Here are the previous threads' links:

[D&D 3.0/3.5] The kid two houses down
[D&D 3.0/3.5] Skill combat and blood drinking
[D&D 3.0/3.5] Spells and swords: fight!
[D&D 3.0/3.5] Undead, real dead

This is the last thread about this game, because we finished the scenario in two short sessions in two days.

Due to the time constraint (Christopher leaving for summer camp), I asked the players about what they'd like to see in the last sessions, specifically, whether a solid confrontation was key or a set of social interactions. They opted for the former which I also think was a good idea; we've established about as much as could be established with the positions and outlooks of all the NPCs.

The fifth session

In this one, the characters headed off to the abandoned "old fort" of the Khoros lands, which they'd learned was the favored haunt of Lord Garfauld when he was going cuckoo, years ago, and figured was where he was holed up in his nasty undead way. Without prompting from me, Christopher and Dan insisted that the two siblings, Raetha and Hathic, accompany them, so the characters could assess them a little better. At the time, they both favored Raetha over Hathic, who had been established as a slightly bigger mouth than motor.

I enjoyed using in-game time for urgency and effect, but not as much as I might have in the past. Lord Khoros could delay Lady Khoros' funeral only a little bit, according to the laws of the land, and that meant if the party wanted to defeat Garfauld before the funeral, they'd be arriving at the ruins at nightfall. This had absolutely no mechanics-based effect, but the players reacted with great trepidation. It's interesting - years ago, I considered it the height of GMing skill to induce emotion in the players, this or any other, but now, I get a lot less pleasure out of it. I would have been a lot happier with a general consensus that "night = scary = great Color," and not have it be considered otherwise beyond minor tactics.

I happily used this map from the D&D website. I love interesting dungeon maps. I decided it represents three levels (topologically speaking), with the alcove-heavy passageway being below the initial round room, and then the two round rooms connected by a passageway being the deepest. I also found another map of a ruined fort and graveyard to put "on top" of this map, above ground; we didn't use this tactically, merely for Color.

Rather than stock every damn niche with yet more giant rats, spiders, and "there just because" goblins, I kept it simple. I hope you'll forgive me for not posting a square-by-square key. Don't get the wrong idea, though. Although I'm describing our actual play-events, all of the creatures and traps were established during preparation and nothing except for Color-stuff was improvised into existence during play.

I stated that the entrance was through the big round room, and that it was in disarray. I defined the funny little objects in that room as gas traps. I'm usually not a big fan of traps, but part of my goal was to revisit some tropes of D&D. Also, looking back on previous play, I'd decided that more saving throws were called for, both formally (i.e. traps like these) and improvisationally.

In the watery corridor leading to the rest of the complex, they fought a gelatinous cube, a creature that I had never before encountered via a D&D character, nor run as a DM. At long last, eh? Surprisingly, it was a tad easier to kill than I anticipated, partly because saving throws seem to have become a lot easier in modern D&D than I recall from the old days, and partly because they had two not-half-bad helpers along, the siblings. Then again, three of the six characters did get engulfed and many hit points did get burned down by the thing's acid, so I guess it served its purpose. Plus, the color of the fight, in the pitch-black, thigh-deep water corridor, with torches tossing wildly and getting snuffed out, was generally pretty cool. It was fun to see Forin get engulfed, but make his paralysis saving throw, and thus grapple the cube from the inside. (I am using the cube description from the 3.0 book; I was a little dubious that one could be engulfed but not paralyzed, but the description there doesn't contradict that reading. This might be another error on my part, but if so, it was a fun-making error.)

I'd given a little thought to the siblings and decided to show each of them at his or her best. So at one point, when Hathic was engulfed by the cube, Raetha extended her spear into it for him to grab. He'd failed the roll against paralysis, so it didn't accomplish much, but it was a nice bit.

Anyway, that's as far as we got with this session. Dan provided an interesting observation, that in this adventure, finding treasure just wasn't a big deal. Although his early D&D experiences peeked through occasionally, he made a kind of personal shift from search-and-loot to why-we-fight, and noted it when it happened.

The sixth session

This one brought them into the deepest, nastiest section, the big circular room beyond the water-filled passage, which I'd prepped for a fun fight as follows.

The corridor to the south was filled with magical darkness, and that's where Garfauld was lurking. It turns out the Darkness spell trumped the Light that the clerics could cast, so there was no going into there, everyone decided.

The object to the north was an iron globe, which soon emitted electrical bolts all over the place in every direction; the idea was that everyone got zapped, forcing Fortitude saves. Failing the first makes the character flatfooted, failing a second in a row knocks him or her down, and failing the third and later means taking damage.

Given my map of the aboveground area, and the orientation of the two maps I'd decided upon, this area was right under the graveyard, so I also had big, bloated, mutant grubs to drop on them too. I merely assigned them AC and damage based on whether they were stuck to you or not; to avoid getting attached when they bit you required a Dexterity saving throw. You guys can see I was all about the saving throws in this prep ...

Anyway, the globe started zapping, and I had Garfauld lunge out of the darkness to grab whoever came close to it. I'd jury-rigged Garfauld by combining the ghast description in the 3.0 book with the spells of a 3rd-level evil cleric, which were not half bad to beef up the ghast stats. And he was really, truly evil with this Death Touch ability, the one you get with the Death Domain.

What Garfauld wanted, basically, was to corrupt either of his grandchildren to his worship of Nerull. So he attacked the one who got closest, then tried to tempt the other to kill that one. As far as Narrativist choices go, this one wasn't meant to be very compelling - note, for instance, that's why it was presented to NPCs, not to the characters. It was context for the fight ... back-story, nothing more.

So what happened?

1. Dan was the player to shine this time. His character Corin aced his Alchemy skill, of all things, to dope out the iron globe. Bemused (and pleased, in that I hadn't really expected any such tactic), I said that Corin had figured out that "breaking a connection" in the various trappings of the globe would shut it off. It took him a couple of rounds, but he did it. Pretty cool!

His character Forin had been savaged by the cube and had about 5 hit points left. He busted out yet another Feat combo plus lucky roll to do the final damage to Garfauld, but not before Garfauld got in the Death Touch. Yup - Forin bit the dust. No save, even.

2. Christopher's characters didn't have a good day. They failed a bunch of saving throws, they got hit by stuff, they missed a lot, and their spells got beaten down by other spells. I was interested in three specific things about his play, though, in this session. (a) He was very, very careful to play the two characters differently, more so than he'd done in the past, and very much in the trends that I mentioned in the previous thread. Interesting! (b) His character Joshua defied the Voice of Nerull which spoke to them from the shadows after the fight, which actually ended up being suitably dramatic and very cleric-like. Dan was sort of impressed that his kid back-talked a god. (c) Christopher was uncharacteristically petty toward the two sibling NPCs, talking about "hitting them" in a kind of random way at the end of the game; I attributed this to his frustration at his characters' relative less-effectiveness during the fight, as it didn't connect with any of his characters' other actions or depictions until that point.

3. As for the scenario itself, I'd also had Hathic stand up for Raetha during the fight with Garfauld, and so just as an amusing ending, I had each one of them demand not to become Lord/Lady, and to swear fealty to the other one as such. That leaves the realm itself in a bit of a pickle, but at least it's a nice (Good) one. Dan in particular found this very satisfying as a general outcome. It made a lot of sense to me as the player-characters had really set a good example for the two siblings, so I figured they'd both do the Good-est thing.

As a final bit, we briefly described Lady Khoros' and Beezah's funerals, and I told them that she had left a letter for her old friend, Corin's and Forin's mother. It also occurred to me, for the first time in my history as a role-player, and given the cleric-heavy, Hieronymous-heavy scenario, that resurrecting a player-character might actually be a fun and dramatic topic for a later scenario, rather than a lame-ass "oh let him keep playing" add-on.

I haven't yet totted up the experience, but I'm pretty sure the characters might make it to fourth level. I'll get around to figuring that out before Christopher gets back from camp. Not that we'll play these characters or this game again, but it's a form of closure.

So to sum up, here were some of the Social Contract goals at work, and how we did.

1. Did Christopher get to play D&D? Check.
2. Did Dan and Christopher get to do a dad-and-son thing together? Check.
3. Did Dan get a bit of nostalgic fun in with his fellow suburban neighbor-guy? Check.
4. Did we hit the creative goals that we talked about in the beginning? Check.

All in all, not bad. I have some general thoughts and conclusions about running the modern D&D, but even more about the nature of dialogue about D&D, and the latter may or may not show up in this thread. At present, I'd like to open up the discussion to questions about our game, especially in Big Model terms. In fact, I'd like to invite people who are relatively new to the Forge to check out the first couple of pages of The Provisional Glossary and to practice the terminology via questions about this game, if they'd like.

Best, Ron

Anyway, that's as far as we got with this session. Dan provided an interesting observation, that in this adventure, finding treasure just wasn't a big deal. Although his early D&D experiences peeked through occasionally, he made a kind of personal shift from search-and-loot to why-we-fight, and noted it when it happened.

Hey, Ron --

As always, sounds fun.

And with an invitation to talk about this in Big Model terms -- uh, well, I don't know if I can help myself.

Let's talk Creative Agenda.  Your personal insistence and also the contents of your report make it pretty damned clear that you're playing D&D with a Narrativist Creative Agenda here.  So I'm going to base some questions around that.

1) You seem pretty strongly insistent that you aren't drifting the game strongly.  While we can quibble about the details of this, I can see pretty strongly that you aren't doing a lot to drift it into a Narrativist direction.  Given that the game system isn't giving you a ton of support for your creative agenda, what tools to you use to help you with your Creative Agenda?  Were there any times when you wished that you had more systematic support for your Creative Agenda?  Were there qualitative differences in experience between playing this D&D and playing with a game where Narrativist goals are openly supported by the system, such as Shadow of Yesterday or Trollbabe?

2) Likewise, you're dealing with two players who don't have a strong attachment to any style of role-playing other than some distant memories and media-given images.  In terms of CA especially, how was the experience of playing with these folks different than playing with, say, the Hyde Park group, where you seem to have a pretty strong grasp on your shared creative agenda?

3) Okay, so this one's actually social contract level, so it's personal and feel free to blow me off.  I know from meeting y'all that you're pretty close with the neighbors in question.  I'm curious what specific effect role-playing -- either in terms of the activity itself or because it's "your thing" in a concrete way -- has had on your friendships as opposed to, say, watching Star Trek or some of the other things you've done together.  Including "it's exactly the same" in the scope of possible answers.

Probably enough for now.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  Those free maps from Wizards are awesome.  There's a lot of baggage on the word "support" in gamer circles, but it is nice to see a company actually provide it.

Ron wrote:
At present, I'd like to open up the discussion to questions about our game, especially in Big Model terms. In fact, I'd like to invite people who are relatively new to the Forge to check out the first couple of pages of The Provisional Glossary and to practice the terminology via questions about this game, if they'd like.

Ron wrote:
I enjoyed using in-game time for urgency and effect, but not as much as I might have in the past. Lord Khoros could delay Lady Khoros' funeral only a little bit, according to the laws of the land, and that meant if the party wanted to defeat Garfauld before the funeral, they'd be arriving at the ruins at nightfall. This had absolutely no mechanics-based effect, but the players reacted with great trepidation. It's interesting - years ago, I considered it the height of GMing skill to induce emotion in the players, this or any other, but now, I get a lot less pleasure out of it. I would have been a lot happier with a general consensus that "night = scary = great Color," and not have it be considered otherwise beyond minor tactics.

Hi guys,

Alex, that's what I'm talkin' about. Exactly. And it's a great example of how the reward system employed (which in your case did not include "get money from looting corpse") is the direct procedural expression of Creative Agenda.

Cool questions.

Ben, I'll take'em by the numbers.

1) You seem pretty strongly insistent that you aren't drifting the game strongly.  While we can quibble about the details of this, I can see pretty strongly that you aren't doing a lot to drift it into a Narrativist direction.  Given that the game system isn't giving you a ton of support for your creative agenda, what tools to you use to help you with your Creative Agenda?  Were there any times when you wished that you had more systematic support for your Creative Agenda?  Were there qualitative differences in experience between playing this D&D and playing with a game where Narrativist goals are openly supported by the system, such as Shadow of Yesterday or Trollbabe?

2) Likewise, you're dealing with two players who don't have a strong attachment to any style of role-playing other than some distant memories and media-given images.  In terms of CA especially, how was the experience of playing with these folks different than playing with, say, the Hyde Park group, where you seem to have a pretty strong grasp on your shared creative agenda?

3) Okay, so this one's actually social contract level, so it's personal and feel free to blow me off.  I know from meeting y'all that you're pretty close with the neighbors in question.  I'm curious what specific effect role-playing -- either in terms of the activity itself or because it's "your thing" in a concrete way -- has had on your friendships as opposed to, say, watching Star Trek or some of the other things you've done together.  Including "it's exactly the same" in the scope of possible answers.

I too was interested in Ricky's question regarding this:

Ron wrote:
I enjoyed using in-game time for urgency and effect, but not as much as I might have in the past. . .It's interesting - years ago, I considered it the height of GMing skill to induce emotion in the players, this or any other, but now, I get a lot less pleasure out of it. I would have been a lot happier with a general consensus that "night = scary = great Color," and not have it be considered otherwise beyond minor tactics.

Ron wrote:
What Garfauld wanted, basically, was to corrupt either of his grandchildren to his worship of Nerull. So he attacked the one who got closest, then tried to tempt the other to kill that one. As far as Narrativist choices go, this one wasn't meant to be very compelling - note, for instance, that's why it was presented to NPCs, not to the characters. It was context for the fight ... back-story, nothing more.

Ron,

Sorry about the cross-post, I see that you've answered a good deal of what I was wondering is answered in your response to Ricky. I'd still like to know if my thoughts on Color hold any water, though.

Thanks,

You're misinterpreting my comments on Color by 180 degrees, Joel. My comments were all about amping up the Color and enjoying it fully, rather than maneuvering around it. Dan in particular reacted to my "nightfall" input as if it had been a tactical move on my part, in the sense of now it being his turn to try to find a way not to be there at nightfall. Whereas my goal was entirely in line with your notions of what Color is for - to establish it, get into it, enjoy it, and reinforce whatever other goals are at work. Just as in the Big Model, in which Color is a "multiplier" through the algebraic equation of the other four components.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Color is a "multiplier" through the algebraic equation of the other four components

Another clarifier, for your question about Narrativism, Joel.

Too many questions about Creative Agenda are framed in an atomic fashion, and yours graded into that direction. Not necessarily for any and all play, but definitely for this particular session in this particular game.

What I'm saying is that the whole five sessions were an "address" of the kind you're talking about. There were bits and moments of specific expression of it, as manifestations or "tells," but to talk about Creative Agenda in this case, we need to look at the entire scenario and sequences of actions throughout it, not at any one particular fight.

Or a better way to put it is, the Premise being addressed by our play in this game was not "fight and destroy Garfauld," in part because that's not a Premise in the first place, but even as any imaginable equivalent. So this fight was best understood as a step or piece of a series of decisions and scene-outcomes, not a goal. In many ways, it was only a showdown from the point of view of the characters (which we enjoyed immensely as the players, yes), and not so much a crunch here-it-comes showdown moment for us as people. I'd say that aspect of addressing Premise pretty much peaked at Beezah's death and the aftermath.

Best, Ron

Thanks. I'm speaking from the standpoint of someone who is very attracted to Narrativist-style play, but has experienced very little of it (coherent, anyway) in practice, so these clarifications are invaluable. Even when (as is the case wich much of what you just said) it's a concept I've already heard and think I understand, I think there's a tendency, with roleplayer brain dama--er, ingrained habits kicking in, to veer off course repeatedly, so a course correcter, internally or from others, is welcome and needed.

Ron wrote:
Or a better way to put it is, the Premise being addressed by our play in this game was not "fight and destroy Garfauld," in part because that's not a Premise in the first place, but even as any imaginable equivalent. So this fight was best understood as a step or piece of a series of decisions and scene-outcomes, not a goal. In many ways, it was only a showdown from the point of view of the characters (which we enjoyed immensely as the players, yes), and not so much a crunch here-it-comes showdown moment for us as people. I'd say that aspect of addressing Premise pretty much peaked at Beezah's death and the aftermath.

Here are all the character portraits we used during play, all taken from the D&D site.

The player-characters

Joshua, human 2nd-level fighter/1st-level cleric; Christopher pointed out that he had a big ol' tattoo of Hieronymous on his back as well
Vall, elven 2nd-level paladin/1st-level cleric; as time passed, Christopher played him as more and more forbidding and intense, unlike the rather bluff and friendly Joshua
Forin, half-orc 3rd-level barbarian; half-brother to Corin - all 'round bad-ass with a good heart
Corin, half-elf 2nd-level fighter/1st-level sorcerer; half-brother to Forin - sneaky, smart son-of-a-bitch, always seeking an angle, but also good-hearted

The family

Lord Khoros - an overly generic pic; I now wish I'd used this one, but didn't have a good enough feel for the character at the start
Hathic - perfect! Exactly the kind of guy I was looking for as I browsed the portraits for this character
Raetha - a bit more sultry than I'd planned, but I really didn't want an anime waif-girl, so this was my first choice; I now wish I'd used this one instead, which I like a lot
Garfauld - standard ghast thing; I guess a tad more dignity would have been good, but whatever

Others

Beezah (this pic inspired me to add the whole bit about Beezah protecting Raetha, and thus suffering Garfauld's "black kiss")
Eladd (a tad more catamite-ish in the pic than I played him, but I did note Dan's amused glance when he saw the illustration)

Oh yes, one another images-during-game point. I simply put the whole map out in front of all us as soon as they entered the dungeon. No one had any issue with "knowing what the next room looked like," and all decisions during play were made perfectly in accord with characters not knowing. I didn't have to mention a word about that, and in fact, I didn't mind if player-knowledge snuck in there in any way, as long as it was internally consistent as well. But as it turned out, there was absolutely no issue with any of that at all.

I kept my notes on my lap in front of me, or on a side table. We were sitting on my porch, so there wasn't a central table. The map was put on a little table (TV-tray type thing) in the middle. I didn't try to hide my notes and they didn't show any interest in looking at them.

Best, Ron

Oh yes, one another images-during-game point. I simply put the whole map out in front of all us as soon as they entered the dungeon. No one had any issue with "knowing what the next room looked like," and all decisions during play were made perfectly in accord with characters not knowing. I didn't have to mention a word about that, and in fact, I didn't mind if player-knowledge snuck in there in any way, as long as it was internally consistent as well. But as it turned out, there was absolutely no issue with any of that at all.

This may be a little tangential, but I use those pre-generated maps too.  I really like how the D&D website has maps, adventure hooks, critters to fight, and so on.  Given how prep-heavy the game can be, it's good customer service.  I only wish I knew of some good apps to generate treasure and dungeons, since that's almost all look-up tables in the DMG. 

I kept my notes on my lap in front of me, or on a side table. We were sitting on my porch, so there wasn't a central table. The map was put on a little table (TV-tray type thing) in the middle. I didn't try to hide my notes and they didn't show any interest in looking at them.

Hi there,

Rob, you summarized:

Players and GM talk, either "in character" or "out of character," about a subject.  Either the player or the GM calls for a skill roll - which is done on the spot.  Then, depending upon who wins the skill roll, the direction of the conversation changes (or continues).

Ron wrote:
The D&D rules try to deal with the grey area by pitching the results over optionally to the DM fiat rule, which I recognize is a common solution, familiar to most role-players, but I choose not to employ it. You can see a more concrete and functional set of techniques inherent in the Sorcerer dice/conflict system, though.

Ron wrote:
(I am using the cube description from the 3.0 book; I was a little dubious that one could be engulfed but not paralyzed, but the description there doesn't contradict that reading. This might be another error on my part, but if so, it was a fun-making error.)

Dan provided an interesting observation, that in this adventure, finding treasure just wasn't a big deal. Although his early D&D experiences peeked through occasionally, he made a kind of personal shift from search-and-loot to why-we-fight, and noted it when it happened.

2. Christopher's characters didn't have a good day.

It also occurred to me, for the first time in my history as a role-player, and given the cleric-heavy, Hieronymous-heavy scenario, that resurrecting a player-character might actually be a fun and dramatic topic for a later scenario, rather than a lame-ass "oh let him keep playing" add-on.

Hi there,

Joel, "fiat" isn't the right concept for the set-conflict processes in any role-playing game. However, the functional ways in which this is accomplished vary widely, and are currently ill-described by current RPG jargon.

I suggest that a great deal of your question, however, is irrelevant. Shared commitment to the SIS is a powerful thing. If a participant in the game were to ask for or instigate such an irrelevant, wacked conflict, it's almost certain that the person is disrupting the SIS, on purpose, for some agenda of his own that has nothing to do with the shared medium. A lot like getting up and doing a belly-dance on the sofa when the rest of you are trying to play a game of cards or watch a movie together. Or building a card-house with one's hand during a poker game, and saying, "What? I'm playing cards with you, aren't I?"

If you can provide a real, actual-play example of such a conflict being proposed or established, which is not an instance of such disruption, I'd be interested to know about it, in its own thread.

Aside from disruptive examples, I submit that Trollbabe is probably the game to check out for a rules-set that solves the issues you're concerned about without fiat - merely authority. But that's off-topic here, I think. All I can say here, productively, is that D&D offers no procedures to deal with that except to invoke the rule that says "DM really decides" following the roll, for some of the social skills, especially Diplomacy. That is indeed a form of social correction, or an attempt at one, although I don't think it would be very effective.

Roger: no temptation whatsoever. Any such hint of that temptation has been burned out of my RPG desires or habits by years of Sorcerer, which has taught me that it is simply and clearly more fun to see where things go, rather than to try to spin the two dials of "how the rolls turns out" and "how the situations turns out" simultaneously. It's not that I merely don't want to do it ... it's that I can no longer even imagine wanting to fudge a dice outcome or to tweak a narration, in order to make Christopher's characters look better or succeed a little more or have an opportunity arise. At present, my reaction to such a thing is not much different from direct, repulsed aversion. If you, for instance, were to state that this was a technique you'd be willing to employ as a GM, it would be a strong disincentive for me to play with you.

Best, Ron

Hmm. . .I think I'm starting to see that at the very least my concepts of "fiat" vs. "authority" need some heavy examination. I'll try to come up with some AP examples and perhaps work up a new thread.

Peace,
-Joel

Ron wrote: At present, my reaction to such a thing is not much different from direct, repulsed aversion. If you, for instance, were to state that this was a technique you'd be willing to employ as a GM, it would be a strong disincentive for me to play with you.

Hi there,

You guys are responding as if the minor and healthy reaction of a twelve-year-old boy were a problem, or as if the response of the father and adult friend (i.e. to ignore it, which we did) were a problem.

Neither is a problem. We were enjoying an activity that includes, as part of what's in it, the failure of actions. It takes place over several sessions (or as to its fullest potential, many[/] sessions), and as expected, the sessions vary in terms of how successful or significant a given character's actions are at any particular moment. Right? As expected. Given the resolution system, given many features of this particular game, that's how it works.

You guys get that, right? There wasn't a problem. This wasn't a crisis. Christopher is not scarred. His characters performed many, many heroic and dramatic acts during play - you read about them, remember? He loved the game. Don't get all bent out of shape at a kid his age going "grump grump" in an extremely minimal way when his characters have an off-kilter series of rolls; it's disturbing to read.

Best, Ron

Hello.

I would like to ask a question about something Ron has only touched briefly in the "D&D: the kid two houses down" threads.

(As I am new to the Forge, please let me know if I am violating any established etiquette. In particular, I don't how much I should bore you by describing where I'm coming from, what my experience with roleplaying games is, and so on. Please feel free to ask for more information, and I will oblige. I'm also concerned that I may not be handling the "quote" function incorrectly, so please bear with me if the quotes don't come out right.)

My question is about the discussion that prefaced the whole game:

Ron wrote:
In other words, someone without the neurosis in the first place doesn't need therapy-based jargon in order to help themself enjoy doing something. All we did was that two-minute talk in the beginning about what sort of play we'd like, and since that talk wasn't swamped in meaningless garbage like "realism" and "balance" and similar, it was productive and sufficient.

Ron wrote:
We all had a little talk about what we'd like to do, and my jargony conclusion from what they said is, "light-hearted Narrativism, with necessary attention to strategy in order to keep characters alive." So no gonzo Gamist Magic-deck style Feat combinations, no crazed perusing of spell lists from every possible supplement, etc. [...] And bluntly, when it comes to looking over every little box on the sheet and figuring out that they should be getting +7 instead of +5, well, I warned them - that's not my job. I'll be hitting them with penalties and AC bonuses to foes, and if they don't track their +'s for various things, too bad.

Ron wrote: You guys are responding as if the minor and healthy reaction of a twelve-year-old boy were a problem, or as if the response of the father and adult friend (i.e. to ignore it, which we did) were a problem.

Neither is a problem. We were enjoying an activity that includes, as part of what's in it, the failure of actions.

Raven, do not set me up with what look like serious questions, only to say "Ha! That's the answer I hoped to elicit." It's patronizing and annoying. If you have a viewpoint on a topic, simply present your viewpoint, and spare me this coffee-shop version of the Socratic method.

Paul, welcome to the Forge, and your posting here is perfectly acceptable. I do encourage you to start your own Actual Play thread, regarding any RPG experience you've ever played.

I'm going to disagree with one distinct point you made. When you see what it is, and what I'm saying, I think you'll see it's the foundation for my overall answer to your question. You wrote,

With people new to roleplaying, it can be difficult to get any input at all, since new players are more likely to be shy/reticent, and anyone unfamiliar with a game is not going to know what they might like or dislike, since they might not have any idea of what to expect from play.

Ron, I'll speak up with an actual play example that describes what I think Paul is talking about. Situation is  very similar to your description, although the game is Call of Cthulhu. Neither of my two prospective players has much RP experience - a little bit of high school D&D in one case, some Vampire LARP in the other. I described the choice as between a Stephen King kind of story, in which normal life is menaced by a monster and the characters need to figure out its secrets so that it can be defeated, and a Clive Barker kind of story, in which people come into contact with the supernatural and are pushed to the point of destruction or transformation by it. What we had was a highly digressive conversation that amounted to "well, I like this about choice one, and that about choice two, and I don't know which I'll like better - so you choose. You've done this before." Essentially, the new player(s) deferring to presumed expertise on the part of the experienced player, absent the kind of bullying you suggest.

At least I think I didn't bully. It can be tough to be objective about these things.

Ah, Mark. Mark.

You didn't provide them with Agenda-specific options. You described stuff which, to a role-player, would make sense in terms of nuances of Character Exploration and the expected success/fail ratio. They had no idea what you were talking about.

No, not even "defeat menace." That is not a Gamist flag to a non-role-player. You have to be specific about the human reality of a given CA. You have to talk about Step On Up in some explicit way.

Print out my little dialogue with Dan and Christopher, above, and your summary in your post. Put them side by side. Now draw, on the Big Model diagram, what each text piece is talking about.

You'll find that mine is totally aligned along the arrow of the Creative Agenda, and that yours is firmly embedded in the Components of Exploration section, mostly Character and a little bit of System (i.e. outcomes, failure/success).

Non-role-players, quite reasonably, assess the things they want to do along the line of agenda, in this case, Creative Agenda because it's a creative activity. Role-players, unreasonably, are largely unable to talk about CA and exist in a state of verbal denial that it even exists. Nothing you described to them had anything to do with what they needed to know.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: Raven, do not set me up with what look like serious questions, only to say "Ha! That's the answer I hoped to elicit." It's patronizing and annoying. If you have a viewpoint on a topic, simply present your viewpoint, and spare me this coffee-shop version of the Socratic method.

Ron,

Thank you very much! That's exactly what I was hoping for. I'm sure I'm not the only one who
will find that kind of example useful.

Ron wrote:
Paul, welcome to the Forge, and your posting here is perfectly acceptable. I do encourage you to start your own Actual Play thread, regarding any RPG experience you've ever played.

I'm going to disagree with one distinct point you made. When you see what it is, and what I'm saying, I think you'll see it's the foundation for my overall answer to your question. You wrote,

With people new to roleplaying, it can be difficult to get any input at all, since new players are more likely to be shy/reticent, and anyone unfamiliar with a game is not going to know what they might like or dislike, since they might not have any idea of what to expect from play.

I disagree with this claim. I suggest, instead, that what you (the role-player) are remembering or encountering with non-role-players at their first game, is the second thing they demonstrate, not the first. They demonstrate this second thing (exactly what you describe) upon receiving fierce, unified, marginalizing feedback from the role-players they're with, about how they're doing it wrong, or reacting wrong, or not getting it in some way. That's when they become shy and reticent, as well they might.

Since Dan and Christopher were not in this position, I was free to deal with their first reaction, which as I know from many years of "working with" (terrible phrase) new role-players, is the simplest and most easy thing ever.

Hi Paul,

One speedbump I'm encountering with your post is that I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. It starts one way and seems to end up another.

Forging ahead a little blindly, I suggest my answer to Mark may apply to your case as well. For whatever my value judgment is worth, it's good that you didn't include bullying and negative reinforcement to mold others into your own model of play; both of you seem to have avoided that without trouble. But absence of negative stuff is only half the battle. The "positive," which is to say the constructive in the most literal sense (stuff to build with), is Creative Agenda, in concrete, human-interactive terms. And although I didn't mention this before, the touchstone for that in terms of procedures ("what do we do here?") is the reward system.

I suggest that in your case, based on what you've said here (because I wasn't there and cannot be sure), you might introduce, say, Tunnels & Trolls as follows:

The goal is to "beat my dungeon." The only way to do that is to progress as many of your characters upward through as many levels and abilities as possible, because I'll be amping the foes up the whole time. You'll need imagination and to think laterally a lot of the time, because the system is highly flexible and you can do stuff that isn't explicitly listed there. Sometimes it'll involve working as a team, and sometimes it'll involve screwing one another over in small ways.

Compare that to:

You make up characters and act out their dialogue!

Thud. The non-role-players' resulting stare of puzzlement and hesitancy is fully justified. Why would anyone want to do that? Of course they'll be unsure; they're looking for the part which any social/fun activity has to have in it - the social and procedural reinforcement process. What do they do which "works?" Without that, and even without the negative practices I mentioned before, they won't have received the explanation they were looking for.

It'd be like explaining Monopoly by saying "we move pieces on a board!" and leaving it at that. Without even knowing what a turn is, or how you get money or how you know someone wins, they are definitely going to hesitate as play begins, or even as they sit down at the table.

My next point may be a little jarring to role-players, who are used to coping with a diversity of strongly-felt, inarticulate Creative Agendas or incoherent versions of them. Instead of saying "Gee, the floor's open, what way shall we go?", which is reasonable in the face of the role-players I just characterized, with non-role-players, especially in a group of'em as you describe, you need to be singular and concrete. This Creative Agenda, procedurally reinforced in this way.

I provided Dan and Christopher with two, but only because we were dealing with D&D 3.0/3.5, with its plethora of associations. If it had been Tunnels & Trolls, I would have described raw, bouncy Gamist play; if it had been The Mountain Witch, I would have described highly player-interactive Narrativist play; and in neither case would I have provided Column B.
Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
One speedbump I'm encountering with your post is that I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. It starts one way and seems to end up another.

Paul can speak for himself, Colin. He can let me know whether my reply to his question - which is consistent with your interpretation - helped him. This isn't a confrontation, and you don't need to mediate.

Best, Ron

Ron,

Your reply was, indeed, just what I had been hoping for, and quite clear.

My own post could have used quite a bit of editing. For the purposes of retaining clarity in this conversation, I'll try to summarize what it was that I had been trying to say:

1. You are correct: that sort of response, coming from people new to gaming, is often a "second" response, as you put it--a direct reaction to negative experiences they've had in the past.

2. However, will I agree with that, I disagree that it is the ONLY reason. Another explanation is that they either just want to experience the RPG thing "au naturel", as an explorer or observer, and thus do not want to provide input. A third is that they simply can't articulate what they want because they don't really understand what RPG gameplay is like, not having experienced it yet. I feel quite confident that the reticence I have seen in some new gamers is due to one of these reasons, and not a result of bullying or other negative behaviour.

3. What I'm interested in is learning how to communicate about these things in a simple way, whether with people new to roleplaying or veteran gamers.

You've provided two great examples of a simple way of explaining CA in plain English, and thus offering these people a clear choice. Those examples are a good model for that sort of communication. Essentially it comes down to telling the players what the overall goal of play is (e.g. collect the most money in Monopoly, defeat the other players), rather than describe parts of the process (especially things like Color elements within the fiction).

However, explaining Gamist priorities is probably the easiest of the three (at least once you get over any stigma attached to "rollplaying" or "playing to win" being evils, and can just explain it as it is, as you have done). Where most people flounder, I think, is in trying to explain collaborative storytelling/Narrativism, where there isn't as clear a "victory condition". Even more difficult is trying to explain an open Sim-type game. And, of course, there are many varieties of play within games aimed at fulfilling those Agendas. The "mainstream" RPG world is focused on that type of play, although it usually talks about "storytelling", so that's probably what most gamers are trying to describe, most of the time--and failing miserably! 

Can you offer any advice on talking about those? A single paragraph, like the ones you wrote so far, would be sufficient, I think.

My final concern in the previous post was that this might be considered off-topic. I will not be surprised if you choose to keep it brief, therefore.

More in line with the thread topic, however, I could frame the question differently:

You have made it clear that you do not intend or expect to continue this game with Dan and Christopher. If the answer doesn't lie too deep in the personal realm, why not? Is it a personal issue (lack of time, preference to play with other gamers, or similar), or a game-related issue (the setting/characters, or the system, doesn't interest you beyond this brief game)? Have you satisfied whatever interest you had in playing 3rd edition D&D in the first place?

(All of the above goes for you or Dan and Christopher--so, if you know how they feel about these questions, I'd love to hear about that too. And, finally:)

Do you plan to play with Dan and Christopher again? If so, how would you pitch a different game (even if it's D&D again) to them?

And, while I'm here, one more question:

Ron wrote:
All in all, not bad. I have some general thoughts and conclusions about running the modern D&D, but even more about the nature of dialogue about D&D, and the latter may or may not show up in this thread.

Sorry, just to clarify:

When I said,

"Can you offer any advice on talking about those [other Agendas]? A single paragraph, like the ones you wrote so far, would be sufficient, I think."

I was referring to the example you gave for "Tunnels and Trolls", which I found immensely helpful as a model for describing Gamist play:

Ron wrote:
I suggest that in your case, based on what you've said here (because I wasn't there and cannot be sure), you might introduce, say, Tunnels & Trolls as follows:

The goal is to "beat my dungeon." The only way to do that is to progress as many of your characters upward through as many levels and abilities as possible, because I'll be amping the foes up the whole time. You'll need imagination and to think laterally a lot of the time, because the system is highly flexible and you can do stuff that isn't explicitly listed there. Sometimes it'll involve working as a team, and sometimes it'll involve screwing one another over in small ways.

Compare that to:

You make up characters and act out their dialogue!

Hi Paul,

I get it, and have from the beginning: "not all," or "not only," is a fair statement regarding newcomers' hesitance and the causes I've stated. I do stand by my observations that the negative reasons (including Creative Agenda inarticulacy) are vastly more common, but there's no point in debating that. I'd like to forestall any further debate on whether other reasons are 10% or 20% or whatever percent of the total.

Regarding describing Creative Agendas to a group prior to play, a lot of this has to do with the way I compose handouts for a given group. I've discovered that the little summaries I write in the first couple of paragraphs are a lot more meaty than they look at first. "Creative Agenda via Color" might be the best way to describe them.

For a pretty intense example, see my old account of My current Sorcerer game - modern necromancy. Actually, the most relevant portion of the discussion can be found in the second thread, The necromancy game continued; see my point #3 in my first post, especially.

As for providing a whole string of off-the-cuff examples here, I'd rather not. Part of the reason is that venue is important: who exactly I'm writing for, as well as the general social circumstances of the game. Another part is that it's not really the way I like to interact on-line, providing lists on demand, although that is not to be taken as a criticism of you in particular (you've been very courteous).

As for the other questions, here goes.

You have made it clear that you do not intend or expect to continue this game with Dan and Christopher. If the answer doesn't lie too deep in the personal realm, why not? Is it a personal issue (lack of time, preference to play with other gamers, or similar), or a game-related issue (the setting/characters, or the system, doesn't interest you beyond this brief game)? Have you satisfied whatever interest you had in playing 3rd edition D&D in the first place?

Ron,

I am not interested in discussing percentages either, so we're on the same page there!

I will go and read the threads you linked to, as well your three main essays (my main problem being that I'm not sure how to explain a Narrativist CA without using GNS jargon, and a Simulationist CA without using gamer-geek jargon).

I realize that posting a shopping list of paragraphs is not your mode of operation--I only suggested it because that was the format you used for the first example. Are you still interested in discussing my question (in some form other than "read this boxed text before your game" from Ron Edwards)? What are important points to hit on for other CAs? As I said, I've found the examples you've put up so far extremely useful.

Finally, in the first post of this thread, you mentioned that you'd like to encourage new posters to ask questions about the GNS aspects of your D&D game. Very well! You've already mentioned that you "drifted" the game in part by limiting the scope of play, effectively removing the planned character improvement aspect of play (as well as beginning at 3rd level, encouraging multi-classing, and having two characters per player). What other methods did you use to make sure you reached your "creative goals" in this game?

Quote: "4. Did we hit the creative goals that we talked about in the beginning? Check."

I believe that by "creative goals" you were referring to your earlier statement: "light-hearted Narrativism, with necessary attention to strategy in order to keep characters alive."

So, what techniques (including out-of-game discussion or anything else, not just rules changes) did you apply to encourage your stated "light-hearted Narrativist [...] + strategy" agenda? So far, you've mentioned the discussion you had up-front (making special note of the potential for character death), relationship-mapping, and some time spent checking over the characters in order to help the players remember to put on their armor, and similar.

For example, were the characters created completely in a vacuum, as the books seem to suggest (unless I'm mistaken)? How did you encourage (if at all) a connection between the characters, and between the characters and the "adventure"?

The relevant quote: "Our heroes are friends of the family in various ways and are showing up for Lady Khoros' funeral."

Was this your decision (and was it open to negotiation), or theirs (likewise)?

Thanks a lot, once again. I've really enjoyed these threads, and your last few posts have been particularly useful to me.

All the best,

Paul

Hiya,

The general question about initial presentation is probably too general for this thread, and I can only say that for most of the stuff I've posted about here in Actual Play, I've tried to articulate just how I presented it to the group. Check out my threads and let me know if any of the content provides useful examples.

As far as specific techniques regarding Narrativist play ... you know, I think it was pretty much just that first discussion, and that was it. After that, it was an agenda, not techniques. Not what we did at an atomic level, but what we did it for, as evidenced by a number of concrete decisions and interactions during play - the same ones I've been careful to point out across all the threads, they should be relatively easy to spot on a re-read.

One of these days, I'd like to consider reward systems which, mechanically speaking, consist solely of subsequent interactions among the characters (PC or NPC, doesn't matter). I aimed very specifically in that direction in my game Trollbabe, and you can see hints of it in games like Polaris and Dogs in the Vineyard ... and the daddy of these effects is probably Hero Wars (later HeroQuest) ... h'm. Another thread topic, to be sure.

My point in bringing it up here concerns the mechanics of the reward system we utilized, and as far as I can tell, it was extremely SIS-heavy - actions had very specific and identifiable consequences in terms of how all the other NPCs related to the character from that point on. It goes back to the essence of relationship-mapping as a technique, actually, which puts one of the foundational texts at The Sorcerer's Soul.

You asked some good questions.

were the characters created completely in a vacuum, as the books seem to suggest (unless I'm mistaken)?

How did you encourage (if at all) a connection between the characters, and between the characters and the "adventure"?

The relevant quote: "Our heroes are friends of the family in various ways and are showing up for Lady Khoros' funeral."

Was this your decision (and was it open to negotiation), or theirs (likewise)?

Thank you very much, Ron. That answers my questions (particularly the parts about choosing to make death an important part of the game, etc).

Is it acceptable for me to quote some of what you wrote here in a new thread?

Thanks,

Paul

Better to ask me procedure-questions by private message. That way, I don't have to switch moderator/poster hats in the middle of the thread, which confuses people (and sometimes myself). Anyway, though, yeah, quote as you like. However, be sure to post about real actual play of yours if you're aiming for the Actual Play forum; don't merely quote me as the basis for a new thread by itself.

Everyone, further posts on this thread should focus on the D&D game I described.

Best, Ron