Hello,

In the excellent comic Finder, specifically the collected story Dream Sequence, one of the characters is utilized by "users" very much in the sense of a video-game construct. Another character realizes this when the first one suddenly flails about wildly.

In her notes to the story, the author/artist Carla Speed McNeil describes her observations of people using specific video games for the first time, and how the characters, for a little while, look possessed by demons: leaping around bat-shit crazy, flailing at nothing, looking left and right in jerky motions. The real person is merely learning the interface for this particular program to control the character's actions, but the effects on the in-game events and interactions would be bizarre and terrifying, if you were to enter that space.

H'm, I thought, how might this apply to role-playing?

I swiftly concluded that the physical motions of the characters were not the primary issue, as they seem to be in the video game situation. To some extent they do show this same physical phenomenon, especially in terms of the order of actions, or the use of particular energy sources timed with whatever they energize. However, when it comes to walking or looking or stuff like that, the learning curve is faster for role-playing, and so I don't see the "bat-shit" phenomenon displayed as, for all intents and purposes, epilepsy, very often or even long enough to notice much.

Yet where, then? From the perspective of my big model, the medium of role-playing is social communication ... and the next issue is a shared or mostly-shared agenda about what's communicated. That's the interface, represented by the continuity down through the levels (or deeper into the box) - and do we see characters acting all bat-shit crazy in these terms as players join a new group?

Then I thought about something I've seen maybe ... oh, without exaggerating, a hundred times. It looks like ...

a) A group goes to great lengths to prepare for the samurai game. They work out family lineages, they reluctantly or enthusiastically agree to refer to all the common objects by their Japanese names, they make banners. By "they," I usually mean one person and maybe one other; everyone else is going along with all this effort but are really just waiting to play. In the very first scene, the GM has the samurai-characters' lord call them to a meeting - and one player-character refuses to kneel. No matter what the GM or any other player says - "He's your lord, you're a samurai," "You've kneeled to him a thousand times before," "C'mon, you're ruining the whole point," "Just do it, so we can play," etc, etc - the player remains adamant. The whole cool-new-Japanese-game begins to fragment apart. [GM dilemma: do I have the NPC retainers just execute him, like it "should" happen?]

b) A group runs a quick Sorcerer game to see how it plays. They come up with demons and descriptors, and the GM starts play a fair piece "further" into the story than is really recommended. Just about when all the characters' personal trajectories are affecting one another, one of them apparently turns into Mr. Brown - he subdues a player-character or important NPC, threatens the character with instant death, and demands that all the others tell him what they're doing here and what they want. Everyone squints at him - they're willing to play the scene, but they can't figure out what the hell is actually going on, and more importantly, no one is too invested in this NPC and hence no one wants them killed trivially. The player is holding them hostage as players just as his character holds the NPC (or whoever) hostage in the game. If he wanted to know stuff like that, why didn't his character just ask? [GM dilemma: "should" his demon suddenly attack him? It doesn't want or need a flipped-out master, and here are all these other sorcerers ...]

Again and again, characters become insanely stubborn, randomly and extremely aggressive, and sometimes physically spastic. Ah! Whereas the video-game characters apparently exhibit severe epilepsy, the role-playing characters become psychotic. Which seems absolutely understandable given the medium of role-playing as I describe above.

But now I consider all the advice I've ever read about this in the game texts and in most community discussions of play. All of them, hands-down, recommend severe consequences to the player and to the character. The idea seems to be a hard-line, integrity-of-Exploration, authoritative smack-down to teach'em a lesson, always justified in terms of "that's what would happen."

Is that what would work best? Execute the samurai, rend apart the sorcerer, arrest and incarcerate the rogue superhero, hunt down and hang the obviously-deranged paladin? Maybe. I can see times in which it might be the best bet.

But that seems awfully extreme, especially considering the apparently common and successful solution for the video game: merely to get through the learning curve, not to invest heavily in whatever happens during the learning process, and to move on to "real" play once the interface is mastered. In other words, the way to deal with it in these games is to minimize the long-term consequences of whatever happens during the "bat-shit" process.

What would that, to me, very reasonable solution look like in role-playing? Ah - that's easy, when I back up and think of entire games rather than single actions and scenes.

a) Run a few-sessions game to see how it goes, then start over entirely with the "real" setting, characters, and situation.

b) Keep those first few sessions about something not especially important; I remember a Champions game I played in, in which the first six to eight sessions were about a space-bug invasion, and after the bugs were defeated, we moved on to the rather elaborate scenario concerning a lot of setting history, romantic history, and family history. The space-bugs were never mentioned again.

c) Run a few sessions with disposable characters. This idea was used a few times for The Riddle of Steel and discussed in the forums - make up characters, run a very brutal fight scene in which they would very likely die, and then start the "real" game with new characters, perhaps invested in the original ones. I recall a published Kult scenario which did something similar, in that the player-characters who die in the first situation become the NPC ghosts of the "real" scenario which takes place many years later.

The only trouble with all of these solutions is that they are all large-scale. They don't help much when you and perhaps most of the group are in State of Mind A, and only one person's character suddenly exhibits the bat-shit psychosis. Because you see, it is always a sudden thing, blindsiding most of the people at the table.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what to say and do, when that happens?

Best,
Ron

After running games for two years straight at a gaming club with a membership of around 100 I've seen this thing...a lot. In the beginning I did the usual GM knee-jerk and called down the lightning to zap the offending character into dust. Sometimes I banned the player from the game. After a while I started to get into elaborate Social Contract deals where I would specifically request this kind of behaviour be left at the door. The funny thing was, none of these methods worked. In the end the most successful games I ran were those where the offending behaviour was taken into account, but my reaction to it was muted. NPCs took an interest in the reaction of the character and I used the "bat-shit" to good effect sometimes, using it as a plot-hook etc. Often I would call a break just after the breakout of crazies as a kind of cliff-hanger. This would get the "good" players a chance to simmer down and maybe a chance to ask the offending player what they hoped to achieve with the outburst and perhaps if they'd like a chance in the direction of the game or whatever...

The danger here is that you alienate the "good" players. In the end I would just ask them to go with me on it and see where it took them. I have a feeling that the "bat-shit" players get momentarily bored for some reason, zone out and then need to get the cardiac paddles out to kick-start their interest in the game. Its attention seeking obviously and a lot of players expect to get lambasted for going ape, but sometimes you just have to give them the attention... noone said it had to be the kind they expected.

edited: cos i forgot one point

I do have some suggestions, actually, although I think it really depends on gaming preferences and so forth. I mean, all this "what should happen" is a particular aesthetic choice.

My classroom experience tells me that the #1 worst thing you can do is drop everything and focus on the difficult player. Doesn't really matter whether that's to give in to him or to waste him; either way, you're saying to everyone else, "If you hold the game hostage, you will have power over other people."

So here's some ideas:

a) .... one player-character refuses to kneel. No matter what the GM or any other player says - "He's your lord, you're a samurai," "You've kneeled to him a thousand times before," "C'mon, you're ruining the whole point," "Just do it, so we can play," etc, etc - the player remains adamant. .... do I have the NPC retainers just execute him, like it "should" happen?]

one of them apparently turns into Mr. Brown - he subdues a player-character or important NPC, threatens the character with instant death, and demands that all the others tell him what they're doing here and what they want. .... The player is holding them hostage as players just as his character holds the NPC (or whoever) hostage in the game. If he wanted to know stuff like that, why didn't his character just ask?....

I was thinking that I hadn't really seen that sort of thing, but then I realized that the few times I have, it's taken a different form:

charicature, or parody.

The person understands it's supposed to be a role-playing game, but their idea of playing a role is so extreme that they rapidly would seem psychotic from the within game point of view. This has usually taken the form, as I recall it, of rapid reinforcement of whatever traits the other players noticed at the start of the session.

The person thus rapidly becomes comic relief; unfortunately, this is sometimes seen by them as a -positive- social role, and reinforced. Mostly a problem when you don't -want- that much comic relief in your game.

I agree somewhat with Edwards; strong social sanction, especially as an early response, is escalation, and likely to drive them away. On the other hand, in video games the early jerkiness is taken care of automatically, by the utterly socially neutral computer. Similar negative reinforcement in RPGs is more likely to look like social sanction, and thus generate social ill will.

The solution I've arrived at (well, just yesterday actually), was to use the strongly constrained games that a lot of folks here have published as teaching tools. Not explicitly - that might be seen as offensive - but just to get folks thinking along the right lines.

In RPGs, as in teaching anything else, it's far easier for students to learn in practice than in theory.

Hmm. I dunno. I've had this happen before, mostly with people who decided they didn't really like the game, didn't want to play with the rest of us anymore. The motive seemed to be purely to disrupt what was going on. In the case of one fellow, he was fine during the initial play, but made what I'll call a "psychotic break" about four to five sessions in. As a GM, I just went with what I thought would most reasonably happen, without regard for whether it was fatal or a smackdown. When this one fellow's behavior became disruptive enough, the other players were the ones who told him off and asked him to choose between being constructive in play, or leaving the group.

There might be some learning-curve thrashing that happens with new players or a terrifically different game, but when I see someone who pushes things to what amounts to a player-player or player-GM confrontation as described in Ron's examples, I don't think that's the same thing. I think the disruptive player is trying to push buttons and take control, but not in a healthy, moving-game-forward sort of way.

Best,

Blake

I am generally of the school that the best way to fix a problem is to figure out "why" and cure the disease, not neccessarily the symptom.

I can think of several situations where I was the "psychotic" character because I was frustrated with the pacing of the game. I wanted something to happen, I wanted some time in the limelight, I was bored out of my mind, or I couldnt figure out what the GM was trying to lead us into. "Can't go over it, can't go around it, guess we'll go through it!"

I've done some crazy, crazy stuff in-game. Setting a flaming war-dog into a theives forest to catch one guy or leaping off of a cliff because I had enough HP to pull it off, and I didn't really want to be in the game. Many of these issues were "frustrated narrativism" in my case, and occasionally frustrated simulationism.

So a few questions:

- Does this happen with functional groups that "practice" GNS or some similar approach to what the group wants?

- Why have YOU done it?

- What changes could have solved the problem for you?

That will get us further, I think.

Jake

Hello,

Interesting responses from everyone. I talked more about this with some people today, and a couple of nuances appeared. The biggest one was that the behavior I'm thinking of is a little different from a couple of others that look like it, but aren't it.

One is what Blake mentions: the person's being disruptive, and knows it, or would know it if they tried. My friend Tod suggests that this is often the case when a person is uncomfortable playing a new game, because it threatens his mastery or social authority regarding the old game.

The reason I think that the behavior I'm describing is not a 100% dysfunctional "I'm gonna disrupt" is that on several occasions of the bat-shit scenario, the player in question made a point to tell me later that they, personally, didn't know what came over them. Not only did the character behave psychotically, the player literally felt as if the character had "behaved" that way, and didn't enjoy it themselves. Cover-up? I'm not sure; the Disruptor behavior seems to be accompanied by a following arrogant satisfaction, along the lines of, "See, I knew he couldn't GM," or "See, I knew that game would suck."

The other behavior is a lot like what Chris (clehrich) mentions, and it's an important one: what if the person is plain ol' addressing Premise or otherwise adding to the game-experience by playing off-type? Such that it's not psychotic behavior at all, just shocking and full of potential for later play.

The difference between this and the bat-shit psychosis thing is that the player hasn't lost it, during play. The player with the bat-shit character is (and I should have described this in the first post) ... opaque, communicatively speaking. You can't talk to them; they can't hear you. They can't describe why they're doing this and they can't veer from its course.

But the "shocker" behavior is accessible - if you ask, they will tell you, or at least will say, "Stick with me, I'm doing this because I really do want to, and please run with it." When I was GMing a series of runs using Marvel Super Heroes, a player had her character burn out a supervillain's retinas with a laser-power, during combat. We all shuddered and turned toward her, very much in a "what the hell?" fashion. Ashley, the player, didn't budge and gave us the hairy eyeball: "I am doing this on purpose," she said. "Don't mess with me about it."

We said, OK, and did so. And what did she do? Proceed, over the next sessions, into a very moving arc about how the character would change and redefine what sort of hero she was. She went Dark Side for a reason, and knowing her, I suspect she was working from a rather deep sense of commitment to the character and the Premise she'd achieved (brought into? realized? difficult verb) into play.

See, Ashley wasn't doing the bat-shit thing, and the difference is that she was able to say, "I am really doing this for my own input into play, and I expect you guys to work with me." It wasn't the weird clam-up that you get with the bat-shit behavior.

Anyway, I hope this clarifies a bit about exactly which behavior I'm talking about.

Best,
Ron

TBH what I've seen happen most at the early learning stage, keep in mind I'm talking about one GM, is similar to, in Improv terms, a Cancelling .

Cancelling
Making previous action irrelevant. Once an action has been cancelled, it's as if it hadn't happened at all. Usually a bad idea

Hi Jack,

"Deprotagonism" is a very big gun to shoot with, as a diagnosis of that brief bit of information. I can imagine many circumstances in which the GM's response would be a fine way to handle it.

To know enough to respond, I'd have to know more. First of all, it's an IIEE issue. If that set of techniques is clear, then hey, the GM was presumably using them and the player was learning them - no problem. If it wasn't clear for that group in general, above and beyond that one scene, then there are way more problems in that group than can be addressed by any single issue or term.

I don't think the anecdote qualifies for this thread topic, anyway. The player-character was not behaving psychotically; he was doing something perfectly reasonable - it's just that the relationship between announcing and doing was off somehow.

Best,
Ron

This happened to me very frequently when I was in college, with the same player every time. His character would *invariably* go bat-shit, with no further explanation than "It's what the character would do", accompanied by a blank stare. My usual response was to fry him with heavy-handed Force for stepping "out of bounds".

His past experience with RPGs had been with very open-ended games where player control of PC behavior was sancrosanct, and not to be questioned. The GM's role was to simulate the world and permit the characters to exercise interesting parts of the System. "The Dream" for them was of a giant sandbox. I would tentatively call it Exploration of System, sometimes with a gamist subcurrent of "Let's see how far I can push these rules."

Meanwhile, "The Dream" for myself and the other players was a genre pastiche with an uberplot. In practice, this was straightforward illusionist play.

We were both dreaming *a* Dream, but we weren't dreaming the *same* Dream. After two years of this happening time and time again, my solution was to just stop inviting him to play, and to flatly turn him away from any subsequent games I ran. Harsh, and poorly handled on my part... yet without him, things went much more smoothly.

Years later, I introduced a new player into the group, and after eight months of functional and enjoyable illusionist D&D play, he suddenly went bat-shit, and I smacked him down. For a while, our friendship suffered for it.

What was different that time is that we talked about it afterwards.

I realized that he came from that same "giant sandbox" background as the previous player... but unlike my previous "problem player", it just happened to take eight months before the first time our respective Dreams diverged. I explained the previously unvoiced assumptions shared by myself and my regulars, that this was a pastiche game about good-guy heroes doing good-guy heroic things, and that I was not prepared - or willing - to accomodate players deviating too far from that. As soon as I was able to communicate the previously unspoken assumptions, we had a road forward. He chose to change his expectations to be aligned with the rest of the group, and in turn I agreed to loosen up my railroading to give him some room to veer from side-to-side a bit. The remaining four months of that game went very well, and ended with a satsfying conclusion.

Now, that was before I first stumbled across any of the GNS material, but the core idea was there - Discuss play styles and verbalize the social contract and creative agenda *before* playing, so that you can understand if this game is something that you will all enjoy.

-Hans

A couple of quick comments, before shuffling off to sleep.

In terms of feeling out a game 'interface', and keeping with the video game analogy, I've seen two ways of handling it.

First is at the meta-game level. In several (old) AD&D1e gaming groups that were well established and trying to integrate newbies (or newbies to us), when something like this happened there would be a sort of simultaneous intake of breath and we'd stop play.

And we'd launch into a discussion of what was going on, why, and what sorts of responses were reasonable and why. The player got to 'take back' what he'd said and change what he did, but it wasn't forced.

Well, it wasn't forced overtly, but it was pretty clearly a peer-pressure thing. I should probably include that the particular group I'm thinking of was heavily Illusionist in play, and interestingly even discussed to an extent how 'good illusionist GMing' worked. This sort of meta-level discussion and newbie-tutoring happened spontaneously in this group.

This strikes me as almost exactly like what happens in a new video game: you poke at the interface, and it pokes back -- you get feedback and learn where the levers and switches are. This Illusionist group provided that feedback at the social contract/meta-game level, teaching the new player how the other players worked together, and how that translated to in-game actions.

It worked well, but this was a fairly functional group, with coincidentally fairly homogenous opinions about 'good gaming'.

The second way I frequently saw this handled was what I like to call the Existentialist model. Basically, the GM beheaded the guy, or had Big Consequences happen, which inconvenienced the character (he was thrown in the dungeon, or something). Not gentle, but not always quite as extreme as would be realistically called for.

This worked with some people, and with some games. It tended to grow into the sort of 'narrative addition' ploy that Jake was talking about.

This generally didn't work well with real newbies who were learning the interface. It frustrated them, because they didn't understand exactly what was wrong with what they were doing.

In the videogame, having your guy die three or four times isn't the end of the world, as you can pretty easily just start over, or restart from a save point, or whatever. In an RPG, that's not a very convenient option (unless you run some sort of 'training' scenarioes, as you suggested, or resurrection is cheap and easy -- in which case you get the Ganez Whitewolf scenario (D&D character resurrected six or seven times, eventually swallowed whole by a Dragon. By that point his CON was about 7, IIRC).

In my own experience, the meta-game/social contract level negotiation/explication worked best, but that was with a functional group assimilating a new player. I think it would still work best in other settings, but it would probably need to be done more deliberately by the GM.

Oh, another thing that happened in the functional group I'm talking about was a sort of 'buddy system'. When a newbie joined, usually whoever was sitting next to him would spend time 'table-talking' with him, explaining things that were happening in the game, and about the underlying motivations and whatnot. This would go on in hushed tones while the rest of us continued moving the scenario along.

I guess what it amounted to was making a conscious effort to cusion the newbie from the full consequences of his actions. There would still be consequences, but we tried to explain what they would be, give him space, time, and information to make good choices, and to mitigate the negative aspects of failing (particularly in 'trivial' things, like kneeling before his master) without completely removing that possibility entirely. Training wheels.

Chris wrote:

"My classroom experience tells me that the #1 worst thing you can do is drop everything and focus on the difficult player."

Everyone's teaching style is different, but my classroom experience doesn't corroborate this, depending on how strongly you read 'difficult'. I often find that if you let the difficult student make their claim, encouraging them to make it as clearly as possible, and then enumerate the consequences of their claim for them logically, they often do let it go. Once they realize that you'll (a) take them seriously and (b) call them to account for what they say, a lot of times they'll pipe down, or - and this is one of the things I really live for in teaching - start working at it so they can come back with more intellectually respectable forms of class disruption. If they keep doing this, suddenly they become contributors instead of disruptors, and some of them go on to become my best students.

To apply this to RPGs a little: OK, so the player goes batshit. What do you do? Delivering the Facial is the standard recommendation, but it's painful, both for those who continue to play and for those who receive said treatment. On the other hand, Letting it Take Front and Center really does often destroy the game: either you put up with absurdity, or you turn everything around to focus on this character who's screwing everything up for everyone else. So what can you do? (Recognizing of course that some players are just always going to be dickweeds, just like some students will keep disrupting no matter how charitably you work with their disruptions. I'm not saying the Smackdown doesn't have its place.)

I think the best way would be to invoke in-game consequences that

(a) don't break the game, but

(b) don't kill the character or otherwise ruin it, and

(c) make it very clear why the behavior in question doesn't fit, while

(d) giving the player something to do which makes amends for the mistake

Here's the example I came up with on a few minutes' thought. The character won't kneel before the Daimyo, and so the Daimyo goes into motion:

"Jokir," he says, "your grandfather's uncle was Shogun in his time, but you are not he. Yet you are proud, as if you were an invincible general and a cunning warrior. For many years now you have taunted me by putting on airs, acting as if you were somehow favored or notable among my vassals. But you are not your grandfather, and you have no right to stand before your lord..." (1. You invent some new background into the game to explain the behavior.) Then the daimyo's guards move in, subdue the offending PC, and force him to his knees. (2. Don't let the player roll this stuff out, or stop for that 'what do you do? are you going to go along with this now?' sort of pause - just describe the events.) The daimyo rises from his chair, moves to the subdued PC, and sneers down at him. "If you imagine yourself a warrior of such surpassing honor, then go retrieve your grandfather's uncle's blade from the Six Silk Temple, where the Wind Demons howl their anger between the icy crags." Finally, the daimyo himself draws a blade and cuts off the character's warrior's knot. "Until you have proven yourself his equal, you are not fit to stand before me, or even before your fellow samurai, as a true equal." (3. Give the character a challenge: this one I like especially because if the character does recover the Shogun's old sword, his daimyo is in a bit of a pickle: he's implicitly granted high status to his previously obstreperous vassal.)

Or alternatively: invent a reason in the game why the character isn't kneeling just then - maybe the daimyo executed his cousin just yesterday - and then play out the situation similarly to the above.

So anyway, some players won't put up with this sort of thing, and just go crazy because they can't let go of their previous crazy behavior, or because they're jerks. But some may, especially if you offer a carrot to go with it, as a reward for in-game achievement and good behavior. And it seems like especially with new players you owe it to them to try. In the case of this example, you get a situation where the character gets penalties (now he has to ride at the back of the troop, it's sort of up to the other PCs whether they want to treat him with respect now or not, etc., a lot of the daimyo's court mocks him) but also has the promise of great rewards (the ancestral sword, the potential for a quick route to great in-game status) and the behavior has been integrated into the setting in a way which shouldn't ruin that part of it for everyone else.

Any recommendations here are going to be super context-sensitive, both gamewise and real-world-psychology-wise. But in general re-integrating the character into the imaginative space, where possible, doing a kind of aikido with their strange behaviors to make them fit while still communicating that they aren't playing right relative to the game's social contract, which presumably they agreed to, would seem a better way to go here. If they still can't hack it, but they don't seem like they're just being jerks, ask them if they'd prefer a different character instead. And if neither of those work, well, there's always showing them the door after the game. Or, for that matter, the traditional Smackdown.

--------------

All of the above presupposes that there's some single person playing the GMs role. I wonder if in GM-less games this is easier to deal with (because everyone saying 'don't do that' leaves everyone directly responsible for the odd man out's bad behavior) or harder (because no-one's sure enough whether x is being a dick or not to just tell him or her to switch it around). Probably both happen, depending on the group in question.

Sean - I quite like your solution.

- James

I think I may be missing something from the discussion, so hopefully this isn't too far off track. I understand that, as Ron said, the player in this circumstance may be stubborn or entrenched about their behavior.

Still, it seems like the question that's underlying the issue is "why has the character suddenly gone spastic?" If asked directly, Ron comments that the player will tend to be opaque. My experience has been that this tends to be true depending on how the question is asked. In particular, I find that "Wait. What are you expecting to happen now (next)?" is a much more productive question than "Why are you doing that?"

I won't claim I have always successfully asked this question. In such cases, if possible, I tend to try to mitigate the behavior by a distraction of some sort while I have time to decide what to do if the situation repeats. Fortunately, in many cases I've found that without inertia and defensiveness locking in the course, the behavior freqently does not repeat. (This goes along with my general style of trying to always prepare one "distraction" or scene which comes to the PCs per session, for use if things begin to stall.)

For some of the other approaches suggested, such as using realistic consequences, or failing to grant attention, my experience has been that these reinforcement behaviors work better when they address "problems" which have been identified and agreed to, and not so well when imposed from the outside. For example, I have not seen the "consequences" approach change behavior much... usually when I have imposed it from outside, it causes too much resentment to be effective.

On the other hand, I've found that such techniques work well if the player is aware and accepting of them. For example, if the player in this scenario is aware that they may make some faux pas but would rather play it out, and is (honestly) willing to accept the consequences, I have found it to be fun and a good experience.

This is similar to reinforcement I've seen in other situations. For example, paying a "fine" for OOC comments or having OOC comments be what is said "in game" work best when those comments are more a matter of habit than a conscious desire to make OOC comments around the table. I guess my point here is that I find reinforcement techniques a good way to break habits that have already been identified, and which are understood to need to change.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

PS -- Apologies for the segue. Perhaps discussion of reinforcement as a general technique would have been more appropriate in its own thread.

The samurai solution above is great, but I cannot help but think that it is tangential to the question. Sure, sucha solution, for the given scenario would work - but that requires that the GM is quick enough on their feet to a) extemporise all of this and b) modify expected play to accomodate this little surprise.

I suggest that the PC games spastic effect is correctly identified as one of being unfamiliar with the interface, and using this interface "inelegantly". The above response is all aimed at dealing with the problem when it arises, rather than identifying the problem in general and exploring methods that might prevent it from arising.

I suggest that the analog of "inelegant interface use" is "innapropriate social cues", but with the strong caveat that I am ONLY talkin about the game space. Only about the games structures.

So my theory in terms of the interface model is that the social context of the setting is not sufficiently systematically enforced. The correcting element in a computerised interface model is the failures in the game itself; that is, your first attempts at taking the obstacle course in Tomb Raider are clumsy, but as you get more practised, more experienced, your motions (mediated through the controller) become more fluid as your skill improves, purely because of the negative reinforcement that comes from falling into pits of lava.

I suggest that the negative reinforcement as discussed above is an in-game failure like falling in a pit of lava; sure, if done well enough for long enough the problem will likely be resolved, but there are real questions as to whether a player will stick around long enough. Falling into a pit of lava is a pretty severe penalty, falling off the zip line in the obstacle course is not. Theres a whole "insignificant" arena for practicing in, so that you can be up to speed when faced with "real" challanges.

I think that what is missing from these scenarios is an appreciation of the social contract in the setting. That is, its all very well agreeing to something like genre expectations within the social contract of the players, but quite a different thing to ensure that they all agree on the genre conventions they are agreeing to. I think in large part this has to be rendered in the system, so that when the player considers this course of behaviour, the system can and does predictably produce penalties that do not arise from the arbitrary judgement of other players.

But rendering the social contract of the setting in the system usually triggers objections based on personality attributes, GM's controlling characters, etc. ad nauseum.

So, I agree with the model given above for dealing with the problem as it arises; the short version would be "teach don't punish". /but I feel the problem itself arises because social contract between PC's and between PC's and NPC's is not explicitly addressed and systematically expressed.

Hi Gareth (contracycle),

That makes a lot of sense to me, including your critique of Chris' (clehrich's) suggestions.

In that discussion I mentioned, I forgot to give my friend Julie credit for describing the Tomb Raider training scenarios to me, which illustrate the whole concept perfectly for video games. (It also explains certain portions of the movie which I had enjoyed but hadn't realized were so specific to the video game.)

Which raises the question: what would a training scenario for role-playing (pick whatever sort) look like, if it were highly, highly focused on exposing and working your way out of potential "interface-learning" instances of character psychosis?

Best,
Ron

I keep turning over in my head the process of learning how to play card games, and wondering if that can be translated into rpg training. I'm thinking of two different types of scenarios.

First, learning a new game. I'm wretched at figuring out how to play a card game by reading the rules. It's much easier for me to learn a new game when someone else explains it to me, and I particularly like playing an open hand (all cards exposed) when it's a game with an unusual card sequence, marriages, rule change events, etc. This would be equivalent to the training session with practice characters. An "open hand" type scenario would have to require everyone at the table to commit to full disclosure and cooperation.

The other scenario is when you know the rules and how to play the game, but you lack confidence in your skills or you're just not certain the *best* way to play. I've experienced this primarily in learning to play Bridge. After the game one or more players will re-create their hands and discuss what options were available for play and if the hand could have been bid or played better. This de-briefing can be very useful, and it doesn't disrupt the actual game. It can also be used to ask an experienced player why they chose to lead a certain card at a certain time. It seems that a similar type of de-briefing could be incorporated into rpg play and would not necessarily have to be initiated by the GM or the spastic player.

Julie

Ron Edwards wrote: That makes a lot of sense to me, including your critique of Chris' (clehrich's) suggestions.

Which raises the question: what would a training scenario for role-playing (pick whatever sort) look like, if it were highly, highly focused on exposing and working your way out of potential "interface-learning" instances of character psychosis?

Hi there,

Yeah, Chris, I may have mixed up my thread-subjects there. Poor brain ...

Frankly, I think you have your own answer in hand: make them play some Sorcerer. Force them into a situation that demands non-traditional play methods, and then have good mechanics to support dealing with the problems caused thereby.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Although that brings up another question: people who are wholly new to role-playing vs. established role-players with an unfamiliar game. And that strikes me as a very big issue relative to the psycho bat-shit phenomenon. Seems to me it shows up a hell of a lot more among the latter group.

Best,
Ron

I went through a brief phase where I kept converting between game systems for my werewolf game to best fit how the gameplay was progressing. When things went combat heavy, I moved away from everyway, and onto Sihouette, and later when things were hitting a very central line, I converted back to storyteller.

The biggest thing I learned is that that System provides players with a way to formulate expectations as to how their actions effect the world. It takes time for players to shake down that system (even players who normally aren't that interested, if at all, in System vs other things) and players try (either directly through character action or indirectly via asking the GM questions) unusual things and test the edge cases of their new abilities.

It is reasonable to assume, for the sake of discussion, that players will do this sort of thing with Premises and Settings as well. They will test the edge cases and shake down the boundries of somethign unfamiliar to understand where the scope of acceptable action is in the middle.

The solution that I eventually settled on to this sort of "shake down" behaviour is to provide "mid action" feedback before the action resolves. I'll tell them what their characters knowledge of the setting leads them to believe the consequenses of such an action to be. Sometimes (to place the feedback more squarely in the character's bailwick (for players that need this sort of justification)) I'll use a knowledge skill of some sort on the character sheet to justify the feedback. Like Pyske, I'll use this to lead to a discussion of expectations.

The more removed the culture of a sutting is from our own, the more "shake downs" it takes to get things moving smoothly.

This is more like the behaviour of pre teens than it is of video game players. If I recall my developmental pychology correctly (which I probably don't, psychology isn't my field) children of that age often deliberately break rules, or lie, or otherwise test what their social power is again the consequences that face them. It is how they learn their own culture, and is generally a very efficient way of doing so.

The position of PC's in (say) a samurai game is one where at least one player probably doesn't understand the game culture as the rest of the group does. It's much the same position as a 9 year old understanding their own culture, and that the same learning techniques are used shouldn't be suprising. If a character is obstinate, then appropriate consequences should be leveled at the character (though perhaps tempered in the same manner as they might be for a 9 year old).

Taking a leaf from a long-ago discussion of social contract, one option might be to give both sides a relatively inoffensive, yet mechanically significant, way to express the statement: "Whoa, that was not really what I expected to have happen there."

The best solution I've come up with (and the one I'm implementing in my game) has to do with by backing your words with the expenditure of a single increment of resource, made strictly to give your expression a weight that comes in independent of force of words (which can feel critical without meaning to, all too easily).

So maybe just acknowledge the problem, especially in games where the chance of psychosis is high - ones where the interface looks similar to expectation, but is actually very different, like say TROS - and provide this mechanism. Either the unfortunate player, or the GM, has the right to say "Hang on, that's... um... not what I expected. Are we working from the same page?" And give them the ability to spend, say, a CP die, to say, "No, really, listen to me. That did NOT work the way it was supposed to [or, 'you thought it would']. One of is is on the wrong page here."

Then leave the rest to back-and-forthing, per the Bridge example above. Let the rest of the group chip in with what they would have considered and would have expected to have happen, too. The GM may or may not run a takeback, he may spiff off a lovely IC spin like Sean's suggestion if he can come up with one, but in either case I think that interrupting with mechanical force to express that this is an OOC disconnect is important.

I think the willingness to back one's words with a mechanical sacrifice will minimize disruptors, too, personally. It's a much greater social offense to fail to listen when someone has literally paid for the right to speak, than it is to "not notice he was annoyed." So it won't stop pedal-to-the-metal disruptor players, but it lets halfway cases (such as the bored/impatient/spotlight-starved player) acknowledge their action, and gives them a moment to state their beef.

It's a lesser step than the "training scenario" level of treatment, which pretty much handles opening an entire session of play up to the level of discussion this implies. TROS, for example, probably still benefits from the "training level" simply because it combines (a) looks familiar but it's not for many players, with (b) and it can get your character killed faster than you can say "overextended." But as a lesser form of "psychosis control," and one usable with a single-player-joining situation, I think it's probably valuable.

- Eric

Eric (Harlequin) wrote: The best solution I've come up with (and the one I'm implementing in my game) has to do with by backing your words with the expenditure of a single increment of resource, made strictly to give your expression a weight that comes in independent of force of words (which can feel critical without meaning to, all too easily).

Si - absolutely. Sometimes tricky to implement, because the whole thing works better if it diminishes a side - the psychology of "increase the players' resources" is quite different from "diminish the GM's," even if the two are mechanically equivalent in the case in question.

And I don't think this issue is enough to support giving the GM limited resources, which in general I dislike. Applying it to NPC resources (as relevantly as possible) is the obvious solution here, if it's applicable, but it isn't always so.

Hmm. I'd forgotten this brainstorm, but... one thing I've talked about is giving the GM a "fiat index" which is a running record of the number of times he's had to overrule something. Basically a log of overt Force. Keying to this, instead of a resource, would work if it were carefully done.

- Eric

Edited on rereading your post, Chris... none of this is "pay if you want it to happen that way." That way lies dysfunction. It's "pay to be heard, no refunds," in my world. Clearer that way and puts everybody on the same side.

clehrich wrote:

Eric (Harlequin) wrote: The best solution I've come up with (and the one I'm implementing in my game) has to do with by backing your words with the expenditure of a single increment of resource, made strictly to give your expression a weight that comes in independent of force of words (which can feel critical without meaning to, all too easily).

I'm totally with this, but I'd like to see the GM have expendable resources as well. That is, I'd like to see the GM have to pay to overrule things. If the player does something "psychotic," there's always the chance that only the GM sees it that way. When the GM says, "Uh uh, you have to pay for that if it's going to happen that way," one of three things can happen: (1) the player says, "OK, I pay"; (2) the player resists, in a functional or dysfunctional manner, depending, which is the central issue here (I think); (3) the rest of the crew says, "Hey, Dave! That blows! I think this is awesome, and you have to pony up if you're going to overrule!"

I just think that #3 tends to get forgotten, but I've sure seen it happen often enough.

Eric, I suspect you and I are getting off-thread, but until somebody steps in to say so for sure I'll guess we're close enough.

My own Shadows in the Fog (old draft at weblink below, currently seeing an overhaul, don't hold your breath) is quite up-front about the GM limited-resources thing to deal with exactly such issues as this. Essentially everybody has the power to bend the universe quite drastically, most especially the GM, but certain types of behavior cannot be directly overruled. In particular, when a player directly bends the universe's structure, the GM either has to compete on a level playing-field or overrule.

How this links up with the current topic is this:

When a player goes batshit freakazoid and starts breaking things, I find that there are really two rough classes (apart from the "destructive" vs. "confused" thing). First, there's the "My character is going batshit, so sue me, that's the way he'd act" -- a particular form of My Guy syndrome. Second, there's the "No, I the player have this power to bend and break things, and I'm using it." Very rarely have I seen the second used completely destructively, i.e. where there was no way to incorporate the apparently batshit behavior into the story. The former? Oh, all the time.

So I'd further break down the second type of behavior into three types:

1. I'm doing something wild and crazy that I really believe will excitingly change the game in a cool way.
2. I'm doing something wild and crazy that I really believe... [insert above], but I'm actually totally wrong and everyone is now very ticked at me.
3. I'm doing something wild and crazy because you've given me some nice TNT to break the game and I can't resist lighting the fuse.

So I think for the first, the GM, like the other players, should have to pay to change the events.

For the second, the GM does (in my game at least, and it sounds like in yours) have the power to say, "No, Dave, come on; that's pretty nuts, you know? I mean, these are the tentacles of a live squid, not elven ropes a la Lord of the Rings"; here the important thing is that the group is approving the GM's approach, and that's simply a matter of feel.

For the third, the GM should be able to overrule brutally, in essence making a punishment-call.

I just think that the third as a GM method comes up far more often than it needs to, because GM's don't always realize that they can overrule in cool ways as well as punishing ones, and they don't always realize that overruling can be perceived as punishment.

So my previous suggestions about "ignore the behavior within the world" are really good ways, I think, of dealing with behavior halfway between 2 and 3, and actually a good way of telling the difference. If the reaction is, "Oh, bugger. Okay, I kneel," or whatever, you've got #2 and lesson learned and no harm done. If the reaction is, "Oh yeah? Well I draw my sword and cut my way to the throne, and you can't stop me, because it's allowed in the rules," you've got #3 and should kill the guy. The character, I mean. Probably. Unless you're sure nobody knows where he is at the moment and the body won't be found for a long time.

My own feeling about overrules is that if the actions that provoke them are perceived by the group as cool, i.e. the crew says, "No way, that's awesome!" is that the GM should either change his mind and not overrule, or else beg on bended knee, abase himself, and so forth. As in, "Okay, I'm a loser, I can't come up with anything clever, you got me, I suck, please please please change that action because I'm just not clever enough to keep up with you." Try it -- it's hilarious, and everyone will remember it very positively. And the action will change, I promise.

What you have to watch out for is a player going batshit and you overruling, only to find that everyone is ticked off at you. I keep using the same example, but here goes:

In a Ken Hite pulp game called "The Insidious Dr. Fang and His Zeppelin of Doom," we escaped a deathtrap and found ourselves in possession of a mini-submarine with shore-landing capability. We were totally supposed to go to Murmansk; this had been made clear in no uncertain terms. A friend of mine said, "Nope, I think we should go to Casablanca." Ken was really annoyed, because he figured this was batshit derailing behavior. I chimed in, saying, "No wait, Ken, this is awesome. We should go to Casablanca, it makes more sense for us. Besides, you can do your Sidney Greenstreet impression -- we promise we will go to the Blue Parakeet." Ken stared at us for a bit, then said, "Okay, you land on the shore of Casablanca in the dead of night. What now?" Correct answer: this was not the batshit behavior he thought it was, and made a great story.

Besides, he does a great Sidney Greenstreet.

Chris Lehrich

I'm sure he does. And much of that dissection I'm good with. But I have to again go back to the issue of one thing:

Chris Lehrich wrote: So I think for the first, the GM, like the other players, should have to pay to change the events.

Definitely threadjack time. I'll think about it and one of these days soon we can have another thread about GM resources and whatnot. Very, very interesting -- but we have waaaay dragged this aside.

You may now return to your previously scheduled thread....

Chris Lehrich

To answer Ron's new question, "What would an RPG training scenario", a couple of things occur to me.

First, examples help.

Second, monkey see, monkey do.

Work the scenario out in such a way that one individual player (preferably an experienced one) starts off alone and faces some challenge that excercises the interface -- ie, some combat, and maybe some social interaction and skill use in most games.

Then, add the rest of the players in, and give them a similar set of challenges. They got to watch from the peanut gallery, now it's their turn to try it out.

I keep seeing the man from scene #47: "You must answer me these questions three ere the other side you'll see!".

The other thing is that I definitely corroborate Ron's point that experienced RPGers who are being introduced to a new game are far more likely to go apeshit than those who are new to RPGing altogether.

I think this is a learning curve issue, partially because they know how this class of games works even if they don't know how this particular one works. The total newbie stretches his learning out over a long time, twiddling things carefully in case the character dies or something.

The experienced role-player isn't invested in the game or the character yet. You can always role up a new character, and by going apeshit you strain the system really quickly. It's tough on the game and the character, but it provides a lot of information about how the game and gaming group interact and problem solve. I don't think it's good gaming, because it hijacks the game and steals the spotlight from the rest of the group. It's a selfish breaking of the social contract to learn about the current game and group.

Of course, it also seems to happen with experienced RPGers who are willing to play the new game, but would much rather play something else. They aren't invested in this system/game/setting, so they tank the game and make it unfun for the others in an attempt to amuse themselves and/or in the hopes of playing the game they really want to.

Hmm. I can't help feeling that much of these suggestions may contribute to making the problem worse. Because, having now established the capacity of the player to deploy Force through currency, we have, it seems to me, only legitimised the destructive behaviour in the first place.

The way I think about this is roughly the following: if the Daimyo has an ability which is 'People Bow To Me: 15w2', the GM can just ask the player with the disruptive action to dice off and accept the judgement of the system. The player has already committed, by and large, to accepting the systems judgement as final and that no correspondance will be taken thereinto. If the player insists on this course, then clearly they are violating the social contract they entered into with all the players, and large part of the disciplining would likely emanate from the players peers rather than from an authoritative figure.

Even better, if the player stands to benefit from such a rule - for example, the player ALSO has a 'People Bow To Me', but it applies only to feudal underlings and the peasantry - they can see the benefits in this form of power and have no motive to rock the establishment boat. Hopefully, they will instead aspire to having a mightier 'PBTM' ability, thus producing genre-reinforcing action as a natural property of system adherence.

I;m a little confused by some of the concepts receiving the focus in this thread. when I think of players "learning the interface" in an rpg, I don't think of people trying to break the system or challenge the GM (or group's) authority; I interpretted Ron's example of the samurai being one of player unfamiliarity with the samurai concept as well as being unfamiliar with a Simish approach to it. if we're talking about a player who stubbornly refuses to bow to the lord even after having the situation explained, I think we're talking about something other than an interface problem -- although whether an interface problem handled inappropriately by the GM or group could lead to stubborn attempts to break the system is another question.

I'm kind of looking more at the case of players either new to a setting or new to rpgs in general who perform actions that, if the GN/group responds "in character" or "in genre" (or whatever other rules are in effect,) the player's character will be severly punished if not killed. no malice or power struggle on the player's part at all, just a lack of knowledge of the consequences. the classic examples I'm familiar with are:

-- the newcomer to D&D or a similar frpg who purchases off-the-wall equipment like a ballista;
-- the newcomer to Call of Cthulhu who buys a shotgun and starts using it without caution, or tries to solve a problem with a Mythos-level infestation using a D&D "kill the monster" approach.

it seems to me the best response is to gently explain why that's not a good idea and allow a do-over. the GM currency idea might be usable, with some modifications. rather than have a fixed number or a spendable resourse, which is way too much bookkeeping, I would just encourage the GM to hand out one-time bonuses during negotiations with players to change their character's actions.

so the GM for the samurai situation could say "oh, this is supposed to be medieval Japan; a samurai who refused to bow to his lord could be beheaded, just like your samurai has the authority to behead peasants who fail to bow to you in turn. but I don't want to have your character die like that because it spoils the fun, so would you be willing to undo your decision in return for a floating bonus on one future roll? if not, your action stands and I won't behead your character, but he's going to be treated in ahumiliating way by the lord's retainers."

it seems liek a good approach, because you are explaining the reason why the player's decision isn't good, offering an incentive to give up control for that one action, and giving another option that is not pleasant but isn't as harsh as outright character death.

I concur that the deliberate disruptiveness belongs in another thread and is distracting us. You pick good examples, John. I'd add these:

- The newbie to TROS who decides that the best defense is a good offense and dumps his entire pool on a strike during the very first exchange.
- (This is a subtle one) The Nobilis player who, intimidated by the scope, can't bring himself to work a single miracle. (Nobilis isn't the only system which has this particular interface hiccup, and it's pernicious in any game... because it can be very subtle, and prevents them from learning the interface until it's overcome).

But again I have to disagree. It's counterproductive IMO to ever have anybody give anything to anyone (other than the bank) as part of these negotiations. It sends the little gamist-imps inside me into flurries of indignation, no matter how far buried they may be at the time, to have someone get paid off for being confused. And it's certainly counterproductive to apply Force based on the currency exchange, as Gareth points out.

So I'm with John, with a quibble on the application. No presents offered, just the discussion and (per GM preference and situation, I think) either "incorporate it healthily" or "allow takeback."

The only stumbler there is the player opacity that Ron points out, which I think is a particular (and fairly common) response to confusion or perceived criticism - clam up and stand by your actions until you understand what's going on. I would suggest that this opacity component is self-esteem linked, which is why the various modes of applying consequences are inappropriate... if the baseline discussion didn't work, then either (a) you have a true disruptive, or (b) you have a clam. Consequences may work (or may feed) the disruptive, but they'll certainly exacerbate the clam's self-esteem issues and make the behaviour worse.

I think this may be why Sean's method resonated with me and others here... it offered the afflicted player a clear path to higher self-esteem via character improvement, while simultaneously using the afflicted PC's situation as an example of the very creative agenda that the player is failing to grasp. If I had to dissect his tricks in that post:

- "Um, no, here, look. The way we play in this campaign, that action would need significant background to make any sense. Here's some appropriate background, see how the causal logic fits together?" (Also, "in case you're not familiar with it," here's an example of 'no myth' play, where the causal logic is sometimes backwards, inventing the explanation after the act.)

- "I know it's kind of intimidating, and by having to step in I'm making things even scarier. You probably don't have words to discuss it right now. It'll be better once you feel you have mastery over the system and the setting. Here's a way to achieve that mastery - do this."

- (Implicit in the method, the going back and fixing things up) "That action was nonsense as it stood, but we prefer to keep it and continue." (Subtext, you are going to be held to your actions, so try to watch and learn.)

- "If I'm wrong, and you're a potentially disruptive player instead of a clam, then here's some mild consequences, but more importantly, here's your chance for some valid spotlight time, just not right now. Deal?"

Demonstrate, support, warn, defer. Not a bad four-point checklist, in general. Any comments or additions to the list?

- Eric