[D&D 3.5] "I don't play for endings" (way too long)
Callan S.:
So, there's Daniel, Chris and Bourke. Chris and Daniel are old friends, Bourke is from Chris's work. Chris is GM. Were all around age thirty mark. Characters are level 3 in this game. I have trouble remembering the session - I even think during it 'I know I'm not going to remember this for latter'. It's kind of how play and out of game topics start to blend into each other alot. Also after sitting down at the play table, pre game chatter and GM screen placements take long enough that I've finished my first beer. Oh, I think around this time we poked fun at old D&D giving xp for gold. Then I mention a Dave Arneston rule I heard about, where you get XP for gold spent on what your character cares about. Daniel says cool in a genuinely appreciative way, but then Chris goes 'Oh, but you'd have to have those things defined in advance'. I think I said no and said it wouldn't be like buying +5 swords. Then he started saying oh yeah, but you could buy chickens with it then make money off that and so on. For fucks sake - It's all 'players cannot be in control for a goddamn second, their always out to betray the game' (betray their own fun as well, apparently).
Last game I wasn't there and some powerful wizard name Yaztromo (yes, I know) had sent 'us' to go kill a hag for the greater good. Daniel says we head straight there but Chris says it'd be easier to head through town then go there. I was about to write here how odd that is, but it clicks now that the encounter we have after leaving town was part of that (why it would matter to have us run into the encounter instead of making it run into us? Dunno). At the time I was thinking 'You know, if heading there through town is an option, why are you telling us it's the best?'
It's a group of hill goblins! Their formation gets spread out and its sort of hinted they are in oblivious mode. Can anyone speak goblin? Well, I can and their going to town to beat them up, with orders just to attack humans - but that orders just there so they don't fight with the other groups heading to town. Side chatter: Chris described the enemy coming but that we can duck down, to which Daniel takes the piss on that a bit by our cart ducks down as well - I add in some stuff about a cart that's like one of those pimped up suspension cars (yeah, I add to this side chatter - when it's one of the main thing, what else do you do). Bourke suggests running in and distracting. Then we sort of ditch that since then they wont be flat footed and my ninja (yes, I know), wont get sudden strike. Anyway, I'm weighing up whether to fight the big guy at the back or one of the smaller ones when Daniel moves my figure behind the big one (combat hasn't started yet, it's still set up). Since I was in two minds I let it stay there, but on reflection now I'm thinking I didn't percieve the shepherding that was intended.
Okay, fight starts - I miss my big opening attack. The ninja has turned out to be pretty weak sauce the last few games - he can only get sudden strike bonus damage when their flat footed, and can't get that from flanking (nerfed rogue backstab, basically). Daniel sleep spells a bunch and Bourke wanders in and smashes some. At some point here Daniels brother, Matt, arrives. And since we left his character with the cart - apparently he wont be included the battle. So he sits eating a kebab during the rest of the time it takes to run this battle. Latter the big guy is sort of retreating/stepping away and I say 'Oh, towards the cart!' hopefully - it'd seem to fit. No, I'm quite wrong, Chris and Dan emphasize that the cart is definately the other way. Why put effort into emphasizing something that adds absolutely nothing?
I think I ended up doing 13 and 14 damage, in the end, due to beating his initiative and using my once per day vanish ability. Okay in the end, I suppose - but the number of misses just seems to stack up. In one of the side chatters Bourke brought up rogues in warcraft and I added how their stun lock methods basically mean your not playing the game for the next 20 seconds or so. Missing attacks are the same - you've chosen to do an activity rather than sit idle - then the activity makes you sit idle. Well, you roll but it adds as much as if you had elected to pass on your turn. Oh, and the big guy turned around and took 90% of my hitpoints in one hit. Meanwhile Dan kills two goblins in one spellcast of magic missile.
Anyway, this big guy heals himself. And I'm sitting there thinking how this is one of the most pointless powers ever - unless he has an escape path, it's not going to do anything but make it take longer to kill him. Bourkes on him now and I withdraw and shoot some arrows. Yes, he dies...eventually.
So, we wrap up. Daniel decides to search the bodies for gold and gets about fifty. I think we go back to town - Chris hints we should go to a druid friend to get heals and I say I thought she was way out of town. No, apparently. Again if it's an option, why are you telling us it's the best? We go there and she heals us and I don't hear this properly, but Daniel goes and spends all the money he found on buying healing potions from her. About this time I've realised that A: D&D is gear-centric, B: My ninja could do with some magic clothing to give armour and C: I have four silver to my name (everyone else has a few hundred gold). So I'm a bit changrined over it not being split. But latter in the session I find it doesn't matter - Chris doesn't like you just being able to buy magic armour, including the stuff under two thousand gold which your supposed to be able to buy. For fucks sake. So I'm going to sit behind everyone else until I'm such a charity case I'm given magic cloth.
We get attacked by hill goblins at some point, then in the night by fat demons things. Can't remember the fight much - there wasn't much to it, except the demons explode acid on death and my +6 reflex of course failed and I got chewed up by that. OH, and I think it was here we got an invocation of 'the golden rule'. My initiative apparently equaled the goblins, so we attacked 'simultanously'. In other words, when I actually killed one, instead of feeling the reward of a threat removed, he gets one more attack on me. That annoyed me too - even that petty sense of satisfaction from getting rid of another monster, just fucked with. The rules don't work that way and...did I say that? Can't remember, but Chris announced he can do that because of the golden rule. These words, these fucking words are like the tip of an iceberg. You could engage the words, but that's missing the real bulk that lies under the murky water - and that stuff will rip your hull open if you run into it. The first thing I think of is asking 'Well, who decides when that rule is used' so as to point out there's a rule above the golden rule and that it's just the GM who decides it. But I think that wont hit the mark. Then I think to say 'Well, only if I agreed you can use the golden rule to begin with'. Then I think that's conflicting to say. Then I say nothing - yay, Callan, you add to the murk by leaving the impression you agreed to the golden rule! Well done, Cal! But what am I supposed to do, I say to my own sarcasm - it's a fucking iceberg! I have micro seconds to respond and a behemoth to dismantle. I didn't consent! I lacked the skill to deal with it!! But my sarcasm says 'And how are you going to explain that to anyone when it comes down to it? You don't have the skill to describe that! And since you don't, and since they think you consented, just accept it. If you can't make a case your just the same as someone who is weaseling out of somthing they agreed to'.
Enough self pitying crap. We encounter a floating eyeball thing latter that observes us. After awhile I suggest talking to it, but Matt and Dan remind me it's just an eyeball, it doesn't have a mouth! Their very certain. I note how that doesn't need to matter in this world, but meh. Anyway, they sling spears and spells at it when it follows us. It runs away, but comes back latter - can't remember what happened in between. Chris takes Matt to the kitchen to talk and when Matt comes back he suggests we talk to it. Oh, really? We do and it speaks telepathically (god, as if lacking a mouth is a barrier in a magic world). Reflecting on it now, there's no brief 'Oh, you were right, Cal'. All too ready to assert their right, but no recognition when their wrong.
The eyeball offers us a proposition from the big bad guy (BBG). He wants us to join his side, with all sorts of offerings made. Bourkes character is neutral evil and is interested straight away. Again here alot of stuff happens that's hard to remember. Basically Daniel and (I think) Matt are going to go over to the BBG. I ask, as my character, why they are accepting a master - we had no master before. But it seems to be some diabolical Dan plan to screw the BBG over for his stuff. Really there is no big question, it's just more micro managing in a game set up where you can't lose anyway. I thought some question of real allegence had come up, but it got taken as just another thing to do petty manouvering over. I say petty, because when your not going to lose or win, what the hell are you trying to avoid or gain? In the past such manouvering might have made me think you could win - now I just don't care either way. Someone can come and explicitly tell me the stakes if they really care about winning, none of this inferred shit.
Anyway, I think the debate goes on for a bit - it's almost interesting but now I can see its undercut by 'clever manouvering plans'. God, I'm gamist inclined and yet I'm giving shit to clever manouvering? But as said, it's all ass without win/lose. Eventually we go with it, which involves meeting the hag we were going to kill. She's on some mountain with about 500 bug bears. Hmm, and if we had declined the BBG's offer - hardly an option, really. So we go up and...it's more GM stalling, as we get nothing from her but some info guys she hates that we can kill for treasure. And we get one bug bear scout when we were offered minions - and he dies in the first round of combat latter, Bourke saying what everyone knew, that that he'd die that quick. So in yet another way there's no big question, because the GM is only offering breadcrumbs to string out play - there's no change in dynamic, we may as well have been sent by Yaztromo to beat these guys and get exactly the same stuff.
We go to them, they are slavers. We pretend to be friendly at first. Bourke shows his evil side and whips a elf chick chained to the wall. I try to bluff a guard into watching then sap him, collapsing him into the alcove where the others wont notice, but my rolls fail at the sap of course. Everyone else was just talking at the time. Standard fight breaks out, some fiddleyness with getting around monster reach, but then it finishes. We take their gold and stuff - at this point I decide to gather some gold just for myself. I get 250. I get a look from Dan. I just make my move, just as much as his move wasn't to split the gold before. That is manouvering. So they tally up the rest, and I expect to be kept out of it and probably miss out on more - I dunno, maybe they forget and I get an even split, taking me to about 1500 gold in total. It was about this time that I asked for the GM book, Chris asks why, I say I want to look at the magic items you can buy and he drops that I can't be buying the low level magic armour. For fucks stake. About the only reward cycle I was looking ahead to and it's neutered.
Oh, and there's this last bit where Dan and Bourke are saying they are the leaders of the party to each other in a hur hur way. Okay, whatever, I'll plan around that. Then Dan goes 'Especially with Callans rolling problems tonight'. It's like, goes completely out from their PC's being in charge to our own social hierarchy and who's in charge of that. "I thought you were talking about your characters", I say. He says something I can't remember, and I repeat my line. You know, when I thought there was actually a difficulty involved, just during the game session I would pay that to someone who had done better - they get to stand on the higher part of the winners podium, so to speak. But this isn't the same - it's like the power play against the BBG, but here it's a power play in our social hierachy in order to consolidate power to...fucking what? Ah, found it. This is like I see in my sons school playground, where they supposedly play games with each other but it's a thin pretense for social position jockeying. Man, that's why I avoided sports in school - I couldn't articulate it back then, but I could sense what was really on the line. Is this what drives this petty manouvering when there is no win or lose in their game? You know, I'm pretty sure I can find the words which will shank this, while not leaving a ripple at the social politeness level. Or I'll just not play those games. Either's good.
That's the end of that game. Poor Bourke though - Chris brought up that he wanted to run a game of star wars. I say poor Bourke, because while my friends games slip through the net, I don't really know him and I'm not actually as willing as I seem to jump into any old game, so I asked questions about what'd it be like. You know, actually finding out whether something will be fun before jumping in. He went through some responces that made me feel I was at RPG.net, like saying "You wont die...unless you do something stupid". I couldn't help but say "If someone does something, they do it cause they think it's good". He was confused, as gamers seem to be, with me asking about roughly how it would end. I'm getting this revelation now, that gamers just don't 'get' an ending, even though every fucking medium they are exposed to, every book, movie, show, comic, has a fucking ending. Chris at one point said 'I don't play for endings'. WTF? It's yet another iceburg, but this time it doesn't matter to me because I'm asking about what I find fun. Anyway, eventually Bourke articulates a surprising clear case for participationism, where I'd been asking about the end and whether you can change it, he said 'Well, as characters in the heat of the moment you might think it'll change the ending, but you can't be sure' and 'I'll seem important, but it might not change the end that much'. Okay, participationism! You can socialise over coffee, beer, or participationism. Okay, I get that! Though I asked how damn serious it was going to be taken - I said I didn't want to be thinking on each move like it's chess, when the ending wont change anyway. I think he got me on that, which is good mutual ground.
Wow, what a long post of trivial details. See why I don't give AP accounts often - they're boring to write up! I haven't got any questions, maybe I'll think of some latter.
Callan S.:
Quote
'I'll seem important, but it might not change the end that much'
That should read
'It'll seem important, but it might not change the end that much'
Also I think I got what confused me about that 'leaders of the party' thing. It's part of the phenomina that happens when rules don't actually resolve issues, so it falls to raw social contract to deal with it, usually via rank pulling. This is an extension of that - just like the manipulation of the BBG is part of 'winning', so is manipulation of the raw social contract/social hierarchy in order to achieve something. But of course that manipulation, if it works, results in real shifts in social position - just for a game. Jeez, over a hot woman or a country, you'd expect it there...but a game? I'm going to consider it a bad habit that's a result of non resolving rules - doesn't mean I'll put up with it any more than if it were completely deliberate/desired, though.
Ron Edwards:
Blink. You call that a non-engaging play account? Callan, it's a gold mine. The terrible thing is trying to come up with insightful responses, when you provided so many of them.
The thing I like best is that you're not posting merely to bitch and rip on your friends. You're talking about how (a) you were able to dope out what they wanted, and (b) how they in fact did a number of things that were counter to what they wanted, or related to it in an interesting way.
You've read my and others' posts about Exalted, right? This is exactly the same stuff. The GM "has a story" which is allegedly pretty damned brilliant, even if it's mostly composed of visiting places and seeing yet another "thing" in each one (a hag? cool. a high mountain? cool. goblin bandits? cool. a donkey? cool?). I think you posted about that before, something about griffins and other monsters just sort of nestled in prep-space for the player-characters to see, one after the other. Meanwhile, the players are engaged in a sort of trivial semi-Gamism, which as you say becomes more about minor I-shoved-you rights, based on meaningless crap like dice outcomes (especially with a high Whiff Factor), rather than any kind of actual or consequential challenge. Each unit of such play is effectively independent and bobs, inconsequentially, on the sea of the aforementioned "story." However, everyone pretends it's real Gamism and that that's the point of play; to do this, their prioritized moments and minor rewards become more and more juvenile.
The combat's really the giveaway: you guys have fights in order to ... um, well, because you're supposed to have fights. Losing hit points is exciting, right? But you know you can grind down the foes' points eventually, and you know you aren't going to get killed by anyone or anything.
Here's the weird thing to me: if Participationism is the desired process, why bother with all that silly low-level competitive noise? Why keep pushing the buttons which, in a lot of D&D play, do a fine job of prompting intra-party conflict and thus provide a valuable nuance to the genuine Gamism? (example: my guy is evil so he whips the elf chick; who's gonna try to stop me, and how is that gonna affect our team tactics in the next fight or the treasure-divvying after it?) Whereas here, it's merely distracting, at most the opportunity to grin 'round the table about being sooo evil.
Why bother to take the guy into the kitchen? Clearly it's all about how the BBG is getting Matt's character on his side for the Secret Party Betrayal Character Story (tm). So your desire to talk to it has to get shut down - the plan is for you all to talk to it, but not until Matt gets to in private, so anything you say about talking to it before that can't be permitted to enter the SIS. But again, why bother? Can't we ... you know ... participate in the "Matt's gonna betray us!" storyline?
Again, this isn't about ripping on people for being stupid role-players, it's about looking at a true mental tangle. It's about keeping the trappings of Gamism without any of its guts. It's about wanting a "story" and being willing to step all over people's actual engagement in play in order to promote yet another repetition of a boring, hackneyed, well-known, and predictable semi-story. It's about constantly looking up the rules and yet maintaining a weird social space in which disallowing various rules is a particular person's purview. The question is why any of this stuff is perceived as how we do things, and why it continues to be done, repetitively. I am convinced it has everything to do with the same fallacies that govern gambling: Whoa! This time, it was almost fun! OK, OK, here it comes, I'll try it again, just like last time .... damn! Almost fun, again! Well, I'm not giving up. I'm all about fun. Here we go, here it comes, gonna get ready, OK, OK, almost there ...
One last thing: geez, that ninja really blows. Is it really that bad a rules combo? Or were you pretty much just screwed by the whiff?
One really last thing: you know that play of this kind almost always requires a butt person at the table, right? As in, the butt of the joke?
Best, Ron
Joel P. Shempert:
A-Fucking-Men, Ron. Callan, this shit is hot.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 20, 2008, 11:14:52 AM
The GM "has a story" which is allegedly pretty damned brilliant, even if it's mostly composed of visiting places and seeing yet another "thing" in each one (a hag? cool. a high mountain? cool. goblin bandits? cool. a donkey? cool?). I think you posted about that before, something about griffins and other monsters just sort of nestled in prep-space for the player-characters to see, one after the other. Meanwhile, the players are engaged in a sort of trivial semi-Gamism, which as you say becomes more about minor I-shoved-you rights, based on meaningless crap like dice outcomes (especially with a high Whiff Factor), rather than any kind of actual or consequential challenge. Each unit of such play is effectively independent and bobs, inconsequentially, on the sea of the aforementioned "story." However, everyone pretends it's real Gamism and that that's the point of play; to do this, their prioritized moments and minor rewards become more and more juvenile.
Wow. This is a fucking dead-on description of the main campaign I was referencing over in the Mother-May-I thread (the first example).That's pretty much all we've been doing, week after week (at least we rotate to other, more engaging campaigns), with sometimes a fight, sometimes not. We're recruited by a secret society as Chosen Ones to stop The End of All That Is (someday), the city HQ is attacked, we retreat to a floating sky island (cool!) HQ, it passes over a dungeon of way ancient ruins (cool!) so we go explore it at GM direction, we touch an artifact that sends us to the Plane of Order (cool!), whose denizens send us to Earth, but it's waaay back in time at the Golden Age of Magic (cool!) where we visit a town and find the proprietor of the Magic Shop is a bound Devil (cool!) who we free and he starts sending us to dungeons and making us magic items, until we meet up with the Secret Society, thriving even way back when (cool!) who make preparations to send us back to our time (cool!), where. . .
Whew. That's pretty much all of play. Any attempt to go off the rails (me: "I wanna lead a rebellion against the Red Wizards of Thay!" Secret society: "Nope, the ENd of the World is more important and [ostensibly] urgent.") is rebuffed. Another player has some secret plan cooking that the GM appears from all the little notes and rolls and secret meetings to be colluding with, which the GM bemoans (but appreciatively) for screwing up major stuff, but we'll see if it really [ichanges[/i] anything. And that could run into social position issues, too--that guy gets to have a cool plan or side quest, but you don't. I dunno.
Looking at encounters through this lens, I definitely see the pattern hold up. Some of them are herding mechanisms (like the dragon attacking HQ to make us retreat, or the halfling caravan that led us to the town where we met the devil), but many are there just to go "ooh, ahh" at, like the sleeping Hydra in the Dungeon, who we just avoided, closed the door quietly and moved on (me: we've explored the rest of the area, let's figure out how to kill the Hydra to see what's beyond!" everyone else: "Are you CRAZY? We can't fight that thing!"), or the Dwarven Good Lich in the Dwarf ruins, who was just hanging out there for us to see "oh, a good Lich! cool!" and talk to and move on, after seeing him transcend to the afterlife. I've been starting to see the game for what it is over time, but Ron, your paragraph there illuminates it so eloquently and succinctly, there's not a doubt in my mind.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 20, 2008, 11:14:52 AM
Here's the weird thing to me: if Participationism is the desired process, why bother with all that silly low-level competitive noise? Why keep pushing the buttons which, in a lot of D&D play, do a fine job of prompting intra-party conflict and thus provide a valuable nuance to the genuine Gamism? (example: my guy is evil so he whips the elf chick; who's gonna try to stop me, and how is that gonna affect our team tactics in the next fight or the treasure-divvying after it?) Whereas here, it's merely distracting, at most the opportunity to grin 'round the table about being sooo evil.
I can only think that it's because people don't know any other way to do it or think about it. I've been observing this for years in my group, and I'm pretty sure nobody actually wants to not have fun, but I think there's an assumption buried in the group tangle of understanding, that there just are mutually defeating elements to the activity of roleplaying, which are just sort of an interference you overcome to play. Sure, people might be frustrated by that interference at times, but wishing you could get what you want without the friction is like wishing you could eat without taking a shit, or get where you're going without walking or driving, or being in shape without exercising. Something like that, anyway.
Like, in the case of my group's constant "is he passing by me so I can talk to him yet?" I don't think anyone thinks that they can say "I talk to the guy as he passes" without vetting it through the GM--maybe the GM has something else set to happen before he passes. Maybe something'll happen and he won't ever pass by that spot. Maybe. . .etc etc etc. After all, "the GM runs the world," right? It's just. . .something you either make work for you, or at least work around or through to have your fun. Like a monarchy, your best hope is to get a kind king, or to curry favor/avoid displeasure. Not have a king? Huh? Whatever do you mean? Who'll issue decrees and live off our largess and stuff?
When I tried to decentralize Authority a bit in my Over the Edge game, I started with tweaking the scene framing, asking players what scenes they'd like to have next. When I got to one character, she started listing off all the NPCs she wanted to meet with, and I said, "OK, which one would you most like to do first?" SHe looked at me in blank confusion and said, "But. . .I don't know, you're the GM, I don't know what you're doing with the NPCs or if they're available, I can't decide that. . ." And it's not like she lacks the skill; she GMs several games herself and is confident and adept at it. She just didn't seem to even have the idea in her head that anyone but a GM could frame scenes with NPCs.
Callan,
I'm trying to find a quote to pull from your post to encapsulate what I took away from it, but I can't. That's because it drips from every damn word. What you describe in terms of social reinforcement, power structures, and pointless petty maneuvering in play is more concentrated and, I dunno, solidified than in my game, but for all that it looks like a mirror of my group. You've identified the underlying factors quite well and clearly. I especially like the playground sports analogy.
A couple of bits that stood out to me:
Quote from: Callan S. on January 19, 2008, 04:31:06 PM
So in yet another way there's no big question, because the GM is only offering breadcrumbs to string out play - there's no change in dynamic, we may as well have been sent by Yaztromo to beat these guys and get exactly the same stuff.
This is very reminiscent of the campaign I'm talking about. I'm struck by just how much effort on the participants' part is required for anything to happen.
Quote from: Callan S. on January 19, 2008, 04:31:06 PM
Is this what drives this petty manouvering when there is no win or lose in their game? You know, I'm pretty sure I can find the words which will shank this, while not leaving a ripple at the social politeness level. Or I'll just not play those games. Either's good.
This intrigues me on a very practical level. What sorts of things do you imagine you'll say to "shank" the petty playground maneuvering without making a scene? 'Cause I certainly haven't figured that one out. . .your little sarcastic dialogue with yourself as the opportunity to speak up passes you by is a frequent and familiar one. Anyway, the stuff you did say sounded right on the money, and the "who decides when the rule is used?" question you considered seems like a good one, much less confrontational then the secnd option. What else would you say in a game like this to avoid or defuse the social-jockeying thing?
In any case, thanks for this thread. Your thorough and meticulous report has immense emotional, and I hope practical, value to me. If it wasn't so long I'd almost wish it was a post in my own thread. :)
Peace,
-Joel
David B. Goode:
Callan,
That sounds so freaking frustrating. Sadly, I know in my gaming life I've both been one of those GMs whose word is law and who has his players on the tracks - and pretty much the same tracks over and over.
It was how my first GM ran his games, and honestly just the way I thought rpgs were supposed to be. I began to become aware of the problem
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