Greetings,

I have been lurking at The Forge recently. This is my first post – I’ve been exploring the ‘net of late, trying to find knowledge to help me understand issues I’ve encountered finding enjoyable play over the last few years. Many ideas on this site have resonated with me. Yesterday, I read, “Simulationism: The Right to Dream”. There were many points of interest in this piece, but one idea, relating to character generation differences in consideration of N-S crossover issues really got me thinking (emphasis mine):


“Narrativist character creation in some games requires a fair amount of back-story, just as some Simulationist play does, but in the former, it's about establishing a chassis for conflict, metagame, and reward, and in the latter, it's about Coloring the character and providing opportunities for GM-created hooks. I rank the conflict between these concepts, during play, among the highest-risk situations for the survival of a gaming group. Strategies to resolve this conflict, whether social or design-oriented, are currently not well-developed in the hobby.”


If I understand the thrust of this passage correctly, I am strongly in agreement with the author’s assessment of the potential severity of this problem.

I will begin by sharing some recent gaming experiences to provide context.

My gaming group has two primary GM’s. I am one. A good friend is the other. He is not only an enthusiastic role-player, but also a talented writer. Unfortunately, our group has experienced anguish in the past over his method of running some of his games.

Our primary frustration appeared to center on his usage of pre-written adventures. However, as I learn more, I think the issue is much deeper. We have experienced games where there was no direct reason for the involvement of our characters, and pre-scripted events were the focus of the story (this is, arguably, the most common sort of pre-written module on the market). We have also experienced stories where our characters hooked into the plot, but the play still felt unsatisfactory.

Of the games I have run, I have experienced slightly more success. Unfortunately, though I think I have some idea of what I did correctly in retrospect, I am finding it much easier to mull over the games I ran that were not enjoyable and see reasons why things did not work in those games.

In our friend’s case, the unsatisfactory play appears to have resulted from lack of power on our part to make any serious impact to the plot. In my case, unsatisfactory play appears to have stemmed, in many instances, from great power to influence the plot being given to the players, without the expectation that they have this power being fully discussed.

Now, before I go any farther, I will say that I recognize that these are, largely, social contract issues. We have not developed an understanding as a group as to what the balance of power should be.

My suspicion, in the cases where the games I ran met with greater levels of success, is that we had inadvertently put together a good basis for coherent narrativist play. For example, we established real relationships between the characters and the people and places of the setting, developed solid understanding of the character’s beliefs, and considered their level of dedication to those beliefs. This basis established, the group followed its natural inclinations, and successfully engaged in narrativist play. The story presented the players with meaningful decisions as to what actions their characters should take, and the setting responded appropriately, with little to no pre-determination on the GM’s part.

That is where I am coming from. Now, let us meander back to the original point of discussion – discussion of strategies to solve the conflict in the passage I pulled from Ron’s essay.

As I mentioned earlier, I feel that many of my group’s issues in this area have resulted from a lack of discussion of what we were trying to accomplish. Such discussion leads to either formal or informal enhancements of the social contract. As such, one possible solution (which I will undertake to test the next time I run a campaign for our group) is to spend some effort during the character creation phase discussing this.

In fact, Ron mentions this in the previous paragraph (emphases added by me):


“Character generation text and methods are extremely diverse within each GNS mode, which is one of the reasons I favor group communication during this phase of pre-play…”


The success or failure of the method I am considering depends largely on the group member’s ability to trust each other. (I suggest that it is going unlikely that coherent play can be achieved if issues of trust are present!) Simply put, I think the conflict can be avoided by making sure everyone understands why certain things are being done in character creation.

Repeatedly, I have seen groups (and game texts!) that espouse the need for “detailed character back-stories”. However, I am not sure I have ever been part of a discussion of why we want this detail.

Almost without fail, it seems that players bring their own assumptions to the table. One might think, “we need detailed back-stories so the plot can be character driven”. Another might think, “a detailed back-story will allow the GM to bring our characters into the meat of the adventure more easily”, while yet another could be thinking, “I need these details for my character so we can create meaningful conflicts to power the story”. While these are similar goals in appearance, I claim they represent almost incompatible levels of difference in how the play is going to “work”. Since everyone “knows” why many role-playing games include the establishment of detailed character back-stories in their character generation process, no one seriously asks the question, “Why are we doing this?”

I hypothesize that if this question is asked seriously, and a discussion that goes deeper than, “We are doing this to help us make a good story” (which, I argue, any of the three imaginary players I listed above could interpret as being in-line with their individual assumptions) then the chances of experiencing anguish over this conflict will be greatly reduced.

One caveat – I do not suggest that simply asking such a question, and discussing it, will allow the group to play without problems. In fact, discussion of such a “why” my even lead the group to stop playing together – for example, if they realize their interests are incompatible.

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? I suspect much better solutions than the simple suggestion I am presenting exist, but I am hoping I have, at least, crystallized the topic for discussion. :)

Hi Robert,

Welcome to the Forge! You've decided to jump into the deep end, as it were, but that's a good place to be! :)

The power to determine what happens, that you're concerned with, is what I call "The Ball". I use this analogy because, like a ball, it gets passed around, and how well you play with it as a team, is highly based off of communication, familiarity, and a host of other cues and factors that make some players work real well with some GMs, and others not so well, and vice versa.

To pull up something I had posted in this thread(http://indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6856), that applies perfectly to this topic:

Raw railroading is when the GM is constantly in charge of the Ball, and only passes it to the players, so that they can pass it back to him/her to do something with it. Think of the star player, who's also a ball hog, and demands that everyone passes to them to score.

On the other hand, you have folks who develop a setting, but don't enmesh the PC's in a conflict, and they're supposed to wander around and "get into" the action on their own. In that case, the GM is always leaving the Ball in their hands....

So, for most people, functional play lies somewhere in between the two, with good passing between players and the GM. But how to get that? Well, one thing is to make sure that players know what they're "supposed to do" in the most general sense when they get the Ball.

Hi Robert,

Now, before I go any farther, I will say that I recognize that these are, largely, social contract issues. We have not developed an understanding as a group as to what the balance of power should be.

If you're looking for confirmation, I totally concur with your self-diagnosis. Can I ask, have you seen this thread? How closely does the group character creation it describes match with what your group does? Can you see how it might establish the kind of functional social contract you're looking for if chargen was informed by a setting/concept one-sheet, but the GM's prep of situation, adversity, and setting details was entirely subsequent to this kind of chargen?

Paul

Bankuei wrote: Hi Robert,

Welcome to the Forge! You've decided to jump into the deep end, as it were, but that's a good place to be! :)

The power to determine what happens, that you're concerned with, is what I call "The Ball". I use this analogy because, like a ball, it gets passed around, and how well you play with it as a team, is highly based off of communication, familiarity, and a host of other cues and factors that make some players work real well with some GMs, and others not so well, and vice versa.

Paul Czege wrote: Hi Robert,

If you're looking for confirmation, I totally concur with your self-diagnosis. Can I ask, have you seen this thread? How closely does the group character creation it describes match with what your group does? Can you see how it might establish the kind of functional social contract you're looking for if chargen was informed by a setting/concept one-sheet, but the GM's prep of situation, adversity, and setting details was entirely subsequent to this kind of chargen?

Paul

Hi Robert,

My current idea is that the best way to resolve this is simply to discuss, as a group, why the step is taking place on a game-by-game basis, in order to assist in setting expectations for the kind of play everyone is looking for.

Bankuei wrote: Hi Robert,
Right, I'd say this is getting everyone on the same page right off the bat. The various GNS goals are different "game plans" of how to handle the ball. The preplay discussion and work you're talking about is completely about the in play decisions in action.

One of the benefits of the aforementioned games, is that they clearly establish Nar play without having to explain the concept through theory. Once you have that, players then have a personal experience that you can draw upon to explain Stances, Narrativism, and the idea of player driven conflict and Premise. Because the rules do this in play, the players preconceptions are pushed to the side.

Then its simply a matter of taking those experiences and transposing those concepts into games where the rules don't explicitly pass the ball, such as Hero Wars, or whatever system tickles your fancy.

Chris

The group may develop common culture (assuming they survive long enough) and so they know what they want, collectively, when they play a particular game.

Or, if a majority of the players are "on the same page", the minorities either drop out (leaving the rest of the group to proceed coherently) or they "get it" and join in with the others.