Hello,
Julie, Maura, and I played Nicotine Girls. I asked Julie to be a GM for a number of reasons, one of which was that I wasn't inclined to be the male GM for two women playing nicotine girl characters.
I had recently re-read the rules with an eye toward imminent play and found, or remembered, the main reason I hadn't in the past: a bit of the rules had made no sense to me. I asked Paul some questions, then cut-and-pasted his answers into my copy-pasted printout of the rules. So now I had what I considered to be a usable rulebook.
If you don't know much about this game, then you should understand that when Paul published it, the nearly universal response was "it's unplayable." They weren't talking about the minor rules confusion either; they were saying that no one could play a game about low-rent girls and their lives.
I disagreed even back then, but having played now, I am more certain why. Nicotine Girls is the first, and to date still one of the very few, role-playing games about social class. Real social class, too, not some jumped-up exsanguinated Merchant Ivory production either. Americans especially don't like to talk about or think about it, and the middle-class American attitude toward people below a certain income/opportunity level is best described as pure contempt, as derogatory and exploitative as any caste system you ever heard of. You can find all sorts of wriggling and uncomfortable disclaimers when people praise Nicotine Girls but say "... and I can't play it," or "... my group would never play it."
Paul wrote a game that rips the lid off middle-class smugness, and the degree to which it's under-played is a shame.
Maura's character was Britney, 17 years old, with Hope of 4 and Fear of 2, Sex 1, Money 2, Cry 2, Smoke 1, whose dream was to "fix her brother's Mustang and drive it to a town big enough to get a job at WalMart."
My character was Nicole, 16 years old, with Hope of 5 and Fear of 1, Sex 2, Money 1, Cry 1, Smoke 2, whose dream was to "go to acting school" which was what she called the theater program at the JCC.
My character-making experience yielded a delayed jolt for me, because I'd started with the Methods scores and had sort of forgotten about them when I set her age a little while later - overlooking, in the moment, that I'd created a 16-year-old whose strongest scores included Sex. More on this in a minute.
Some clarifications to the rules:
- Hope never goes down. If you fail a Hope roll, you can't use it for a roll again during this story, but it doesn't decrease and you still get to roll for your Dreams at the end.
- If the GM does something to you that is like an item on the Fear list, it doesn't give you Fear; only you can give yourself Fear. The former should be protagonizing adversity, but the latter should be trauma and dysfunction, pure Jerry Springer territory.
- Fear increases from the Fear list are permanent. Yes, this means you could build an insanely high, can't fail Fear score. Which also means your character's life chaos is awful - so Paul specified that it's a prerequisite to play to love your character and not want such a life for her, Dream or no Dream.
I should also point out that succeeding in conflicts barely affects your final Dreams roll, and the tiny bit it does is entirely Hope-based, so racking up that kind of Fear is not strategically meaningful anyway.
We played by alternating characters' scenes, but they were available to one another as characters in each others' scenes, if desired.
The initial scene involved a For Sale sign on the Mustang and Britney managing to buy the car herself from her dad, if she can scrape up the money. Maura rolled Hope using Money as the method, and she succeeded! I must say that Julie had a touch with post-roll resolving narrations which tended to reveal much more about the characters as well as be intensely depressing.
Then Nicole had to negotiate a change of shifts at her ice-cream place job (Hope/Money), in which she smoked a little with Britney first to get some advice. She considered playing up to Brent, the manager, but Britney told her to be straightforward about it, which she did - and succeeded too! Well, granted, using Hope with Money basically to bribe a co-worker to switch shifts.
Maura and I experienced remarkable tension leading up to and during the rolls. The sensations of empathy for one's own character and engagement with the other character were startlingly intense. I found myself considering that a certain dignity – or at least the sense of humanity inherent in this person whose values and worldview were so different from mine – was necessary to put into play in order to play at all.
Britney's mom demanded that she get rid of that car, which had a lot to do with why her dad had put it up for sale in the first place, and Julie spared us nothing in understanding Britney's family/home dynamic. What I didn't see coming was the total exposure of the pain underneath the dysfunction when, after Britney succeeded with the Hope/Cry roll, concerning the death of her brother in Iraq.
Julie pointed out that Maura tried a couple of times for Britney to use reason in negotiating, and it got her nowhere: Sex, Cry, Money, with or without smoking first, and that's the menu, nothing but.
For me, Britney was at the top of her game when she put the car into neutral, set her teenage back to it, and rolled it through the streets to a new home.
Nicole found herself able to attend the after-school arts program, but was stunned to discover that people had to show themselves to be good at something in order to perform in the upcoming show (sort of a talent show, with a framing sort of plot). An instructor gave her a copy of West Side Story to watch, and as it turned out, she busted out a pretty good song with Hope/Cry too.
This was Nicole at the top of her game, all determination, not knowing really what it was or what kind of information was out there, but actually able to do it.
Britney had a problem: where to put the car actually. She decided to see if she could house it at Mark's, Mark having been Darryl's best friend. Julie described Mark as not quite right since having returned from Iraq, not even counting the missing foot. Britney got in a Smoke with Nicole first, and here's where I had to confront both the in-fiction logic and the system, working in tandem to hit me with the limitations in the girls' choices.
I waffled a little by thinking of having Nicole advise Britney to Cry her way through, but it didn't work for me. Here was Nicole with her head abuzz about MGM true love set to music, and the only thing that made sense to me – and as it happened to Maura as well, as we role-played the conversation, was for Nicole to advise Sex. The sting is, by the rules, if the girl follows the advice, she rolls bonus dice equal to her Smoke score. But if she doesn't follow it, then she gets that number of dice deducted.
Another nuance was added by Julie, who had narrational rights, who preferred a broader interpretation of Sex as a method, with more emphasis on promises and expectations than on the physicality. The interesting thing is that despite a certain trepidation, both Maura as author and I as partial author were reconciled to Britney having sex with Mark. A little grim, perhaps a lot, but not out of bounds. (Does anyone really think Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a funny movie? Or at least that scene where Stacy has sex for the first time?) But Julie was thinking more in terms of a character whose name I've forgotten from Freaks & Geeks, who according to her and as Maura agreed, used sex as a manipulative method all the time without necessarily doing anything physical. Which is fine; in a game of this type, the GM pretty much sets the Lines, and we went with that.
I knew that sooner or later I might find myself playing Nicole to use Sex as a method too. A difficult issue. I was valuing her sojourn into airy fantasy for a bit, and didn't look forward to the nigh-inevitable comedown, especially at Julie's capable narrational disposal.
However, the next scene turned out to be about something else entirely, when I decided Nicole would break the news that she had no intention of finishing high school in order to get to the JCC as fast as possible. Mom said no, and here, the fiction gripped me in its iron paw. I could not see a way to use Hope, and Money and Sex were flat out, which meant our first Fear-based roll. I could have used straight-up Fear for a really crappy roll, but this was important, so ... well, after waffling again and almost picking some cop-out options, I chose Divorce/Separation.
Sure enough, apparently Nicole's dad had an entirely different family we knew nothing about, as he had fathered the child of the girl who worked at the gas station (!! Where Nicole bought her cigarettes!), and now was bringing them all home – i.e., here. Mom: "Pack your things. This isn't home any more." The conflict evolved a bit here, to be about whether Nicole could stay at Tracy's instead of moving out of town, until the end of the term (i.e. and the show's production). Adding the Fear got me some serious dice and I made the Cry roll.
It was time to wrap up for the night. Paul had explained to me that Endgame is possible at the end of any game session. Basically, the group decides whether they want to end it here or to play another session. We went ahead and ended it, and rolled in genuine earnest for our girls' Dreams ...
Neither one got it. Your best shot is to roll two 1's on a number of d10s equal to your Hope, or your Hope +1 if you didn't blow a Hope roll earlier. So I rolled six d10s and Maura rolled five. Both of us rolled a single success, not two. There's nothing in the rules constraining or suggesting that this is a "partial success," either, so you have a free hand in making up the Epilogue no matter what you roll, as long as she either does or does not get her Dreams as resolved by the roll.
Nicotine Girls is not a wind-up toy. You can win every conflict and you know what, that only means a tiny increase in your chances, and that's all the bennies you get. Starting Hope is far more important. If you start with a Hope of 2 and never fail with it, you roll three dice. If you start with a Hope of 5 and blow a Hope roll, then you'll roll five. No, you can't rack the 2 up to whatever because you kept succeeding. That is middle-class fantasy.
Maura said that a couple of years with Mark was not easy, and Britney never did manage to finish fixing the car. She did leave town and get that job at WalMart, but the dream aspect was gone.
I said that Nicole divided her time between the two family households and although she went to the JCC, she got a certificate in business administration, and ended up with a very normal and not-very-upwards job. Occasionally people think about that sparkling junior year in high school and wonder whatever became of that girl.
If you're marginal, rational negotiation and honest empathy are not options. You can't explain things to a cop, or to a boss. You can't inspire true support in those who regard you as less than human, nor can you engage with them rationally. Your peers and family cannot help you because they have no power either. You only have sex, money, manipulative plays for sympathy, and advice from those who are just as marginal as you. Hope isn't magic; it doesn't make things happen. You can dream, sure. But dreams aren't a golden path to follow or a call into the universe for it to respond to. All that is petit-bourgeois mythology, and stories that challenge it confront the middle-class psyche like a cold, grasping hand to the groin.
That's probably why people recoil from playing this game. I think there's no actually-legitimate excuse, including me for the last six years.
Best, Ron
Oh, clever, that's right, forget the link: Nicotine Girls (http://www.halfmeme.com/nicotinegirls.html).
Best, Ron
Ron,
It's exciting to see Nicotine Girls play because it's one of those games I look at periodically and say, "I really want to play this" and then don't. The game "spoke" to me the first time I saw it.
I'm a little curious about your interpretation of the rules. Perhaps this is what you clarified with Paul. The text uses the word "session", not "story" with regard to Hope. So if you make it through a "session" without failing when you use your Hope it goes up by one. Doesn't it follow then that if your story lasts more than a single session that Hope could conceivably increase by the number of sessions you chose to play? (I'm not imagining an 18 session Nicotine Girl mega-campaign but two to four doesn't seem to be out of the realm of possibility).
A fairly hefty part of your interpretation of the thematic dynamics of the game relies on the fact that the +1 applies to the story as a whole rather than per "session" as the text states.
Jesse
Jesse,
You are correct in that if the game is played over multiple sessions, Hope can go up. In the game we played, the story was only going to be one session so there was little opportunity for increasing hope other than the add one to Hope if no Hope contest failed.
It is an interesting game dynamic. Fear can fluctuate wildly during a session, but not Hope which is either ruled out as an option after its first failure or go up slowly over extended play.
Julie
Which reminds me ... we did have a rule question for Paul.
At one point during the game, Ron's character's Fear dropped to zero. Solely through successful use of the Hope motivation in conflicts. Is there any game effect other than the inability to use Fear as a motivation in a conflict? (In afterthought, as GM, this would have been a prime opportunity to inflict violence on the character.)
Julie
Hi Jesse,
That's a good point, and I totally confounded session/story in my thinking when I wrote the post. It's true that my +1 and only +1, ever, was over-stated. I don't think it diminishes my analysis too much though.
Basically Maura and I were damned lucky not to lose Hope, and I think the main cause for that was that we Smoked whenever we could and followed the advice. Sooner or later, that wasn't going to happen, and even with that mechanical boost, the dice can really nail you in a system like this in the most pointed, must-have-been-planning-it way. I know it happens with The Pool all the time (i.e. the one roll out of many, ouch!!), and that's with d6's.
What I'm saying is that even with several sessions - and like you, I think 2-4 is a good number for this game - a +1 per session is very likely not going to happen.
I'm also thinking (and this really makes me want to play it again!) that the in-fiction events will become increasingly tense, as a combination of opportunities opening up and constraints boxing in. Especially once added Fear gets involved, as it had only begun to in our game. If what I'm thinking tends to happen, then the whole dynamic of Hope vs. Fear will shift a little. I'd like to see what play toward the end of, say, the second session will be like. I wonder whether I'll use Hope more than I mathematically "should" in tems of risk, because I'll not want my girl's life and life-decisions to be ruled by Fear.
Best, Ron
Hey Julie,
I'm not sure there should be a game effect for that. I certainly didn't have one in mind when I designed the game back in 2002. Thematically, Fear is what makes a character tenacious on behalf of her own needs. But the difficulties a player adds to his character's life from the chart don't go away when Fear hits zero. I don't think the game should say the character's tenacity or behaviors or personality should be changed if Fear hits zero, any more than a low Humanity takes behavioral or personality options off the table in Sorcerer.
But y'know, if I were running the game and a player zeroed out Fear and asked for his character to have an experience of living in the moment, a moment of peaceful happiness, without anxiety, I'd be glad to see it. I think that would be a fine interpretation of what might happen when a character zeroes out Fear.
Paul
That's interesting. By contrast, after we played, Maura mentioned that she found the idea of a nicotine girl without Fear to be disturbing ... acting in a dream-world, convinced that dreams will make her reality, and destined for an encounter with Fear of the worst sort (from the Fear list) quite soon.
Best, Ron
I also wanted to play this game for a long time. But each time I tried to, I could only find one player to play. Since the importance of the smoking scene, we dropped the idea. Maybe we could try to frame each other scenes. But I wonder what kind of dynamic it will create since you will be giving advice in the smoking scenes for the scene that you will be framing.
QuoteNicotine Girls is not a wind-up toy. You can win every conflict and you know what, that only means a tiny increase in your chances, and that's all the bennies you get. Starting Hope is far more important.
I dint see it at first, but creating a character with a score of Hope of 1 is kind of aiming for a ending where your girl don't get her dream. It is like pre selecting your endgame or epilogue. If you do so, is it a way of telling what kind of game experience you are wishing for? (well in a one or two session game)
Full disclosure: I mentioned this to Ron privately, and he asked me to post about it. I hesitantly am.
Basically, his AP of Nicotine Girls made me cry.
Ron's critique of why it isn't played because of how it would make higher-class Americans feel is, indeed, dead-on (all of it: contemptuous and exploitative, regarded as less-than-human, petit-bourgeois mythology of hope/work, systematically powerless, etc).
The game is depressing...because it's true. And not "depressing" in that made-for-television-movie-after-school-special way, because it is not just "a story" sad; it's fucking depressing in the same way "Schindler's List" is depressing.
Thanks for that disclosure, Raven. I've been hesitating to post myself.
Reading Ron's post gives me a big black queezy sucking rock in the pit of my stomache. I knew those girls, and a dozen others like them. I still keep in touch with a couple of them. Some of them ended up doing okay, and some not so much. Most of them were single teenage mothers.
I think Nicotine Girls is a game that deserves to be played, but for me it just hits too close to home to do so.
What's the importance of playing it, in relation to people who are in this cultural/resource situation? Atleast from my looking over it again, to me it's fingering the wound and...it seems to stop there? I get that other artistic mediums can raise awareness and sympathy - but atleast to me I think you'd have to be atleast somewhat sympathetic and aware to play this to begin with?
Quote from: Callan S. on June 16, 2009, 07:17:32 PM
What's the importance of playing it, in relation to people who are in this cultural/resource situation? Atleast from my looking over it again, to me it's fingering the wound and...it seems to stop there? I get that other artistic mediums can raise awareness and sympathy - but atleast to me I think you'd have to be atleast somewhat sympathetic and aware to play this to begin with?
Because having to play characters you care about--that is, people, whom you can't help making being a person yourself--who are in that situation puts nails in the idea the lower class is lazy, dirty, stupid...dehumanized untouchables basically lower than animals. (And lest anyone chuckle or roll their eyes, I am not kidding about or overstating that perception in any way. I am deadly serious.)
This is more than just "fingering the wound" because there's a difference between
having an intellectual understanding of all these issues, which you can easily push out of sight like you can with most things in your head, and having a personal,
emotional connection to it that doesn't go away so easily, and which a game that highlights the humanity of untouchables can provide in part, forcing one to understand and empathize. (ie: if you spend your time thinking about the feelings and struggles of even a fictional construct in that situation, it's much more helpful and motivating than if you understand and accept only that the poor have struggles.)
I don't know, I think those stories don't necessary need to be seen only as depressing or as the fingering of a wound. Opportunities are maybe absent or missed, but still, people are living through those situations and manage to swim in those waters, they still have significant moments and experiences. Their life don't have to be felt as stories about some kind of victimization. Not fulfilling one's dream can be seen as a tragedy, but it don't need to be perceived as a constant state of being. Maybe even that Hope and the epilogue about fulfilling one's dream or not impose on those stories some unnecessary values or morale. I don't know, since those stories are also close to me, maybe I want to see them as ordinary stories that have their own inner value without needing of being morale or about sensibilisation. Maybe I also want to see them as not constantly sad or tragic even if they are about lack of opportunities (or missed ones).
Hello,
Chris, one of my thoughts about this thread is that if we cannot utilize role-playing for the feelings and emergent stories for issues of this kind, then the medium itself is unsuitable for Narrativism. Emulating Hollywood is one thing; doing this is another. I happen to think that no fiction-creating medium is inherently limited in content, so I'm optimistic. Or to put it less abstractly, that "big black queezy sucking rock" is your signal to do it. If you were a filmmaker or a novelist, that'd be the case without controversy. And I'm guessing you know what to call such a creative person who shrinks away from the signal and remains with making only pablum, or even workmanlike quite-good stuff that happens not to be the BBQS rock.
(Side point: assuming the existence of a medium which is not capable of such content, the other, non-Narrativist things to do with it are not inferior or stupid. I'm talking in the context of the desire for fiction, and to create it, in the same or greater range of literature, theater, and film.)
Callan, I'm glad you posted that question. As I see it, there is no specific goal involved beyond that of what I called the cold grasping hand. If it's cold and grasping enough, then the person who feels it must re-evaluate his or her behavior. What will they do after that? I don't know. I definitely don't have a specific recommendation. What I want is to be around people, to live in a community including people, who've experienced that. Whatever actions or attitudes I'd be seeing and dealing with, I prefer those - including ones I might not like - to what I see and deal with now. I guess I'm saying ... to me, it doesn't "stop there" in terms of having played. Now that I think about it, or rather, as you've prompted me to think about it, if we're talking about having merely read it, yes, I agree with you. Maybe that's where Chris' stomach is at, actually. It's definitely in tune with Raven's point, because his post is about play.
Evlyn, one of the things I want to stress about the epilogues is that Maura and I weren't thinking in terms of constructing "the moral of the story," but rather thinking in terms of what the fiction so far made nigh-inevitable, as we saw it. I think that such endings do create (facilitate?) themes, which are themselves "the moral of the story" in simplistic terms, but I also think making them as I describe generates honesty and insight rather than imposing a false lesson. The best thing about the honesty and insight that I'm talking about is that it can prompt disturbance, not merely confirmation, of one's currently-held values. I think that's related to Callan's question in a positive way - if coming up with the point of the story in an external, overlaid, imposed way were to be done, then yes - the only possible result would be ... it's hard to find a word ... trivial.
Best, Ron
After reading back my post I was like "ouch It dint come out as I wanted to express m y thought on the subject". I wish I was able to adjust my vocabulary as I expressed myself like in a direct conversation. I agree that my comment about a moral dont fit with your actual play report. I enjoyed the trivial endings, and I liked your actual play report. I dint see it as sad. I especially liked the Walmart epilogue. I think that since I enjoy stories containing the theme found in Nicotine girls, the comments about dreading to play this game just confused me, and I exaggerating their intention. For my part I enjoy the premise of Nicotine girl, and I find it entertaining to tell and be tell those stories.
Hey Evlyn,
My dread of play comes the lurking spectre of memories and past experiences. Not even just painful or heart breaking memories, because sometimes happy memories become bittersweet when surrounded by the context of history. So, basically, play isn't going to be just a story for me. I'm watching out of the corner of my eye to make sure nothing sneaks up on me. As Ron rightly points out, that probably means there is something there that I need to take a look at. Daunting, but there you have it.
Nicotine Girls is like that first domino. It's waiting there, ten feet tall. Once you tip it over you set into motion a series of internal events that have to run their course.
Yes, but why push that particular domino? Speaking of mythology, I think the idea that if it's depressing it must be meaningful somehow, is mythology (I'd suspect it's a psychological defence, actually, developed over thousands of millenia). And one that's not specific to the middle class.
If there's already a reason formed for engaging the game or it's responding to something like a nars equivalent to gamisms gutsy daring ('Dare you to face off with the cold, grasping hand!'), fair enough, I get that. But drifting into an emotionally charged activity without a prior reason, atleast to me seems to be giving up guidance of oneself.
Callan, three things, all of them involving intellectual courtesy and rigor.
1. I know you're asking Chris, but I hope you can see that I answered that question regarding myself in my earlier reply to you. In a discussion of this sort, please acknowledge when someone has given you their time.
2. You're putting words into people's mouths: "if it's depressing it must be meaningful." No one said that. You can criticize it all you want and it won't mean a thing.
3. Since you've brought it up, evolutionary psychology (or to call it by its perfectly good name and better scholarly grounding, sociobiology) can serve us well here - but not in the speculative way you're using it. One of the core issues, and best studied in non-humans, is reciprocity. In an ultrasocial ape such as ourselves, reciprocity (and its modifiers, exploitation and deception) is affected by, and even serves as an environment for, every decision we make.
Which is to say, human decision-making (what people call our "selves") is nigh composed of decisions about whether to help honestly or to screw over, and whether to do so covertly or overtly. More basic decisions about mating and bodily survival (or in the case of Nicotine Girls, status improvement of whatever sort) are embedded so thoroughly in this social web that they cannot be considered in isolation. Economics is a primary and direct means of expression of this web. Like it or not, you and me and the nearest nicotine girl are connected.
The game, or the hand I mentioned, asks, What are you going to do about that? A perfectly valid answer is "nothing." I'm not saying the game is a guilt trip. One might not even find it depressing; I didn't (Chris' reaction is his own). The point you keep wondering about is to get that question onto the table in a dramatic context.
As for middle-class issues, I don't regard the term as foundational (i.e. at the level of primary causes), but it's our best term for how certain sociobiological decisions are constructed under specific economic circumstances. Its core feature is to combine extreme faith in social mobility with extreme blindness past a certain range of economic parity, and hence is, yes, distinctive from upper-class (gentry) and certainly from working-class constructions regarding those same decisions.
The key references for any deeper discussion about that are Timothy Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature, and Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems. A number of people who have no business publishing anything like to speculate foolishly about selective explanations about human actions, to the annoyance of those of us who actually research the topic, and I think our discussion here should stay grounded in the substantive material.
Best, Ron
Why play Nicotine Girls? Ron's given his reason; mine is somewhat different. It is the type of game that lends itself to a visceral experience. I enjoy that and will actively seek it out in my gaming. It's why I play games like Grey Ranks. There is no fantastical elements or special powers to get in the way of the emotional experience of the characters. In the one scene where I played Britney's mother, her pain and anger over losing her son was as real to me as any of my own personal losses.
I would like to add that I did not find our game depressing. There was some sadness and longing for the unrealized dream, but it was not an overwhelmingly dark story. And yes, there is also my own tenuous connection to the Nicotine Girl world where if I had been born in a different branch in my family, this would be me; which in turn lends itself to the illicit joy in recognizing these are not my stories.
Besides, it's one of those games that require zero preparation. That's always a plus for me!
Julie
Callan,
If I squint it looks like maybe you're asking the value of emo gaming porn? Not trying to be an ass and purposefully obfuscate your question, I'm just not sure what you're asking. If that is close to the mark though, I'll say that Nicotine Girls, as a game, isn't in that category in my mind. Whether you could play it that way, maybe, probably, I dunno as I haven't played it.
The subject matter of Nicotine Girls doesn't revel in itself. It's grounded quite solidly in hard reality. There's no room for the sort of posing (this isn't Vampire) to better be seen in an oh so tragic light that you'd find in something that could be labeled as an emo game. I'm sure someone could approach the game that way, but I'd be wondering just wtf is wrong with them.
My personal issues with the game aren't around "if it's depressing it must be meaningful". They're "this spot here is really raw and sore when I poke at it". Body, mind, or soul, that means that you might want to examine that area further and see if any healing salve needs to be applied. You have to know the extent of the wound before you can determine a healthy approach to healing it.
In many ways, psychologically and emotionally, I'm still connected to that teenage boy that I was and those teenage girls that were my friends. And the slow motion tragedies that were the lives of many of them. But that's my deal. As commentary and spotlight on class, gender and our society Nicotine Girls has a lot to recommend it.
What proportion of the roleplayers are predisposed to the asserted middle-class perspective? What number of them will benefit, in broadening and deepening of perception (and perhaps significant change in behavior), through play of Nicotine Girls? I have had a few transformative experiences in the course of gameplay over twenty-ish years, and have witnessed a couple, but they seem to be rare and not significantly informed by the design (deliberate or otherwise) of the game. I'll include my own background and AP for this, later, if it pertains and contributes to discussion.
I would really like play to facilitate not just evocative but transformative experiences, yet I feel strongly that it is play culture and not the games themselves that engender an increase in receptivity. Playing with the right people and the right frame of mind, I'd get more out of Nicotine Girls than Gummo (or Kids, or Nickled and Dimed for that matter), because play can easily be a more fundamentally active, creative process than a passive, consumptive one. But without significant personal chemistry, and/or plenty of previous experience with that sort of play, it would almost definitely be a trainwreck , because it is essentially antagonistic to a common cultural pretense among the people most likely to play it. How does design premise and execution contribute to play culture?
Hi,
It's a big piece of Forge-discussion based theory that play, and all the subjects and techniques within it, is a subset of the socializing among the group in question. I, at least, think that no specific topic or technique within play itself has the inherent ability to transform the people, going "upward and outward" if you will - unless the people themselves include that possibility, tacitly or openly, as part of the reason to play.
I've devoted a lot of the last decade finding ways to inspire people to do that. Again, it's not because my games have Rule X or Topic A, it's because I try to present the material in such a way that it prompts questions and with any luck the desire to prep and play with those questions afire. If that happens, then Rule X and Topic A, due to their unique properties, become fuel. But by themselves, tossed upon any old role-players with any old mess of various reasons to play among them, they're curiosities at best.
All this is to say, to your excellent question, that yes - it does "depend on the people." That doesn't mean those people have to know, or to state among themselves, that that's what they want. Nor does it mean that those people will do it anyway without the rules XYZ and the topics ABC. It only means that a group who plays with that degree of personal honesty and willingness to be enriched through play itself will find special value among the games that have them.
As I understand what he's said and written in the past, Paul only designs games for exactly those people.
Best, Ron
Ron, I thought we had some sort of quiet understanding that I've spent time reading and thinking about your posts - you wouldn't have posted about the time I've given to you in reading you carefully. But to be less monosybillic (zerosybillic? is that a word?), thanks for the responce and I'm sure you appreciate the thought I've put in too.
With #2, I said what I think about 'depressing is meaningful' and didn't attribute it to anybody - your putting a few in my mouth there, unless I'm mistaken. If no one sees a connection to it, it may be there isn't one.
QuoteThe game, or the hand I mentioned, asks, What are you going to do about that?
I don't see it asking anything? It's just there, rather like Everest is there and people are drawn to climb that. Nicotine girls reads to me more like a mountain than a game. Just something that's there - not an activity made by someone, it's...I dunno, a mountain. I don't mean that in a negative way (and to me it seems a compliment in a way). It's just that mountains aren't to be treated like it's a game. I think you've got to get your head straight about why your climbing a mountain before you start, even if it's "Fuck this, I'm doing it!". Is my approach making me miss something?
Also I have no professional background in what you call sociobiology, but what keeps drumming in my head is that for the greater part of our development we were in relatively small communities of perhaps a few hundred individuals or less. Someones empathy could have beneficial ripple effects in such a small pool. But that time strikes me as gone and that empathy as simply not enough in the large numbers involved now. Or more exactly, I don't have any faith in it as having any ongoing effect in itself. Perhaps if there are some scientific test results on the matter to look at, it might show otherwise. Without it, relying on empathy seems to be relying on something that worked in smaller communities. That's why I ask the reason for doing it to begin with, rather than just the passion.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply. I think I'm trying to sound what you see it as? So it sort of has the appearance of a wound? I'm not going anywhere specific in asking that, mostly just thinking about what you've said.
Hi,
Callan, that makes a lot of sense to me. It seems right along the lines of d.anderson's post, too. You start with mountain climbers. Although again, I stress that doesn't mean a bunch of people who say they are mountain climbers or even really know it. Role-playing groups tend to shake people out who are or are not mountain climbers, to leave a core group who are or are not. I think Chris' point is basically what happens when you are a mountain climber who either didn't know it, or who had been sticking to easy mountains.
You're absolutely right about human community size and the role of empathy. That's a big deal in Alexander's book, especially concerning deception and exploitation. My own example about that concerns advertising that promotes the image of a small village and even goes so far as to assure customers that the staff of a chain grocery store, for instance, is "family." I'll resist bringing this back around to what social class means in this context, simply because it'd be geeking out, but the core notion is that economic levels (roughly) may generate false communities and disrupt potential real ones, with "real" meaning, having the potential of actual mutual benefit.
Best, Ron
That's sort of funny, I've climbed some heap big actual mountains. When it comes to metaphorical mountains, feeling the compulsion to climb them often puts me in stubborn mode. An "I'll climb it when I damn well decided for myself that I'm going to climb it" attitude. Jumping off metaphorical cliffs is, as going down always is, much easier. It seems to usually result at being at the bottom of another mountain though. Go figure.
The idea of empathy becoming less effective, diluted, is disturbing. I assume it is partly because reciprocity breaks down to a large degree when dealing with total strangers? With the grocery store example, it's possible to form relationships with at least some of the staff of the store but it's impossible to have a relationship with the corporate entity that runs the store. As an individual, you might as well try and make friends with a bulldozer for all the good it will do you in affecting its course. Basically, the currency of interaction is no longer even close to having equal weight.
I know this is getting away from being directly about Nicotine Girls, but the instigation of these sorts of discussions seems to be a part of the purpose of it and similar games. At least from where I'm standing. If I'm helping things wander into off-topic territory though, just let me know.
I'm not certain Ron and Callan are discussing the same thing when they're talking about "empathy". I say that because I'm reading Callan's dismissal of the idea of empathy's usefulness, and his stated inability to grasp the point of play of NG that apparently ties into that, is "Empathy has no use any longer, so what's the use of playing a game to gain empathy for others?" I may be mistaken in that, so he's free to correct me.
My response to that sort of logic would be the point of developing empathy for a large external group is NOT in producing mutual benefit -- though I completely agree with what Alexander says about its use for deception in the marketplace (of either ideas, such as politics, or business) -- but of allowing personal communities to form when one encounters a member of that group within one's own potential community, so that rather than defaulting to usually mistaken cultural perceptions that include judgment, dismissal, disgust, or even a sort of insulting "paternal concern/caretaker", and so forth denying the ability to form an actual bond in beneficial circumstances, that bond can be created free-and-clear.
Thanks for the replies, everyone! I would make a comparison though, with the riddle of steels spiritual attributes. The TROS world is a nasty, brutish place and is hardly drawn entirely from fantasy. But at the same time getting more SA dice gives you an incredible advantage and a buffer against the nastyness. It might be compared to climbing a mountain with safety ropes and pitons, while nicotine girls is like climbing bare fingered. I'm not saying it and games like it have to have safety ropes and pitons, I'm just saying that when suggesting playing a game of it to anyone, it probably warrants mentioning the higher level of difficulty of bare finger climbing (if difficulty is anywhere near the right word for it). Probably, anyway.
Hey Julie,
A question. Did you ever use an NPC girl to give Smoke advice?
Jeff Zahari says he does when he runs Nicotine Girls. I haven't myself, and I'm not sure what I think about it.
What do you think?
And Joel, you just ran Nicotine Girls at GPNW. Did you use an NPC to give Smoke advice?
Paul
Hah, way to call me out, Paul!
I'm actually planning on posting a full AP thread of my own, but I can answer here too.
I had a little bit of that in the game, but not much. there was one scene where two Nicotine Girls were having a Smoke scene at their fast food job. I played an NPC coworker, and it became a group advice session, with me contributing "you could do this, or that" comments. In the end it was the other PC that gave the final advice, though. But i did have some official NPC advice in the climactic Smoke scene: the bitter old lady at the Vocational training center spurring the bright but cynical NG to do everything to get the fuck out of town before she ends up just like her.
Overall, the player characters were more than sufficient to take the initiative with advice. It wasn't that NPC advice was Not How to Do Things (I always got the impression, textually, that it was a real and prominent possibility), more that I just didn't have a lot of strong NPCs that were fit to have Smoke scenes with, and the players were really proactive about it.
Peace,
-Joel
Paul,
No, I didn't use an NPC girl to give Smoke advice. During play I was wondering if it would be necessary, but both Ron and Maura were quite willing to be in each others Smoke scenes. In a future game where a Smoke scene is called with a particular NPC, I may be tempted to pass off the NPC to another player to avoid giving advice that would have a mechanical effect on conflict resolution. Although in a one on one game there would be no option but to have the GM play out all Smoke scenes.
An interesting thought, although the rules state that there is no player vs. player conflict resolution, the Smoke scene between players could be manipulated in a way to give a disadvantage.
Julie