Recently in another actual play post ---> http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=22017.0, Ron wrote something that really resonated with me.

[Quote]
My take is that if CA is left to fend for itself, or more accurately, if differences in desired CA are left without resolution, then a group can function via what I call incoherent play. They can enjoy how they play together, the techniques and color and whatnot.

But only in comparison with play that does not utilize those techniques. Which is like someone saying "I like bucket seats, so whatever we do, as long as it has bucket seats, that's better than not." And everyone else either likes bucket seats, or can take them or leave them, so that's what happens.

The problem, or potential problem, is that bucket seats are not, themselves, the car, nor its destination. So people basically say, "you know, originally or if it were possible or serendipitous, I'd sure like this car to go somewhere. But every time I ever did this, those fucking other seats kept hurting my back. So now, hey - all I want is the bucket seats. Someone else make it go somewhere, as long as I'm in the bucket seats, I'm good."

Translate this into a ten-to-fifteen year history of role-playing. Now, the person is going to be flat-out certain that all they need to have fun, is that the game must have (e.g.) no one-hit kills, and lots of cool effective powers. Because when their character gets killed with some one-hit NPC action, and when they have magic but can't do anything except "read magic" once a day, it sucks. They'll tell you so. First priority, man - first priority.

Did they ever want to Step On Up, Dream, or Address Premise? Maybe they did. One, two, or all of them, maybe. But that is long, long gone in their creative history, They didn't know about it at the time and they know damn well, now, that any effort or thought in that direction is off the radar screen. So it's now off of theirs.

When those preferences take such priority that they override all else, then people stay together with a group only because it's the only group which doesn't inflict massive irritation upon them via non-desired techniques. This is Mark's Champions game, big-time. Plus nearly any other late-thirties, former college buddies, bored-wife-included, still-playing-Champs (or Ars Magica or D&D or whatever) group.


This described the exact situation that I now find myself in with two separate gaming groups. It was almost as if he was a silent watcher at my gaming table. He suggested that I follow up by posting an Actual Play account describing my experiences, focusing on the one I think has incoherent play. Once you open pandora’s box it is hard to go back, once you figure out that you want to the car to go somewhere, you want to start taking a trip and stop arguing about bucket seats.

The Group and History
First, a quick history of the group. It was formed in early 2004 when I moved to Japan. A fellow gamer reached out across the intraweb and replied to a post that I had on the WoTC boards. Here are some details about the group, its formation, and some other social contract level details. I can go into more detail later if needed for the discussion.

Me – Steve – 31, gaming since the early 80’s. Pretty steady gaming until college, where there was a gap playing some mini games with roommates and magic.  I started playing RPG’s again after college. Due to my job, which is not military, I move about every 6mo to a year. The longest assignment has been the current one, Japan, for almost three years. The last place I lived prior to moving to Japan was Doha, Qatar (a small middle-eastern country near Dubai). I lived there for about 1.5 years, and the only gaming was done sporadically as play by post. When we started I only had this game group, and didn’t know the guys except for Dennis. My background is basically “club play”, meaning finding games through gaming clubs or game store adverts.

Dennis – also in his thirties – gaming since the early 80’s. He also cut his teeth on Basic DnD. He was the guy who reached across the intraweb to build the group. He has a creative writing background and commutes all the way from Yamanashi to play (about 2 hours one way). He also has other game groups in Yamanashi. Dennis played with Gene in a different city a while ago when they were both in Toyama trying out 3E when it first came out. Dennis put the group together, and I hosted since it was central. Dennis is similar to me in that most of his groups run short session games.   

Gene – 20 something – to be honest I don’t remember a lot of Gene’s gaming background. He had played with Dennis in Toyama. Gene moved away about a year ago, so he doesn’t show up in the later game accounts. Gene lived in Chiba and also commuted 2 hours to play, one way. In total Gene and Dennis are about 4 hours apart and we met at a central location (my flat).

Pete – 20 something  - didn’t play basic ODnD I don’t think, but has a long gaming background. He has expressed a preference for high power play and longer campaigns. Didn’t commute as long as the others but still it was a good train ride. Probably knows the D20 rules the best of any of the group.

The sessions basically follow the same schedule which is:
* eat lunch together starting at noon
* start playing about 1pm and play until about 6-7pm
* eat dinner
* sometimes continue play until about 8 or 8:30 pm.

Generally I supply the beer, wine, and food. But that is because I don’t have to buy train tickets and the other guys do. I have occasionally socialized with Pete outside of the game, because he lives close enough to do so, but Gene and Dennis live pretty far out. They would occasionally crash at my place if they had to do something in Tokyo that involved an overnight stay. We have two game sessions a year that are “lite”, a hanami cherry blossom party and Christmas party. While there is still gaming, it is light stuff like LoTR risk, and generally the non-gaming spouses or SO’s show up to if they can get the time off. No one in the group until recently had spent much time with the “Big Model”. So for the purposes of the discussion of the first game, you can basically assume that we had never heard of it.

The Games
In the last 2 and change years, the longest single game was about 4 sesssions, we couldn’t get anything to last longer than that. I have pointed this out to the others recently that perhaps this could be a symptom of incoherent play. Pete has stated that he would like longer running games. If I recall correctly, almost all of the shifts between games was initiated by myself. We also rotated GM’s quite a bit, although Gene never GM’d.

I am not going to talk about all the games we did, I’ll just start with the first one which is a typical one for the longer running games, and can always elaborate more if needed. Towards the end of the two years the number of sessions per game has been getting shorter. Now they are basically one shots.  But most of our games for the two years were similar to the one I am going to describe below. With the exception of some playtests of homebrew stuff (mine), play was D20 based.

Early 2004 – Eberron D20 – Lasted for about 4 sessions. I had just gotten the book and found it interesting. We started either at first level or second. There was some discussion on this, Pete wanted it to be a higher level game. But eventually we settled on the lower level game for a new group with a new setting.

I was GM. I basically took the movie plot for “ghost and the darkness” and plopped into Eberron. I can elaborate further on the prep later if needed. There some interesting themes in the book, and the whole fantasy train system combined with the “magebred” beasties suggested that plot. I do remember spending a lot of time pouring over the train details, the time it took to get from x to y, and other details from the book including the various noble and magic houses. I also recall that while one of the Eberron Nations is solidly based on the “English”, the others don’t have that feel. The one we played in, I picked a French theme, and made all the titles French, like instead of knights we had Chevalier. I also just picked some random Eberron beasties and made a micro-dungeon for a part of the adventure. The dungeon was to bring some of the ancient history of Eberron into the spotlight. I didn’t do the travel time stuff ‘cause I liked it, but did it because I thought it wouldn’t be fair to fluff something like that in the first session. I wanted the word to act in a consistent manner for them. If I was doing it again it would depend on the type of game the group wanted. If they didn’t care I would just fluff it, if they did I would make it consistent.

Character creation was done after adventure creation. That was a function of logistics such as only meeting once a month but meeting for about 8 hours. But I do think now it would be better to do character creation first, and then build the adventures around the characters.

The GMing was a mix of behind the scenes set encounters and key based encounters (all in all I think basically what the DMG tells you to do). For example, certain parts of the adventure were givens, they were going to face the controller of the lion regardless of what the PC’s did. There were giant neon sign type of clues in the game as well, that said these guys don’t want you to investigate their dig site. But in other points it wasn’t. It was a given that they would find the micro dungeon, but not a given that they would go into it, but knowing Gene I didn’t think that would be a problem.  There were definite “loss points” in the game, and there was real risk.  But given the system, D20 Eberron - which has “fate points or something similar”, the general rule that it is damn hard to die in D20 with the -10 Hitpoint rules,  and the fact that I pretty much stuck to the CR system in D20, this risk is one of death through attrition and not single rolls. The bigger loss point was being sidelined for a while.

The reward for the mission, was (A) some social recognition in-game with the various factions, (B) a very large black magic lion which they had to somehow turn into a more real reward, but for now they had angry lion in a cage, and (C) a magic demonblade. But I knew they were never going to keep it. Taking it away was the next plot point. We stopped the game right after the blade was taken away by some bandits. I told the group that we should break and would return to it later. I was burned out after 4 sessions of prep and was tapped for what to happen next. 

I also recall that there was a very elaborate travel plan that I created, creating villages along a major trade route, figuring out encounters at which village, and the trigger for if the PC’s faced those encounters. It was basically a balance between traveling in the wilderness under cover or traveling open through the villages. This was for the post adventure when they were traveling back to the person that gave them the “mission”.

Pete has stated that he liked this game as one of the best we have played. I am not sure where Gene or Dennis weighs in. But based on my memory that there were moments in the game that overshadowed Dennis’ role in this game, so I would speculate that this wasn’t one of his favorite games of ours. But he may chime in at some point in the discussion.

Here are a couple of the highlights from that game looking back based on what I know now (i.e. after opening Pandora’s box or crying the emperor has no clothes). These events took place over 2 years ago, these things I mention the players still talk about today:

(A) I don’t think I could play that game again. I wouldn’t choose to do the prep work.  There was a lot of prep in that game, including reading the entire manual, and teasing out themes I liked. Then there was all the balancing of Challenge Ratings, tweaking inconsistencies in the NPC motivations, making sure the time tables worked for traveling from point A to B, as well as statting the whole damn thing up. I think I spent roughly 14-20 hours prepping that game, not including reading the Eberron manual.

I understand now that I was taking player choices away from them at a lot of points in the game. My enjoyment from that game came from seeing how the prep material would unfold in the world, and seeing how the players would react to certain parts of the game. In the end, it turned out like my vision going into the game. At the time I thought, “cool, the game went the way I planned and some cool stuff happened”, now I think it would feel flat like “oh, the game went as I planned, no surprises”. The fact that the next adventure was based on them losing the sword, just feels plain wrong to me now.

The most interesting point looking back now in the game was seeing how the players reacted to situations, such as “what do we do with a 1000 lb. magic bred lion as a reward”?

(B) Gene is the type who just wants to see what is behind the next door. Even if that door is marked don’t fuckin’ open it, it will kill you. He did that in this game and almost every other game. He poked his raiper in little holes that were obviously traps. He went down to negative Hit Points, and the group found out he was a shapechanger not an elf. He got sidelined for a while, and lost a lot of rep as the “party rogue”. Gene’s rogue wasn’t the tomb raider type, he was the shapechanging sneaky type, at least that was how he statted him. As a data point, Gene was also the one who comb through the splat books the most, looking for stuff for his character. I also think it is important that Gene never once got upset in our games, no matter how bad he got hosed, and he never GM’d. Gene was act first, think second. I don’t think Gene was constrained by setting at all, the other players would have to remind him about how certain actions might not be consistent with the character concept.

(C) Pete seems to be happy as long as things go the way he wants it to go, but he won’t always state what he wants directly to the other players. You usually find out after the fact.  He had a pretty strong character vision, a Neutral Good Paladin from the frozen north. I remember having to kind of shoe-horn that into the setting. He accepted the other color I threw on to it to make it fit, even if he never embraced it.  And I think he has a pretty strong vision of what he wanted in the story. He is somewhat constrained by being consistent with the world, but will choose characters that have little moral, societal, or setting constraints. For example, while playing a Paladin, this paladin is neutral good and from a far flung tower in the mountains and doesn’t revert any known god in the setting, thereby removing a lot of constraints typically associated with Paladins. So while it was a paladin, it was the loosest one I have ever allowed in a game and the most “un-eberron” of the group. But he doesn’t mind applying setting constraints to others.

His most frustrating moment was when Gene just shot the bandit leader. The heroes were riding home with their prizes (including the cool sword that Pete was eyeing). They encounter a place called “gallows gorge” (big red neon sign here) with a single lone bandit, saying hand over your stuff. Pete, the Paladin, was going to talk to the bandit leader with high diplomacy to start.  This was, of course, not as it appeared. Obviously a single bandit is not going to single handily try to take down a group of 4 tough looking folks with a caged 1000 lb black lion. But Gene went ahead and shot the bandit, and then 15 other bandit buddies popped out to ambush. I think Pete was upset with Gene because it wasn’t the smartest trick in the book and he as the Paladin could have tried to talk his way out of it. End result was an afternoon of heroes v. bandit fighting. He did like that he kicked ass and took names during the battle.

Pete also played the token wizard in the group, a kind of PC who was never really around. He was used when spells were needed, and for comic relief. But again, I think that was hoisted on the group that you need an arcane magic user as I told them there was an encounter that they would die without an arcane spellcaster, and Eberron is heavy into magic. The wizard spent most of the battle under the wagon, hiding.

(D) Dennis was unhappy when his ranger didn’t feel like a ranger. He had a pretty strong idea of what he wanted in the game. He also was pretty good at getting into the setting material, and being very consistent with his character. I think his game priorities are best described “I want it to feel like X book or Y movie or Z myth”.

I had a critical fumble rule at my table, you roll a 1 and something bad or funny happens. At the start of the battle his first roll he rolled a 1. His bow string broke. I don’t think I would do that now; it broke down the dream. Ancient archers of mythic tales never had their bows break at the start of the battle. He had bad dice rolls during the entire battle, and spent most of it hanging from the side of the cliff (he kept making his climb rolls good enough not to fall but not good enough to go anywhere). Again, the loss point is sidelining the character for a while. To the rest of the group it was somewhat humorous and memorable, but to Dennis I think the whole experience soured the image he was going for. Dennis was most frustrated with the Dice I think. It didn’t help that Pete was jumping from one side of the gorge to the other in medium armor, and Dennis the light thrifty wilderness fighter was stuck hanging out on the side of the cliff.

I think this whole game is similar to what Ron describes in the quotes above about incoherent play, bucket seats and all. I have one or two more games to discuss with regards to the thread, but won’t mind questions or comparisons first before diving into them.

My Goals for the discussion are:
(1) help understand coherence better
(2) understand the difference between individual goals at the table and the concept of coherence to a creative agenda
(3) develop a means to communicate the above to points to the group

Very cool AP report! Let's see if I can help a bit.

Help me understand the social contract of the group. What was the understanding among you and the other players about what the game would be? Was there discussion among the players about the kind of campaign it'd be, beyond the PC levels and the fact that it was Eberron?  It sounds like you as DM drove the choice for the adventures but did the players have any input on that? Did you use any aspects of their characters as fodder for the adventures, like "Oh, I should include X for the paladin," or "Oh, I shouldn't include Y because no one in the group likes that stuff"?

I just realized you said, "Character creation was done after adventure creation," so obviously you didn't prep the adventure around the PCs but did you alter the adventure any based on character creation?

Were there any agreed-upon house rules? Was character creation done as a group with lots of interaction, or largely as an individual exercise? How much say did you as DM have in what they played (any vetoes or any "steering" on your part)?

I think I need to understand more on a few different layers to really understand your group dynamics and, therefore, try to answer your specific concerns. I'm drilling down through the Big Model, starting with social contract.

Hi there,

Adam, one thing I suggest is using a little inference, making a few guesses or proto-identifying statements, and asking the person (Steven in this case) how well they fit. The key is definitely to give them authority over the overall portrait, working from the suggestions. This tends to work better than asking them to do all the reflecting.

Steven, I'll list the stuff that jumps out at me in this post. You tell me which elements of the social setup are on track and which should be discarded.

1. Expats. Well, not really, but overseas English speakers, some of whom have traveled very extensively and widely, almost all of whom met in the context of "hey, we're here in Japan, let's hang out." So my first inference is the presence of a social glue at work which is significant - it extends the range of personal tastes and differences which people might be inclined to consider hanging out with. Granted, Steven, Dennis, and Gene knew one another before the group really got together, but I think this entire context is probably a big deal.

(Subtopic: ordinarily nationality isn't of extreme importance, but in this case, it's a factor. So, Steven - Americans, Brits, both, or?)

My second inference about that same feature is that everyone seems inclined to go to some trouble to meet up; there's a high logistic buy-in that everyone accepts. This also generates - over two and half years, mind - social glue, sunk-cost to put the worst face on it, or laudable commitment to put the best.

2. Age and gaming background indicates some possible inferences about the nature of the game being played, probably initially described as "D&D" without much clarification. This may be important because the thirtyish guys were both trained to role-play via something Steven calls "Basic D&D" (which needs to be clarified, but my current point is that it's definitely older-school), whereas the younger ones (twenty-something) may well have only discovered it though D&D3.0. If that's the case, then we're dealing with very different games as an assumed-to-be-common background. If that's not the case, then I'm interested to know what prior D&D strain the younger guys came up under.

Subtopic: one point about Steven specifically is that he has not lived in one place (prior to this one) for more than a year since college. That's like, eight or nine years! My hesitant inference from that is that he may not have much sense of role-playing as a part of a settled social life, and as part of adult life as opposed to remembering college life. So if one's model for "D&D" is best understood as "back in college," then think about what that means for any activities described that way.

3. The game - they play D20, period, never mind the bit of homebrew (more on that in a minute). This may be worth keeping an eye on ... how much does the group, as a whole, buy into the D20 myth, which is exactly the same as the GURPS myth from 15 years previously? The myth that says, "now you can play anything, because this is the system for anything." It's a comfortable illusion and tends to be strongly defended until it collapses by itself.

How long? Two and a half years, guys - keep that in mind. With all that effort and travel and hospitality embedded in it. That's the left-hand jab'; you shift your head back and away from it ... just in time to take the cross on the opposite cheekbone, knocking you off your feet. What's the cross? They manage four whole sessions per game (i.e. setting/prep/characters), maximum. This, for a group of folks whose gaming background - if I'm right - includes the assumption that play goes on a long time, including a reward-mechanic involving incremental improvement.

My mind boggles a bit, from that right cross. Yours should. You guys know what making up characters and prepping scenarios is like for any version of D&D, in this case D20 (which is even more so if you count stuff like monster-building). They've done this how many times? (Granted, in recent months or so, my impression is that people are more-or-less expecting one-session games. I don't know whether this is gravitation toward a preference or a coping mechanism for an ugly reality).

4. Does anyone seem a bit like the odd man out, in any way? Why look, Steven, it's you. I'm very interested in why and how you end up being the guy to instigate switching to play something else, especially since sometimes you're the DM and sometimes you're not. But for now, let's hold off on this point until after we talk about the Eberron game.

How's this looking, Steven? A decent foundation for us all to understand where the group is at and what issues or connections might be at work?

Best, Ron

Hi Ron/Adam,

I agree those questions are a good foundation to start from. I almost cross posted answers to Adam to yours, so let me take the time to digest and address each one in detail. I will say that I agree that I am the odd-man out with the exception of game in particular, which was a mutual decision between Dennis and I to stop the game. But I am getting ahead of myself, that should be something for later development. Let me work on this and get back to you. I will probably add a few more points which could be important, which is "other gaming activities", and situtation for being an expat in Japan (i.e. the only non-english teacher in the group)? Am I right in assuming these could be important?

I am hoping that Dennis will jump in as he has more knowledge of the gaming background for both Pete and Gene than myself.

Cheers for now,

Steve

1. Expats. Well, not really, but overseas English speakers, some of whom have traveled very extensively and widely, almost all of whom met in the context of "hey, we're here in Japan, let's hang out." So my first inference is the presence of a social glue at work which is significant - it extends the range of personal tastes and differences which people might be inclined to consider hanging out with. Granted, Steven, Dennis, and Gene knew one another before the group really got together, but I think this entire context is probably a big deal.

(Subtopic: ordinarily nationality isn't of extreme importance, but in this case, it's a factor. So, Steven - Americans, Brits, both, or?)

My second inference about that same feature is that everyone seems inclined to go to some trouble to meet up; there's a high logistic buy-in that everyone accepts. This also generates - over two and half years, mind - social glue, sunk-cost to put the worst face on it, or laudable commitment to put the best.

2. Age and gaming background indicates some possible inferences about the nature of the game being played, probably initially described as "D&D" without much clarification. This may be important because the thirtyish guys were both trained to role-play via something Steven calls "Basic D&D" (which needs to be clarified, but my current point is that it's definitely older-school), whereas the younger ones (twenty-something) may well have only discovered it though D&D3.0. If that's the case, then we're dealing with very different games as an assumed-to-be-common background. If that's not the case, then I'm interested to know what prior D&D strain the younger guys came up under.

Subtopic: one point about Steven specifically is that he has not lived in one place (prior to this one) for more than a year since college. That's like, eight or nine years! My hesitant inference from that is that he may not have much sense of role-playing as a part of a settled social life, and as part of adult life as opposed to remembering college life. So if one's model for "D&D" is best understood as "back in college," then think about what that means for any activities described that way.

3. The game - they play D20, period, never mind the bit of homebrew (more on that in a minute). This may be worth keeping an eye on ... how much does the group, as a whole, buy into the D20 myth, which is exactly the same as the GURPS myth from 15 years previously? The myth that says, "now you can play anything, because this is the system for anything." It's a comfortable illusion and tends to be strongly defended until it collapses by itself.

How long? Two and a half years, guys - keep that in mind. With all that effort and travel and hospitality embedded in it. That's the left-hand jab'; you shift your head back and away from it ... just in time to take the cross on the opposite cheekbone, knocking you off your feet. What's the cross? They manage four whole sessions per game (i.e. setting/prep/characters), maximum. This, for a group of folks whose gaming background - if I'm right - includes the assumption that play goes on a long time, including a reward-mechanic involving incremental improvement.

My mind boggles a bit, from that right cross. Yours should. You guys know what making up characters and prepping scenarios is like for any version of D&D, in this case D20 (which is even more so if you count stuff like monster-building). They've done this how many times? (Granted, in recent months or so, my impression is that people are more-or-less expecting one-session games. I don't know whether this is gravitation toward a preference or a coping mechanism for an ugly reality).

4. Does anyone seem a bit like the odd man out, in any way? Why look, Steven, it's you. I'm very interested in why and how you end up being the guy to instigate switching to play something else, especially since sometimes you're the DM and sometimes you're not. But for now, let's hold off on this point until after we talk about the Eberron game.

How's this looking, Steven? A decent foundation for us all to understand where the group is at and what issues or connections might be at work?

Hello, this is Dennis.  I'm still digesting all Steve has said so far, and Adam and Ron's responses, so this will just be a quick post. 

As Steve said, I first started playing with the Mentzer red box Basic D&D game.  My friends and brother and I played that, and Star Frontiers all through late elementary, Jr. high, and high school, plus a bit when I was back on break during college.  We tried out quite a few other games (some TSR, most not) during that time as well, but only had long-running games with those two systems. 

Like Steve, Magic: the Gathering (plus beer fueld Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo nights) were my gaming fix at college.  A group of friends and I played maybe 2-3 sessions of a game (1st edition AD&D) and that was it. 

After college, but before coming to Japan, I played for a year with a group of guys I met through a co-worker.  The group dynamic was similar to the current Ebisu group.  In that year, all 5 members of the group tried their hand at DMing for a while (weekly sessions), some of us more than once, so we had at least 6 different short lived campaigns in that year.  We played a hybrid 1st/2nd edition AD&D game.  Shortly after I left for Japan, two other members of that group also got jobs elsewhere (but still in the U.S.) so the group broke up, but we still keep in touch.

In Japan, I didn't game for the first two years or so, until 3rd Edition D&D came out.  I picked up the PHB while I was home for the summer, then a few months later ordered the DMG and MM over the internet, and got a group together to play (including Gene).  We found out the hard way about some of the flaws of d20, that you can't expect to play it the way older editions were played, but we also found it to be refreshing because we all bought into the "myth" mentioned above, that you could play ANYTHING with these rules. 

Gene had played a LOT of 2nd Edition (don't remember if he ever talked about older editions or not), mainly Planescape.  And in this game in Toyama, he also liked to play (often goofy) characters that just HAD to look behind the next door. 

This group actually stuck to a campaign I ran (based on Arthurian and older Celtic myths), with a few players coming and going.  When everyone works on a year-to-year contract basis like we do, it's just something you need to deal with.  We often discussed other campaign ideas, but we were enjoying this game. 

At the end of the year, it was my time to go, moving to where I am now, Yamanashi.  However, Gene and two of the other players and I played online D&D and d20 Star Wars and d20 Modern for a while, but we had problems with a) the fact that Gene hates Star Wars (his Force Adept charater was named Smurfette), and b) playing online, even with voice chat, made it hard to focus on the game (players getting phone calls and ignoring the game for 30 minutes, or reading the news, or whatever).  We had a successful game going in Toyama, but online it just wasn't working.  So we stopped. 

About that time, though, Gene moved to Chiba and Steve and I met (and I soon met Pete also through the WotC forums), and we decided to get a game going.  Steve's told you the rest.

The Eberron game was our first game together as a group.  I wasn't too interested in the setting from the WotC PR (they focused on all the things that don't push my buttons like the magic as technology and halfling dino-riders and constructs as a player race), but listening to Steve talk about the political intrigue of the Dragonmark houses, and pulp adventure potential, I got interested.  Still, though, I really don't know the setting that well, and neither did Pete or Gene.  Only Steve had read the book, the rest of us had just read selected parts of it relating to our character concepts. 

Wow, this got long, and now I've gotta go teach a class.  I'll post more later.

Hi Dennis! Great to have you here.

Hey guys, no need to post blow-by-blows of every detail of your gaming history. Lots more room in Actual Play, eventually.

I'm drafting a post to explain the left-jab-right-cross, Steven.

Best, Ron

Here's what I mean by the left-right thing, Steven. First, no, you're not seeing my point. I'll state it very bluntly.

It amazes me to see that much time, energy, and effort (significantly including creative investment) into playing games which, despite their design focus on prolonged play, only last four sessions max.

Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

That's what I mean by the right cross. It is a punch. Someone hit me with a knockout punch upon reading about that. It is hugely significant and as far as I can tell, obviously the case to the point of being irrefutable.

To continue being blunt, I suggest that the extra-game aspects of the Social Contract (you guys like each other, you're getting a chance to socialize in your own language for a bit each month, you enjoy the shared pop culture background of having played D&D, et cetera) are very strong glue, and they'd better be, because the game-play itself is barely adequate even as a cover activity. I suggest that if the very same game-play were occurring among a group less strongly held together by personal and extrinsic factors, then well, it'd probably not have sustained the continuation of the group as such.

OK, now I have to clarify some incredibly important things, as you (Steven) are relatively new at the Forge and Dennis is brand-new, speaking of posting not reading.

- I am not saying you guys suck at role-playing and are terrible, dysfunctional morons. In fact, to the contrary, I'm a bit awed at the "spirit of persistence" at work that really values the creative effort and talent that you guys do have. Because readers will probably invent what they think I'm saying and repeat it elsewhere, I'll use jargon right now - this situation appears to be both functional (i.e. fun enough, sustained) and incoherent (in terms of Creative Agenda, there ain't any because no real reward cycles ever occur).

- I recognize that the Eberron game is from a while ago, and that you guys have entered into some significant dialogue recently. I'd like to discuss it in that appropriate past-context, which means that in some ways I'm playing catch-up to where you are now.

So let's talk about that Eberron game in terms of your three questions, Steven. First, you didn't plan on it being only four sessions, right? But the investment didn't pay off. Let's see what kinds of things led to (or expressed) its incoherence.

1. I don't see much group buy-in into the SIS itself, i.e., Eberron. It's pretty clear from your account that all three characters were effectively D&D drop-ins from previous play. You bought into Eberron and prepped accordingly, in terms of plain old gross-level SIS features (where, what it's like, et cetera). No one else did. I'm lookin' at a ranger, an MU (I use the slang term on purpose), and what appears to be a curious cross between a paladin's effectiveness and a chaotic-neutral do-what-I-want fighter. This seems to accord with the points I make about setting and situation in my [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu thread.

2. Your aesthetic focus seemed to be upon carrying out the storyline of The Ghost and the Darkness, more or less; theirs seemed to be ... well, I dunno what, but it involved a lot of decisions with dubious consequences, like figuring out what to do with a magic lion or thinking about who's going to get to keep the magic sword. If I'm not mistaken, everyone was most comfortable simply running through the mechanics of fights because that was most familiar.

3. Yet those fights seem also to be marked by a lot of murk - why do they get into fights? Because one player says X. What does one player saying X mean we have to get into this fight? (That is rhetorical; most role-playing offers no answer.) Then as you GM the fight, some stuff seems to get away from you a little and a character hangs on a cliff face, and in another scene, a character hides under a cart ... anyway, what I'm after is not that you're a BAD GM or anything stupid like that, but rather that no one seems sure about why the group is fighting or what it has to do with anything, and the procedural murk seems to instigate the fights without reflection or purpose.

What I'm suggesting is not that these things made your game incoherent. I'm saying that the condition of incoherence led to these things occurring. Does that make sense? I think it might be useful to walk our way through that reasoning.

Best, Ron
edited to fix the link

I'll jump in here with a few opinions about our Eberron play of my own before Steve answers your questions, Ron.

As for me, you're right that I hadn't fully bought into the Eberron setting (not knowing much about it, and having initial reservations about it) but as the play went on, I think I was trying to buy into it.  One of the problems was that I was playing a character that knew his world, but I knew relatively little as a player.  Like you mentioned, getting into combat, where we all knew the rules and the trappings of Eberron were irrelevant, was a bit of a relief for all of us, I think. 

Pete, playing the Paladin, I think just wanted to play his character concept, and accepted Eberron because it plays fast and loose with alignment. 

Gene, playing the Changeling Rogue, got into the setting a bit more, as a "cosmopolitan spy in more rustic lands" but not 100% into the setting, either.

I think that might have led to some of Steve's frustration at the game.  He spent a lot of time preping and getting to know Eberron, but due to logistics, he's the only one who had the book so the rest of us just got to look at it during down time at game sessions.  So he was jazzed about Eberron, the rest of us were either on a "let's just give it a test drive' attitude, or "I could care less if it's Eberron, Faerun, or Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory as long as I play this character."

I also feel that Steve was trying hard to work with my character's background (his House, relatives, backstory) into the main story, but Pete's PC background, other than a connection to my character we decided on, had no real "play" within the story, and Gene's character from Sharn's background was sort of nebulous and never came up in the story of the first few sessions either. 

This may have kept Pete and Gene from enjoying the game as much as they could have.  I was getting into the story, but in combat and skill focused encounters was not performing well, so that was part of my hang-up. 

__________________________________
Also, a slight aside about our group's social contract.  As this Eberron game was our first game as a group.  I've never liked critical fumble rules (and in the string of incoherent play before I came to Japan I mentioned in my first post, the group insisted on them so I was the odd man out).

But I didn't speak up when Steve said he would use them.  I guess I had the attitude of "it's his game, we'll use his rules."  If I'd spoken up, Steve might not have used them, and that would have solved one of my biggest problems with how the game was playing out.  I've got only myself to blame for that. 

Ron,

I am going to try to unpack some of this to get my head around it, there is a lot there. Let me know if I am missing something crucial thing to the next step. I am going to go a bit out of order if that is OK to the things that made the biggest impact of what I was hoping to get out of the discussion? I don't want to miss stuff though, so remind me or poke me for more details as warranted. I am not trying to be rude by quoting or posting, let me know if you think this is too much akin to interrupting the conversation.

Part I - The issue

What I'm suggesting is not that these things made your game incoherent. I'm saying that the condition of incoherence led to these things occurring. Does that make sense? I think it might be useful to walk our way through that reasoning.

this situation appears to be both functional (i.e. fun enough, sustained) and incoherent (in terms of Creative Agenda, there ain't any because no real reward cycles ever occur

1. I don't see much group buy-in into the SIS itself, i.e., Eberron. It's pretty clear from your account that all three characters were effectively D&D drop-ins from previous play. You bought into Eberron and prepped accordingly, in terms of plain old gross-level SIS features (where, what it's like, et cetera). No one else did. I'm lookin' at a ranger, an MU (I use the slang term on purpose), and what appears to be a curious cross between a paladin's effectiveness and a chaotic-neutral do-what-I-want fighter. This seems to accord with the points I make about setting and situation in my [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu thread.

2. Your aesthetic focus seemed to be upon carrying out the storyline of The Ghost and the Darkness, more or less; theirs seemed to be ... well, I dunno what, but it involved a lot of decisions with dubious consequences, like figuring out what to do with a magic lion or thinking about who's going to get to keep the magic sword. If I'm not mistaken, everyone was most comfortable simply running through the mechanics of fights because that was most familiar.

3. Yet those fights seem also to be marked by a lot of murk - why do they get into fights? Because one player says X. What does one player saying X mean we have to get into this fight? (That is rhetorical; most role-playing offers no answer.) Then as you GM the fight, some stuff seems to get away from you a little and a character hangs on a cliff face, and in another scene, a character hides under a cart ... anyway, what I'm after is not that you're a BAD GM or anything stupid like that, but rather that no one seems sure about why the group is fighting or what it has to do with anything, and the procedural murk seems to instigate the fights without reflection or purpose.

Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

It amazes me to see that much time, energy, and effort (significantly including creative investment) into playing games which, despite their design focus on prolonged play, only last four sessions max.

Either (1) those one-to-four sessions, per unit of group-level investment, are so satisfying and thoroughly complete that they hold some kind of world-record for blowout-fun role-playing success ... or (2) some kind of repeated hiccup is occurring such that each attempt fizzles. Maybe it runs out of steam, maybe it hits a stop-point, but like clockwork, someone (usually you) can't see any point in continuing (and the others tacitly agree).

Given your impetus for posting this account, and the material you quoted from my post - all of which I accept without any reservation as a fair description of your game - clearly (2) is the case.

That's what I mean by the right cross. It is a punch. Someone hit me with a knockout punch upon reading about that. It is hugely significant and as far as I can tell, obviously the case to the point of being irrefutable.

To continue being blunt, I suggest that the extra-game aspects of the Social Contract (you guys like each other, you're getting a chance to socialize in your own language for a bit each month, you enjoy the shared pop culture background of having played D&D, et cetera) are very strong glue, and they'd better be, because the game-play itself is barely adequate even as a cover activity. I suggest that if the very same game-play were occurring among a group less strongly held together by personal and extrinsic factors, then well, it'd probably not have sustained the continuation of the group as such.

p.p.s - Since the all important 3rd Annual Ebisu Gamers Christmas party is this weekend where the forces of Mordor will square off against those upstart hobbits, and the wife has made it clear in a very authoritative, both creatively and procedurally, that I must help in the preperation including strict division of labor of making of the cheese ball of doom, purchase of the liqour, cooking the pumpkin pie, I won't be able to post this weekend. And I don't think Dennis will either (since he will be there with bad luck dice hopefully being crushed under my heels). She has made it clear that the social contract is dependent on this fact.

Cheers Steve

 

Steven,

You don't have to use the terminology with your group to get on the same page with regard to Creative Agenda. Hell, lots of people play coherently without ever having heard of CA or the Big Model. We didn't invent this stuff; we just named it. ;)

Are you saying, however, that you never talked as players about whether the group preferred to kick ass and take names in a DM vs. Players sorta way or if it preferred a game where the DM would put the players (through their characters) in tough positions and make the consequence of every choice hurt, or at least say something cool? Or maybe someone wanted to explore the Eberron world and really stay true to the setting material, as filtered through the lens of the group. That's all, more or less, Creative Agenda, just spoken in everyday terms. (And, grant that it takes a lot more language to say "Narrativism" or "Gamism" or "Simulationism" in everyday terms.)

As I see it, the "Murk" in your games is the "Why are we doing all this anyway?" that seems to be floating around the heads of all the players, including you. It ended up defaulting to a "well, let's wander around Eberron and kill stuff" without really clicking in any major way for anyone. Gene was interested in the setting only as far as it got him bonuses for his character, and I'll bet he would have been overjoyed by a series of difficult tactical encounters that let him show off his rules mastery (Gam). Dennis was more interested in the setting and I'll bet, with a little push in the right direction and the right group, he'd have really enjoyed digging into the guts of Eberron and seeing what made it tick (Sim). Or perhaps he cared about that setting detail only as far as it gave his character social context that could get him into really interesting role-playing conundrums and showing what he the player cared about (Nar). With his yearning for high-level characters at start, the Paladin character with little connection to the world, wanting to use his buff Diplomacy skill to "win" the encounter quickly and being annoyed when it turned to a tactically senseless combat (yet enjoying the combat itself once it got going), Pete might be angling towards a Gamist CA but who knows -- I have no idea if his distaste for dungeons and puzzles is a "tell" or not. Really, we can only guess at CA with this little knowledge.

In any case, I don't think the Murk had anything to do with IIEE or any other low-level procedures and techniques. The huge umbra of incoherence overshadowed any concerns at that level.

If you all agreed on the answer to "Why are we doing all this anyway?" and you were able to carry through and achieve those goals, then I suspect the fourth game, and the fifth, and the sixth would have happened.

I, too, admire your tenacity and I'm glad you're all having fun! Maybe we can help make it an even better experience for you all.

Adam,

Thanks for clearing that up, I think I understand Ron's point 3 a lot better now, and bascially what I think you are saying is that there needs to be some discussion before the game about "whats the point of all this?" or at the very least if it looks like we are getting deeper in the murk, pause and ask that question.

Cheers,

Steve

I don't speak for Ron, for sure, and if I've misrepresented something he said I'm sure he'll clear that up. But, yeah, you don't have to have explicit conversations about this stuff, but once you realize everyone is heading in totally different directions, it's a good idea to share a compass. And, really, why not have a short conversation before starting into the woods?

I am still confused about incoherence in some way (at least as it applies to this particular game). Adam's post helped somewhat for murk, but I am still confused about CA. In his note he mentions individual CA, while in Ron’s it mentions that a CA couldn't be formed because of the reward cycle and incoherence. Again the big point that I am looking for is how to set-up a game, and facilitate play to create a coherent game.

I think our next game after Eberron (D20 Aliens game) might have some good examples of a game that started in a direction that perhaps could have been coherent and then went down a different path.

Here is the problem for me, how do you take the things that people are excited about and weave them into a coherent CA? It seems really damn hard from my perspective for this particular DnD group, but easy for my Polaris Group (which I think is something closer to a Sim agenda than a Nar agenda after 4-5 sessions and some folks becoming vetrans). Is that an impossible goal for DND or for this group? Or is it that you just try, cross your fingers and hope this time it will be different?

But before going into the Aliens game, I wanted to check if we are done with the Eberron game and check my understanding of the above. I got the impression that Ron wanted to talk a bit more about the story and SIS from his three point post, and then I went off on some wild ass tanget screwing that up. Is better to shift the discussion to the Aliens game? Or get back on track to the Eberron game with the points mentioned above.

Cheers for now,

Steve
----------

As aside, not to detract from the above, but just to mention, the three-fold what do players want in the 3rd Paragraph of Adam’s post seems a bit pigeon holed or forced to me and definitely off-target for Gene. The players at this point definitely didn’t think in those terms, and since the play comes from them, I don’t think it can be said, hey that is what they really wanted, they just didn’t know it.  So while I can agree to majority of Adam’s post upon further reflection, I can’t take on board most of the third paragraph (sorry man, not trying to be rude, just saying how I see right now). It might have been more useful if I had said what they thought was exciting and what they wanted to do. 

That doesn’t mean that I don’t buy into the three exclusive categories though, I just think you can’t say that someone sits down at the table and says I want to be one of these three exclusively. It is more like “oh man I want to be a shapechanging cool and smooth talking rogue” or “I am excited about the pulp adventures of Eberron I hope this adventure has some of that in it”.  I think you can say that as play emerges that if it is coherent then one of the three emerges. At least that is where my understanding is now. So the real question is how do you take what people come to the table with and create play that generates enough coherency that allows one of the three CA to appear?  I can elaborate on what I think what the players brought to the table if that is important.

Hi Steven!

Let's hold off on the Aliens discussion until we're done with Eberron. Those games are separated by a lot of time, too, so it's good to focus for a bit.
I think you're getting a little tied up with "what the player wants" as a motivational thing. You should probably let that take care of itself, as a phenomenon. If I observe Bob to be enjoying a Narrativist CA with the rest of the group, then I simply don't trouble myself with whether Bob wanted it prior to play, or developed it during play, or responded positively to the opportunity provided by someone else's decisions during play. It really doesn't matter. CA is an effect, or an outcome, or more accurately, a motor that must "catch" in order to run. I see no reason at all to discuss putative or intended CA, if it's in any way distinct from one that occurs.

On a related note, due to the medium of forum/text discussion, we should always remember that when someone who wasn't there characterizes someone who was, it's just trying on a shoe. Adam doesn't know Gene and wasn't there. If what he says doesn't really fit, then no biggie, just say so, and we move on if it's not a crucial point. I think Adam's general point that folks really didn't buy into the setting in any way that made a CA possible is not at dispute among us, so the details about this-or-that person aren't so important.

I am still confused about incoherence in some way (at least as it applies to this particular game). Adam's post helped somewhat for murk, but I am still confused about CA. In his note he mentions individual CA, while in Ron’s it mentions that a CA couldn't be formed because of the reward cycle and incoherence. Again the big point that I am looking for is how to set-up a game, and facilitate play to create a coherent game.

Here is the problem for me, how do you take the things that people are excited about and weave them into a coherent CA?

Hi Ron,

Sounds good from my end.

In the interim between your posts, just want to answer a few of your questions bring up a question regarding the discussion (not the content but the actual process of discussion). I did mean the global "you" and not me personally. So to rephrase what can "we - gamers in general, this group specifically" do to help create a coherent agenda during play? I'm cool with taking the discussion down the current lines, and also understand that there isn't going to be an answer, but rather a process.

How does that motor catch, I think is the heart of the discussion, and I'm with you that it takes a while to understand that and get there, hit the bag so to speak.  But yeah I know there is no silver bullet, just a process and I can get behind it takes time to get there, and that you need lines not points. I can get behind processes, its what I do for a living.

Apologies (and specifically to Adam) if my previous aside was coming on too strong that wasn't my intent, I see where you are coming from. And I appreciate you, Ron,  pointing that out to me, cause it helped my understanding of where folks are coming from around here. I was basically trying to say what Ron said: "shoe doesn't fit, but its probably not critical to waste time to figure out the exact shoe that does since the overall point makes sense that the people don't dig the setting in the same ways or not at all".

But I do think I need to be able to point out when the shoe doens't fit.  I think you are saying, sure you can do that. Is that cool, or is that too hampering the discussion?  Really, I'm not trying to speed bump this or try anyone's patience, just trying to get on the same page about this.   

So not much really to add other than to say, I'm with you so far, thanks for clearing up some stuff, and looking forward to hitting the bag a bit more.

Cheers,

Steve

No apology necessary, but it's appreciated anyway! I just like to try to get to specifics quickly, even if they're wrong, rather than talk at some abstract level. If I'm wrong at my guessing, at least you can tell me where I'm wrong and where I'm right and I can correct my misinterpretations but keep the discussion going. When things get too abstract, we could talk past each other for weeks and not realize it.

(Also -- my personal disclaimer -- I understand this stuff about 90% of the time and I use these discussions both to help other people understand them as I see them and also to correct my own misunderstandings via teaching. That is, of course, I'm not always right.) If I start steering you wrong, someone else here will likely step in and gently correct me and get you back on course.

In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

Adam wrote:
In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

Hi there,

All right, I've looked over the thread so far and here are some things I want to conclude - or rather, to check with you, Steven, to see if they work as conclusions. And yes, you (and Dennis!) are the arbiter of shoe-fitting, because you were there and we were not.

Let's think of that platform I keep talking about, constructed of green-painted wood. That's the shared imagined space (SIS). Let's go over that term a little.

Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself. No sharing. No imagining except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind, and certainly in the case of that paladin, it shows the narrow limits of your capacity or authority to do that in this group. Even if you did it thoroughly and re-tooled every character to fit perfectly into Eberron, you were only doing it for yourself. No one else bought into that.

This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?) The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters. As I wrote in a previous post, it is very likely that this group of guys got together to play D&D in a much more abstract or retrospective sense, and your setting could have been freakin' Dimension Z or ancient Rome for all they cared.

Hence no Situation (the key/core of the five components of Exploration). Hence no SIS, with the possible exception of fleeting moments of tactics or rolling damage amounts.

What I'm driving at this that your play-account certainly looks incoherent in GNS terms ... but not because of differing views on desired Creative Agendas. That's totally off the radar screen. There is no point to discussing that; that's like talking about whether we're going to have a democracy or a dictatorship when we don't even have a population, or even a planet. Sure, we could talk about such things, but without a population or a planet, it would be so abstract, and conclusions would depend so greatly on real-population issues which at the moment aren't known (they don't exist), that such talk would be absolutely worthless.

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

Does it also make sense to you that in those circumstances, even talking about CA is of no consequence or interest, when discussing or reflecting upon that game?

Dennis, I'm interested in your views and responses too.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?)

Ricky wrote:
a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed
. . .
if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

Hi Ron,

I am still digesting through your response, I don't want to say yes or no just yet until I can puzzle through it a bit more thinking about the whole game.  Espically the bit about there being no situtation.

The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters.

I had a somewhat similar problem in my Eberron game, discussed here.  I think the linked thread might be helpful, as I did a lot of shoehorning myself, using pre-published adventures and dropping the characters into them.  I had all these players that had characters with strong backgrounds and motivations in the world, and I ignored them.

To root in Actual Play, I now play Burning Wheel with the same group.  Everybody in the group made a character with the same focus on the situation I had in play (a huge glacier swiftly covering their lands).  Everyone wants to stop it, everyone has their own reasons for doing so.  There's talk about what to do next, and how it melds into the motivations of the characters.  It's amazing what a little discussion can do for a game!

Hello,

I thought I'd address David's and Ricky's questions in the interim. David, I'll start with you, and brace yourself, because I'm going to be a little blunt. As in, "blunt instrument."

When I'm not GMing, I stay the hell away from the setting material books, so I can experience all that discovery during play.

When I am GMing, I try to tell the players just enough to know how to play their characters in a gameworld-appropriate fashion and nothing more. Lecturing them on taxes and city gates is relatively boring. Making them play through the first time they get to a big city, "There's a wall around it? There's a queue going in? There are four armed guys at the entrance? They want me to pay a farthing?" is much more fun. (In subsequent trips, we don't need to play through it again if the players don't want to; they already have a mental model for the experience, which is generally sufficient to communicate the setting features.)

Maybe this is why I never run games where the players know the setting as well as or better than I do....

don't find it odd at all. In fact, it seems like the two are causally related. As I understand it, the use of a setting means two things:

1) Develop the setting as play proceeds. However, a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed: everything has been sufficiently developed, and reading the sourcebook or the GM's campaign prep or whatever tells you everything you need.

2) Use the setting as a springboard for conflicts. However, if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

Hi Ron,

You'll find me agreeing wholeheartedly, quicker than you can say "Setting Challenge".

Frank

I am going to focus on Ron’s questions, particularly how they relate to the Eberron game at hand. My apologies for waiting so long to post, I needed to sit and think about Ron’s original post for a while. Also, I think Dennis is away out of the country, we can hold off until he gets back if you want, but I am also comfortable with continuing.

Ricky, Jon, David, I am going to skip your questions for now, or at least assume that Ron has addressed them. I spent most of the weekend thinking about Ron’s original post and have not digested the follow up ones. Although the “throw paint on the wall and hope you get a Jackson Pollock” analogy is probably pretty applicable not to just this game but many others I have been in.

So lets go back to the last post regarding the Eberron Game (which I quote a bit since there are so many between)

Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that
things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself [Steven]. No sharing. No imagining  except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind…

Snip

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you [Steven] that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

All of that fits fine with the suggestions and conclusions I presented, Steven. We're on the same page.

Also, your footnote is a perfect and wonderful explanation for why I now insist all discussion of theory at the Forge be rooted right here in Actual Play, or a similarly practical context like Playtesting.

Best, Ron

Great! Now I can add one final check of my understanding (which was in the first draft of the previous post but was taken out to make sure that my first thoughts were inline - hence the reason why I can post so quickly after since you basically said yes).

Now if I understand the exploration part of the big model, here is one of the biggest reasons why we didn't have SIS, is that I did have some of the particular thematic elements of Eberron in the adventure, and that those elements were very important to me and to my sastisfaction of the game. And because  I was part of the group, and they weren't picked up by the group, the motor didn't catch.

As a group we can choose to emphasize certain elements of the SIS and de-emphasize others. So, in speculation, if I had just been intending to use Eberron as color, and others were also equally supportive of just using Eberron as color, and it was OK to everyone involved to de-emphasize setting themes then it would have made for a more coherent game? I guess what I am asking is, you don't have to have strong emphasis on setting to have coherent SIS right? If hadn't had so much stake into the thematic elements of Eberron we could have very well said, we like this color lets keep going onto next mission? It was the twofold fact that this important aspect to me didn't become realized in play, and it sort of took the wind out of my sails to the point where I had a lot of let-down for the creative investment into the adventure without the pay-out causing the motor not to catch.

Or in other words (again some speculation here since it hasn't been played, take that into account), if we had all been willing to do "solve the mission" play going into it, and just used Eberron for color, there might have been a more coherent if weaker SIS. Now that SIS would have been shared at all levels equally, and whether it was good SIS is a matter of asethics, but if everyone had the same expectations going into it, and were cool with that, then it might have sustained play longer.  I wanted to discuss this, cause I think there are some players in the group, where the "setting" isn't really important, it only serves as color, they could care less if it was dimension z or rome or whatever. And I don't neccessarly think that is un-fun, its only un-fun to me if I was expecting heavy emphasis on setting.

It would seem to me, that the most important point to getting a coherent SIS is to get the shared part right first.

So is this still consitent with the concepts of SIS, or did I go down a wrong path with this train of thought? If the answer is yes, it is consistent, then I think we can wrap this up and talk about where to go next in the dicussion. If the the answer is "hell no" that is wrong as wrong can be, then I think I need to understand where I went wrong and spend a wee bit more time on that.

Cheers for now,

Steve

Ron wrote:
Here's the part you nailed perfectly: your phrase "springboard for conflicts" is right on the mark. A setting's role is to contribute to situation, which by definition means the fictional characters of interest are in unstable, dynamic circumstances. You could give me a one-page setting or a twenty-four-book setting - and in either case, if it lacked that feature, then it's suck-ass bullshit, and if it has that feature, it rocks.

All completely on track and correct.

To provide another example which may be helpful, a group may be most invested in Color and System, with only the barest interest in Situation (and therefore Characters + Setting), just enough to provide the minimum "things" for "things to happen."

One might contrast that very strongly with still another group which invests most strongly in Color and Character, even diminishing Situation per se, and treating System in a funny way, i.e. imposing a "never really followed" overt one as a mask over a highly socially-driven, Drama-heavy, covert one.

Both of these groups may have a nice solid SIS ... as you say, if they're on board together regarding how it's done.

Two final points.

1. None of this has to be hard. It's quite possible for it to be stunningly easy, specifically by everyone contributing and expecting basic investment in all five components without making a big deal out of it. I've found that impromptu groups, such as the campus club "mini-groups" I used to organize, did very well with that approach. If a group does that, it's quite simple and in fact, predictable for them to arrive at a more "profiled" version of the SIS later, if they want, and for everyone to find their own place in what aspects get hammered hardest. But that cannot happen without that basic if minor shared commitment to all five to start.

2. Two things seem to be tripping up multiple groups described in multiple threads at this moment. First, a remarkable degree of murk, specifically a failure of procedures to arrive at situations during play - the people seem to stare around wildly a bit, then fall back upon "uh, Indians attack you!" or "the dying man gasps out his last breath, and his hand opens ... revealing a gold coin! With a map engraved on it!" Second, a lot of problems regarding authority as I've defined it earlier this year, which is not to say a power struggle, but rather ongoing confusions about credibility of input (what counts when who says it). What I'm seeing is therefore a lot of characteristic SIS-failure, which, to repeat, simply obviates the possibility of a meaningful CA ever gelling.

Best, Ron

Great, we can wrap up Eberron and put a bow on it. It has been informative, I originally thought we were going to get into the whole nar,sim,gam thing, but it turns out not. The fact that the conversation went in other directions I think is indicative that it was a usefull discussion (at least to me on this side of the world). I'd also like to thank Ron and Adam for their patience and being willing to stick with it - thanks.

Specifically to Ron, do you have the time or interest to keep going with the thread (I hope the answer is yes!)? If so, where do you think best line of thought is to talk about your points number (1) and (2) above?

(A) To dive into the Aliens session that was next, and that was a bit more coherent (or at least a big chunk of it was) in terms of the SIS,but still had some problems particullarly to an end-game scene that was rewarding to some, but frustrating to others? (Where Dennis was the GM - D20 modern)

(B) Or would it be better to skip ahead to where we are now in the last 3 months playing steve's homebrewed games which was a lot more shared for sure but again blew up at the very last scene of each one? (no-one is really GM in these ones).

(C) Continue a bit with the same SIS frustration, with the high level DnD game (except this time I think if I understand right, it was the system part that was tripping us up) But this I think is just a different symptom of what we have just been describing, except the motor wasn't catching on system for Dennis and Me when Pete was the GM for that game.

(D) Or better to warp this thread up entirely, and hold off until January to get the actual play for our upcoming game of '81 Moldvay Basic and see how we do now with the knowledge from this thread?

I think that A and B have a type of murk, but one that is different than your point number 2. I think those suffered from some very specific things that happened at specific points that ended up being big enough frustrations to be game-enders. 

Cheers for now,

Steve

p.s. I think besides telling me which direction Ron thinks is productive to take the conversation (assuming he wants to continue)- I think we should maybe a pause a bit before more posts of substance appear to let this all sink in a bit and would ask others to do the same if they could.

It can be a little tricky to go away and think and then come back with two or three posts that while seem to apply but are really a bit tangential. While they were useful, they made it a little tricky for me to follow.  I would humbly ask that if someone thinks there is more good discussion for the Eberron game to start a new thread and link to this one instead of posting more about it in this thread, I think I am ready to move on to the other games. Assuming that request isn't too out of line

Hi Steven,

My thinking? The Aliens game in a new thread. Let's keep going step by step and not jump all 'round the place; remember, the more context everyone has for your group's history and development and experience, the better the most relevant and recent concerns can be addressed.

So everyone, let's also call this thread closed. No more posting to it, please.

Best, Ron