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After a recent session of actual play, I have been thinking about the "logistics" of how other folks play a game.

My question is this: How does your group "set up" when it plays, and do you think this affects the game?

For example, my current group sits around a nice living room in couches and chairs. A few of us use T.V. trays for paper, books and dice. Others use coffee tables, thick arm chairs or maybe just a book on the floor for same. Usually, the GM just sits in a chair like everyone else (though usually on one "side" -- not in the middle of the group of players), but sometimes will move an "office chair" sort of in the middle of the room (back to the T.V., where, incidentally also sits the stereo which always plays music, typically something rock, maybe a soundtrack like Gladiator or something).

Contrast that with: When I run games at my house, which I have not done in several months now, I use the dining room table. It's long and narrow, and I almost always sit at one end, with the players (usually only 3-4 max) sit around the sides. I do not use a GMs screen, nor does the group above in any instance. The dining/living room is long, with the table at one end. At the other end of the house is the stereo, and again we usually have some kind of tunes playing. The table is near the main door in the house, and also near the washer/dryer pantry. These two things have been minor distractions in the past.

I have, of course, played in many other situations. Back in the "golden days" of heavy-duty D&D gaming, we used to play in our college-era apartments, sitting around a living room on couches, using coffee tables, etc. Our group was usually fairly large (by my standards) -- usually 7-8 people. Interestingly, while we were all around the room, it felt very close and focused (in contrast, at times, with my settings above). People were focused on the dice rolling, and because there were more people involved, the personal contact was closer and less relaxed than groups described above.

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The first example above, which is the mode I play in currently, I find that the play is very relaxed and comfortable. There is little focus or attention on die rolls, for example. In fact, rolling dice is almost a distraction for this group. People must get up from relaxed postures, often to clear a space to roll dice, and then verbally share the results, as no one can really see the dice rolls. I find no one "cheats" in this regard.

In the second example above, with a group of similar size, my experience was also fairly relaxed but certianly more focused on the "accoutrements" of gaming. Dice, character sheets, pencils, snacks, etc.

What I have obvserved is that the physical locations and postures MAY affect how the group conducts the game. That is, I think that -- in addition to lots of larger social contract issues -- the "logistics" of our sessions weaken the notion that System Does Matter. Has anyone else experienced this, or noticed similar issues? Or, do you find this an erroneous observation, and that it's more likely the social contract issues are all that's going on here?

Finally, I'll say that I have lots of other thoughts about the make-up of these various groups/sessions I've described above. I think the people, the social contract involved, vary widely in each case, and that has a MUCH greater effect on how the game is played. But, what I'm interested in here is how the locations, postures, accoutrements, ambience (music, specifically), "die-rolling surfaces", etc. affect how the game is played, and how the expereince might be different from expectations.

This thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4468

focused on different environments, but not so much on the effects, which is what I think Matt's trying to get at here.  

Mike

Thanks for the link, Mike. I had a hazy recollection of a similar thread, and this was it. Wasn't too long ago, either. Sheesh, I'm losing it.

You're right that I'm looking for more discussion on the effects, basically as it relates to System Does Matter. Ralph nailed it for me here:

QuoteI also find that playing in a relaxed lounge type setting seems to lead to relaxed focus on the mechanics of the game.  Now I'm not a big fan of rules heavy stuff by anymeans, but IMO, if you're playing a game with rules you ought to be playing by the rules.  Living room gaming has always led to more of a "winging it" environment.  The same group of gamers playing the same game in the same campaign seem more willing to play faster and looser with the rules if their sprawled out on a couch than if they're sitting around a gaming table.  Perhaps its because they get too comfortable to want to have to move to fish out the rule book, but that's generally been my experience.

This is precisely what I was getting at, and I'm surprised I had missed this comment before. He also comments on the music thing, which I find to be not much of a problem, in part because we often have music that's entirely appropriate to the game.

I offered this thread up for discussion, and I'm still interest to hear what folks say. My immediate thought, which I only hinted at above, is that I'm finding my particular issue boils down very simply to table vs. no table. I seem to be longing for the table! It's just one more component of the social contract that would nudge the "needle" in the direction I'd prefer, which is a bit more attention to system, why it matters and how to keep the game from veering too darn far into freeform territory. I think freeforming is fine, but I do think that different goals among my fellow players means that no one really knows what, where or why the freeforming is going.

Hey Matt:

In the game I play on Thursdays, we've changed location a couple times. Sometimes at someone's house, including a coffee table and couch, sometimes in the FLGS, in a back room with metal folding chairs.

I haven't found the change to be too significant, other than last week when Buckminster the ninja cat snuck up behind me and meowed an inch away from my left ear. At the FLGS, there's some more background noise, and occasionally funk, but the distractions and environment in either location seem to have a minimal effect on play, as far as I'm concerned.

But I will say this: if I get stumped and need an impromptu break, it seems easier to do when we're not at the table Walton-family style.

I have found this relaxed-play in relaxed-surroundings also. We play in a University classroom (see thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6658) and I prefer it this way. There is definitely more concentration on the game as a whole but only because there are less things to look at and it feels like a game room. A living room, feels like a place to relax, and so on.

I think this is why we continue to game in such environments.

I think environment is more important when some players are new or the group hasn't gamed together much.  When people aren't as confident they'll have fun, distractions become more powerful.  On the other hand, the people I gamed with for all 4 years in college could have ran a campaign practically anywhere and gotten into it.

Seating arrangements I've found are an example of this.  I've seen people get forgotten practically if they are new to the group and at the end of the table.  I've seen the GM and the players he get along with best sit very close.

I've found that starting a game in a small university conference room (empty room with big table & lots of chairs) was easier than in a large, spread out living room with a TV and roomates who aren't gaming are wandering in and out.

Here's just a weird example of how location effected play for one game I ran.

I was in the 5th grade I think.  I'd run games on the way to school on the bus for two of my friends.  This ride was probably about 15 minutes long, with mayb 6-10 minutes of actual play.  The game went extremely fast because of the short length of each 'session'.  In essence a standard session of events would be shoved into this small length of time, there wasn't very much roleplaying involved, just moving from point A to point B like a video game.

As far as I can remember the system was something very simple like roll a d20 higher than your opponent's d20.  The game itself was standard 5th grade fare (well for my group that is).  They played themselves and the game was pretty combat heavy (though there was no injuries or deaths).  Ahh... that was weird.

I have also toyed with various environments for differant games.  Darker an RPG I'll eventually write in the future is supposed to be played in a pitch black room with flash lights.  I also thought it would be cool to play Unknown Armies in an open air restauraunt close to a traffic heavy city road during sunset.
-Joshua

See, what I'd say Matt is that environment affects the game on the Social level. So, as always, that trumps the system. It's not that System Doesn't Matter, it's that System only matters in the context of the social setting.

Thus if you have a group that likes heavy games, they might like Rolemaster. If that is changed by the social setting, the environment, if that changes their feelings so that they don't want heavy, then Rolemaster may be out.

If a relaxed environment makes players more lax about their requirements, that means that, yes, a wider variety of game will seem appropriate to them. Seems simple enough to me.

What am I missing?

Mike

I don't think you're missing anything, Mike. I think you're dead on that environment is a social contract issue, and therefore trumps system (for example).

Hmm. I guess my point is that I find the relaxed atmosphere is a subtler symptom of other social contract issues going on. Implicit in that social contract is that everybody gets along (above all else, besides "have fun"), everybody acknowledges -- even openly -- that we have different tastes in game systems, and therefore system does matter isn't as important as the fact that Person X or Y or Z is funny when we play (for example).

So, maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse, but my original question was simply "Have you all noticed whether set-up changes your game experience?" That's being addressed by folks, so I think it's a valid dicussion. We've seen some interesting results.

Cart: The relaxed atmosphere means folks are reluctant to do physical things to reinforce the system properly.

Horse: At its worst (though certainly not a deal breaker for me and my group) system doesn't matter ... as much as Social Contract does. Duh.

The reason I say it that way is that I think our social contract is based on 1) faulty assumptions about what System Does Matter (as championed here on the Forge) means and is for and 2) general, outright laziness in learning and properly applying systems. Not misunderstanding the systems, but simply not bothering to apply them. Ignoring significant chuncks of a system such that Drift is likely occuring. Or, worse, freeforming is. Again, not endemic or All Freeform, All The Time. Rather like a symptom that pops up from time to time depending on who's running the game, which game we're running, etc.

< Double post, sorry. >

I'd just say that the Drifted game, perhaps even Freeform is just the system that your group needs in this case. System still matters just as much as it did before. It's just the change in social environment has changed what system is best in this case.

Remember that Drift is proof of this (the original system isn't working otherwise why Drift), and that Freeform is just another kind of system.

But that said, it is interesting to consider what changes occur to group demand in different environments.

Mike

The campaign I run is done sitting around the couch, whereas the HarnMaster and Lord of the Rings campaigns I played in were done seated around a long tabletop.  

I'd concur that the couch setup is more relaxed in a way.  It is easier to take breaks, and easy to break into chatting to the people next to you about in-game topics (or out-of-game topics).  I should also note that I have occaisional distractions as my 3-year-old finishes his video and comes into the room.  These have probably contributed to my moving to a more soap-opera style of play.  Players will have one thing in hand, generally their character sheet, but they won't tend to crack open a hardbound book.  

A round-the-tabletop setup is more centrally focussed.  Certainly the dice and the game-books get more attention, as well as anything like maps that get put on the table.  Distractions tend to be flipping through the books or playing with dice rather than chatting.  

One thing I have done in my Vinland game is made mini-notebooks for all the players.  The mini-binder has their character sheet, the family trees, a 4-page list of NPCs, and the session summaries for the 36 sessions.  Players can then skim through this during the session.  

In general, I think that designs often underestimate the effect of physical factors -- i.e. what is actually physically happening during the game.  Notably character sheet design I find is extremely important to a game, and one that is often neglected by game designs.

Hmm. That last post - thats a LOT of work, but appreciated, undoubtedly by the players... I do remember, however, a friend starting a RuneQuest compaign, which I'd never played. We ALL (like 4 of us) made the Pilgrimage to Kinko's and copied a sluice of things out of the rulebook to put in our own 45 cent player folder: character sheet, turn summary, tables of some sort, equipment list, spells - you know, like, ok thats's cool, I guess that would be kinda neat to have at your fingertips, maybe help you come up with something during a dry spell in the game - and then he opened the book up and handed it to me. It was the freaking CALENDAR.

I just sorta looked up at him (being he's like 6'9" or some such) as he held the book out to me. "You're serious? We're copying the Glorantha CALENDAR? EACH of us?" High holy days and various other date-related miscellany was his justification, and we did it of course, with that sort of cynical hopefulness that "hmm, this is weird - maybe it will really be interesting in the end". Well, I got into it to a certain point but really, the thing that kept going through my head was "you know, I want to play an rpg - I love rpgs and making characters... but this may be just a *tad* more bookkeeping than I am willing to put into this".

Eventually after only a few sessions, and not a whole lot of referring to the calendars, we all went through the no-rpg phase and it was forgotten about. Before this seems totally off-topic, I wanted to add that a lot of things WITHIN the game ITSELF, *CAN* DEFINITELY affect the gaming experience, just as surely as environment, maybe just because they're new, or because you have an automatic knee-jerk reaction of "Auughhh, this is gonna suck", for whatever reason. The games turned out okay but I think there was an underlying bit of dread of having to know whether Qizarfle the Night of Green Teeth fell on the 29th or the 34th of GlibGlib.

This "new" or "afraid of new things" idea is where I'm going with this, believe it or not. My group (same one, different people here and there) played Warhammer for years, usually around my kitchen table - small kitchen, opened into the living room, people in and out all the time, TV set, barking dogs, squawking birds - pretty much the worst environment, second only to an airport or clock factory. But it worked, somehow. Almost all family in one form or another, that helped some - the referee and one other player and sometimes his son were pretty much the only non-blood related players (though naturally the usual squabbling will happen, especially with teens or short-tempered adults - we had no drought of either). In the end, everyone fondly remembers those nights around the table as one of the most rewarding times they've had, game-wise, as characters truly got developed, a lot of creativity was discovered, schemes and diabolical atrocities were committed - all within reach of a cheese sandwich.

I noticed any other place we played, usually also at a table, like someone's spacious shop at work after hours - was okay but felt like some sort of 'stopgap measure' - like the "Whales" Star Trek movie - yah you can go to it, play, enjoy yourself, even be creative - but when all is said and done and you're back in reality, nobody considers that a REAL play session. I got a couple opportunities to play around a living room with different people - but it was Cowboy Feng's Space Bar or something and involved lots of drinking foul smelling liquids out of plastic cups so while I do admit it was MUCH more relaxed (even with the incredibly powerful stench of cat-urine-in-the-carpet), it wasn't a 'real game' - I do admit though, even without the drinks, I would definitely have been very relucant to sit up from the giant worn out chair that was attempting to eat me, buttocks first, to have to roll a die or scribble something.

Different environment. Larger kitchen, larger table, larger house. Still dogs, birds, tv, etc. I think a lot of it is cousins getting older but yet - the feel itself just seems 'different' - didn't seem to be able to get into their characters, to really work on playing or following a plot; some character development here and there, mostly mine, with more players having this or that to go do. Depressing and amusingly, only makes most of us think back to the smaller, more uncomfortable house, with the MORE comfortable session.

Quote from: Dr. VelocityThis "new" or "afraid of new things" idea is where I'm going with this, believe it or not. My group (same one, different people here and there) played Warhammer for years, usually around my kitchen table - small kitchen, opened into the living room, people in and out all the time, TV set, barking dogs, squawking birds - pretty much the worst environment, second only to an airport or clock factory. But it worked, somehow.  

You suggest that a casual setting (people coming through, etc.) is a bad environment, which seems to stem from thinking that the ideal is 100% focus on the game with no distractions.  But I don't think that is necessarily true.  

A pure game-focussed environment is more pressured, which can reduce enjoyment or even creativity.  As a parallel, consider a writer who puts himself in a room with only his notes and typewriter in order to get himself to write.  While this can work, other writers often get their best ideas when sitting in a cafe, or listening to music, or whatever.  They don't write continuously, but rather they sit for a bit and then they get an idea and write it out, then maybe they go get a coffee or whatever.  

With no out-of-game distractions, any lull or dull moment is magnified because it is the only thing to pay attention to.  Declaring a break may not help, since the break can be just as dull as sitting at the table.  Creativity does not come on demand, and sometimes asking it to can actually suppress it.

I'd tentatively suggest that set up could have some sort of role to play in support of system. In our group I've noticed that when we set up with round tables, or at least not in the "GM sits at the top of the table" mode, we're much more comfortable with scene framing and scene resolution. Could be that there is a whole game ownership thing going on, with the GM at the top of the table/behind the screen acting as a cue for players in figuring out how authorial power is going to play out.

We've tried a variety of set ups – all sorts of tables available at out local club. Traditionally the GM sat on the narrow edge on a rectangular table, possibly with a smaller table beside him or her to hold books etc. For a long time we used a variation of this – the 'L' set up – using to rectangular tables with the GM on the inside corner of the cross section. This allowed the GM to 'get close' but still provided the comfortable familiarity of "you player – me GM" to hold sway.

Lately we use one table, usually rectangular, with everyone sitting where they choose. For practical purposes the GM usually gets to use the full breadth of the table to store props, books dice etc on.

Interestingly our change in set up has also correlated with the demise of the GM's screen. As we've played more narrative associated games (Sorcerer, TROS – next up Universalis) we've moved away from the Wizard of Oz "don't look behind the screen" brand of illusionism. Over the past few games players have had more direct contact with the system. I suspect that when we next play D&D we'll go back to this mode and take up our previous set up and roles to make that system work for us.

Maybe I'm putting too much thought into how we sit around the table!

Alan.