems like work. They seem to overall enjoy it most of the time, but I do often get more looks of boredom, especially with larger groups. I need to engineer the nature and complexity of my campaign based on the group size.

But to get back to point... A certain amount of one on one role playing between characters is good, very good, in fact necessary in my world, often times it is the only way in which players can get information about one another's back stories and hence their involvement in the group. I tend to have a wide range of character types from the pious paladin to the murderous scoundrel and they all end up needed to work for the better good, and thus motives come into play, motives which I deliberately do not reveal as general information to the group. Some games I would give personalized updates to each person and often times would even instigate PvP triggers which they would follow in character to advance the plot. So in short doing one on one character interactions can really advance the plot, but by the sound of the game you are in, there seems to be a glazed over objective that doesn't have a whole lot of depth and thus the one on one interactions are also only superficial.

Uninteresting and unfocused one on one role playing can also be evidence of boredom, though i find that if people are bored they simply go off on tangents and start talking about things off topic. This game may have been running long enough however for everyone to realize by this point that the GM breaks up out of character talks, so everyone basically screws around in character.... allot of that may have to do with the fact they are LARP players as well.

Then I guess you could ask yourself what is is about this RPG session that you like so much that keeps bringing you back there, and perhaps you may have an indication of where some of the other people are coming from as well.

Travis wrote:
Then I guess you could ask yourself what is is about this RPG session that you like so much that keeps bringing you back there, and perhaps you may have an indication of where some of the other people are coming from as well.

By the way: In my German RPG board, we call this style of play "DSA-Hartwurst-Syndrom", DSA refering to "Das Schwarze Auge", the popular German fantasy RPG I already mentioned, and Hartwurst refering to hard cured sausage. Very chewy indeed. I think there are three reasons why you'll so often find the Hartwurst syndrome with DSA players:

First, the system promotes it. There are lots of skills, so lots of checks to be made for pointless things like bargaining, recognizing a crest, making fire in the wilderness, etc.

Second, the setting promotes it. There is tons of detailed information about the setting to be explored, so expect both GM and players to show off with their setting knowledge. I mean, they didn't read those 400 pages to now keep quiet about them, did they?

Third, the official adventures you can buy in the shops are heavily railroaded. As in, total plot control by the GM. There is literally nothing meaningful the characters can do, no matter what the players want. So how else are they going to entertain themselves, beside coming up with a genius tactical idea in combat every now and then (that doesn't affect the outcome, but may gain them compliments)?

- Frank

droog wrote:

The fact is that I don't enjoy the game at all. The people are really quite nice, and I appreciate the fact that they have been friendly and welcoming despite the fact that they don't know me from Adam. That in itself wouldn't be enough to make me go to the sessions, though. There are plenty of nice people in the world, and I find role playing an inefficient way to socialize.

Frank wrote:

First, the system promotes it. There are lots of skills, so lots of checks to be made for pointless things like bargaining, recognizing a crest, making fire in the wilderness, etc.

Second, the setting promotes it. There is tons of detailed information about the setting to be explored, so expect both GM and players to show off with their setting knowledge. I mean, they didn't read those 400 pages to now keep quiet about them, did they?

Third, the official adventures you can buy in the shops are heavily railroaded. As in, total plot control by the GM. There is literally nothing meaningful the characters can do, no matter what the players want. So how else are they going to entertain themselves, beside coming up with a genius tactical idea in combat every now and then (that doesn't affect the outcome, but may gain them compliments)?

Travis wrote:
Not an effective way to socialize? you seem to be attending and observing these sessions entirely as a sociology experiment, and you're stating this result as if it were your findings rather than your personal opinion as far as yourself is concerned. Am I right in assuming that your assessment is from a personal preference standpoint?

droog wrote:

Of course. What else? That said, it still seems to me that you might as well just hang out and watch videos, or chat.

It's my firm opinion, based on my observations, that they aren't having that much fun. What else do you want from me?

droog wrote:
I would love to get a closer analysis. Is it just habit that keeps these people playing? Why, despite the fact that I’m bored, are my contributions welcomed? Is there any significance to the fact that most of these people play together in LARPs?

Travis wrote:

I think you may be misinterpreting my quote as an attack on you, I'm just trying to clarify if you are attending the game sessions out of a desire to play the game and have fun, or are merely there as a sociology experiment, that's all....

I think the delivery of my message was a bit confusing, so sorry as well if I came off poorly, my request for more information came off with an air of debate.

Yes I do think that the level of attention and subsequent boredom do to a lack thereof can be the GM's fault just as much as the players. I recall you mentioning something that the GM would tell a basic story and have a combat situation in the session somewhere and then the players would basically sit back and wait for the GM to feed the next story development. That sort of description lends me to believe that the GM is sort of just going through the motions and not providing much material for the players to feed off of and fuel a player driven story. As I am discussing in a thread I started about campaign plotting vs outline form (where the GM makes a "railroad" point by point plot vs a basic outline of milestones) It generally sounds like the GM is putting some basic material before the players expecting them to take the bait and run with it, but they don't seem to be doing so. I would think that if the GM took more of a "Railroad" approach and led this group by the hand into some carefully designed and engineered plot for awhile to really emerge them individually, they may well be more attentive and he can ease back and allow the players to retake the gamist control of the story development from there. Almost like resuscitating the progress of the overall campaign by breathing a bit of depth into it, even if by artificial resuscitation. GM led sessions should be an easy transition for this group since they appear to not do much on their own anyways. An equally bad overcompensation can occur however when they do take notice of the depth and involvement in the plot, but the GM may not be through the cycle and ready to give plot progression control back to the players at that point, they can easily split right back into boredom socialization mode.

As far as power being consensual I think there is a certain amount of "suspension of disbelief" which all players must have especially in a familiar game setting, which with it, urns a certain degree of executive power over to the GM. It depends greatly on the system as well where some the rules are so extensive and complex that they control everything, and other systems give trump powers to the GM, which I prefer as long as the GM can substantiate them with good reasoning, story, and/or rules to back their choice. It seems in general though that there is no vie for power between the Gm and this group resulting in what appears to be a "Ho Hum" mentality toward the plot progression itself and thus the overall progression of the game as a whole.

I think bottom line is, you are in the wrong play group. Am I right in making the assumption that you'd like to be in a play group which stays on task more, has fun and is interested in the plot and interactions with the other players in order to progress that story? A sort of give and take between the GM leading the plot and the players forging into the next objectives?

I'm really not sure how to answer this, Travis. I've been well aware since the very first session that I was in a game I didn't care to play in.

In the past, I simply avoided such games by instinct. This time, I decided to stick around and try to understand exactly what was going wrong. Thus, as I have mentioned before, this isn't my problem to be solved by this thread.

I'm not personally interested in being involved in any sort of GM plot railroading, though it's possible that your suggestions might work for the rest of the group. But I'm not about to tell the GM how she should be running her game. Ultimately, it's their problem, and I believe that it will not be resolved but will simply end at such time as the bulk of the group decides to play something else.

I think that this thread is pretty much done for me. Once again, thanks, all.