Both my wife and I used to be avid roleplayers but children, work, scheduling with other players, and general dissatisfaction with play had reduced me to not playing at all and her to a once a month LARP.  Since we both were somewhat unsatisfied with this situation, we talked about trying to arrange gaming with some friends we used to roleplay with. Ultimately, however, we decided to start a game for just the two of us so we didn't have to worry about scheduling.  Initially I was quite leery of this idea since she wanted me to GM and I wasn't confident that I was up to it.

All of my past experience was with larger groups, systems that didn't work for me, and clashing creative agendas.  My biggest concern with this was that she would be bored since in my past GMing I had been able to rely on party banter to see where the players were heading (and of course the players always stayed together because that's how you roleplay...sigh, it hurts sometimes looking at my past play), and to buy myself time to think about how to deal with the curveball the players had just pitched me.  The other issue was that before quiting roleplaying I had been getting more and more frustrated with the experience.  Thanks to the forge I had identified that my problems were with conflicting Creative Agendas and differing (and unspoken) expectations of the Social Contract, but I was (and still am) trying to figure out exactly what I want.

Despite my misgivings, I throw together a game featuring a girl with special powers forced into a secret global organization and sent off to Princeton where she trains secretly while trying to maintain a normal life.  Terribly cliched, but that can still be fun.  However the game died.  It crashed and burned a thousand screaming horrible deaths.

At the time I thought the first bit was ok, I revealed her powers, then the organization showed up and bullied and threatened her off to Princeton.  Yup, I totally deprotagonized her.  I had this 'Cool Idea'[sup](tm)[/sup] that I was going to run and rather than discuss it with her and say "I got this great idea for a character with powers training at Princeton, wanna play?", I told her "make up whatever character you want" with an unspoken "And I'll make your square peg fit my round hole if I have to".

After that she recognized that my "creative vision" was going to completely squelch her attempt to play and explore her 'Cool Character'[sup](tm)[/sup], she decided to protect her emotional investment by disengaging with the game (and of course she didn't tell me any of this because that would be complaining and all roleplay is good roleplay...sigh).  Then we muddled through a handful of sessions where all that happened was that she talked to people, not about anything interesting or relevant, just talk.  I kept getting frustrated because I was trying to get her to take the initiative and do something and she kept ignoring or batting down all the plot hooks I tossed her way.

I started making excuses not to run the game, we had an argument over whether our relationship could work if we couldn't even manage to roleplay together (it's almost funny in retrospect to think we gave that much importance to a single attempt to play a game), and eventually agreed to officially declare the game dead.

This totally bummed me out, validating all my depressive beliefs that I suck and that I'm the worlds biggest loser.  Thankfully after a bit I realised I was being just a tad over dramatic, got off my ass, and started trying to figure out what went wrong.  Queue the realisation that the very first thing I had done in game was to deprotagonize her character.  I talked with her a bit about what I had done and why it was 'a bad thing'[sup](tm)[/sup].  Queue her revealing that she had disengaged from play.  Queue my revelation that we could do better.

I spent several days reading over various forge articles trying to pin down what I was wanting out of a game.  I sent her copies of the articles too, but after having my life threatened if I tried to make her read 'another thing written by Ron', I settled for a series of conversations were I tried to draw out her expectations, limitations, and desires regarding roleplaying (which I think actually worked out better anyways).

With that done we had discovered that primarily I was looking for a Narrativist exploration of issues backed by strong characterization, while she was looking for Simulationist exploration of character and setting spotlighted by various takes on consistent thematic issues.  Though not identical, this was similar enough that we started to be confident that we could come up with something that worked.

The other things we determined was that while she had never played in a game that really allowed her to creatively contribute to the game, in ways other than through character, she was willing to try.  We established some boundries of authority for introducing things to the game.  Talked about her taking initiative for creating and framing scenes and techniques to do so.

After that we started to discuss what to play.  She suggested we try restarting our first game, which I vetoed on the basis that it was already screwed up and had emotional baggage attached.  Having a flash of insight I checked with her whether it really was the game she wanted to continue or whether it was the character she wanted to keep playing.  After thinking about it for a little bit she acknowledged that it was the character, so we agreed to take the character, rework her a little bit, and build our game around her.  And so we did.  I'm not going to talk about that here since it would distract from the general gist of this post, I'll toss it up later as [Sorceror] Storm Watch.

Anyways last night we went out for dinner and worked through character creation, setting creation, and our opening scene.  It went off like a dream, we were both really grooving it and she narrated a fantastic kicker that was incredibly moving (she had her younger brother killed by an elemental force that was trying to get her).  Overall I'm really happy, we came up with a definition of humanity and some themes that we will be hitting constantly as she explores her character.

Not sure whether I'm getting at anything in particular other than that this really cool story would never have come about without having botched the first game and then working past it.  We might have come up with a differen cool story, but it wouldn't be this one but it likely would have missed at least some of the things that our revelations had suggested we need.

Regards,
Dan

((Having read this over my wife feels that she comes off as a 'whiny bitch' let me assure you that she was remarkably tolerant of me through this, any such impresion is purely my fault as the writer.  However if I came off as a 'Domineering Asshole' during this whole thing thats because I was being one.))

Hi there,

That's uh, very revealing. I appreciate it, although I'm a little embarassed as if I'd been caught using your bedroom's bathroom while you guys were having an argument, and then had to walk out nonchalantly and hope I wasn't noticed. Or any similar scene from British comedy along those lines.

Anyway. Thanks for posting this, and I sympathize with your wife's protest against the barrage of my articles. Hint for next time, if necessary - Vincent's archive, much better.

Best, Ron

Yikes! 

Thanks for posting, Dan.  Please be sure to keep us updated on your future sessions.  I'm really curious to hear how things work out over time.

-Eric

Hi Dan,

Welcome to the forge!  I don't have much to add here except to note for other folks that I know you out in the real world, and our gaming circles occaisionally interact.  So if we appear to be talking in code, smack us.

I'm glad you and your wife have managed to find common ground; if it's any consolation, your road was much shorter and less rocky than the one Raven and I took - we basically spent a good 5+ years where we just couldn't game together, it pushed all of both our buttons.

James