[TSoY] I fought "The Party" and "The Party" won
Christopher Kubasik:
Joel,
Right call on stakes. I had to go back and review the rules. That's how they're written. My bad.
As for the "party" stuff, for me, I guess the best way to put it is that I'm "Party Agnostic." I don't think in terms of "party" anymore. The PCs might be hanging or not, but whether they are or aren't isn't a matter of "party."
When you wrote, "you can regard "the Party" as a red herring if you like..." Maybe. I don't know. I would look more at what you're seeing as passivity and such. Active play can occur whether or not the PCs are working alongside each other, so I don't think thinking in terms of party is going to help much.
The question are how can you help your players become more engaged in play. I'm just suggesting that the "party" issue might not be the symptom that needs to be addressed.
Joel P. Shempert:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on April 06, 2008, 03:59:54 PM
When you wrote, "you can regard "the Party" as a red herring if you like..." Maybe. I don't know. I would look more at what you're seeing as passivity and such. Active play can occur whether or not the PCs are working alongside each other, so I don't think thinking in terms of party is going to help much.
The question are how can you help your players become more engaged in play. I'm just suggesting that the "party" issue might not be the symptom that needs to be addressed.
Yeah, my above post is me musing and coming to the conclusion that it's not "the party" as such that's bugging me. So I think we're mostly in agreement. I think what I'm talking about is actually a set of behaviors that in my experience tend to accompany party play but aren't intrinsic to it. Not sure if there's any causation buried in that correlation. But it's those behaviors (most notably failure to engage with the other PCs) that stick in my craw.
Do you have any observations from the passivity/non-engagement incidents I've described?
Peace,
-Joel
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Joel,
Most of my experience the last two years has been Players actively engaging. There has been one time (rare) when I was at a table and realized I was outnumbered and the Players just wanted a lot of fun color. I threw myself into making fun color and we all had fun. (One can do that.)
And then there was one particular case that leaps to mind about one player.
A young man who arrived at at PtA game carrying an Order of the Stick compilation he had just bought at the dealer's room. He had never played PtA before and had only played versions of D&D.
In the opening scenes he was pretty disengaged, and really just wanted to grab on to some goofing around story stuff (we had set up a CSI in the middle ages show, but he wanted to play pranks on the other Player's character rather than get around to the murder). It struck me all as pretty "protective" behavior -- staking out a bunch of turf that was his that also couldn't get him in trouble.
I did two things:
First, I stopped the game. I said, "Okay, hang on. We just spent the last hour creating the setting for this TV show, and I know you're not used to playing this way. But I'm going to ask that you give it a try. Here's a bunch of words that we've come up with in that brainstorming session..." and I listed a bunch of words, many of them out of his own mouth. "For the next couple of hours let's stay focused on those concepts."
I want to point out that while I don't know how that's going to read on the page, the tone was warm and excited in that 12-year-old boy way I get when I'm excited about something.
The second thing was that he has created a girlfriend for his character. HE did that. So I put the relationship with the girlfriend in danger. His PC's issues was "Obsessive Genius" so, I had the girlfriend show up when he was working on his inventions or the murder investigation -- and the the scenes were about whether or not he could tear himself away from his obsessions to deal with her. He was shy kid (I'm saying "kid" but he must have been 19-12), and I'm guessing dating and girls were still big issues for him. So he REALLY got engaged on this issue.
Also, he really wanted to go the mechanical genius route, so I gave him scenes where he had to do his work under pressure from political figures who didn't wan him to do his work.
The game worked out great. He stopped reading his book, only paid attention to what was happening at the table, and at the end of the session (it was midnight) looked at the table sadly and said, "I wish we could keep playing. I really want to know how this all ends."
So, that's really the key for me. I try to rummage around and dig out things for the character sheets that I'm pretty sure the Players are interested in. And then I address those things. What's established SOCIALLY is more important than what I arrive with alone, if that makes any sense. And it seems to be working out pretty well.
CK
elegua:
I played Duval in that game and had some observations.
It was a convention game with players who were unfamiliar with the game and each other. I think this was what hung things up the most.
Zach and I worked because I designed by character to have several possible hooks for interactive tension and Zach (being the most experienced story gamer of the players) latched on quickly to them. His character was designed from the beginning to take advantage of what I had created and expand on it greatly. Even though I had a good time, I will admit I wasn't on my game as much as I would have liked and missed some great opportunities to escalate even further.
Petrea's character was the next best fit for intrinsic plot hooks, but nobody at the table really understood what she wanted. It seemed pretty clear from my seat that she wasn't comfortable creating her own story in the game. I don't think she was familiar enough with the style of game. I could speculate all sorts of reasons for this. My take is that learning to encourage folks like this to be more active in creating a dynamic character should be a focus of the community, particularly those who are trying to initiate new members.
Neither of the elf characters seemed to be integrated with the setting at all. Neither of them had links to what was going on locally or any strong feelings about what to do about it. Not only that, but their general character motivations were completely opposite. This had opportunity for conflict, but Brandon was indulged in his bloodlust and Willem didn't find any sort of groove of interactivity, which is all the more important when you have 3-4 hours to do a complete story arc. This is probably most closely related to Joel's lack of engagement at 9am after short sleep as he just rolled with everything that was happening in character creation and didn't try to get players to build up those ties. I think this is what would have improved this particular session the most.
Given that view, it probably would have been better if Zach and I hadn't clung to each other considering we were the two players most interested in engaging others. Of course, we had no way of knowing this in advance and by the time it became apparent there were problems, it was too late.
elegua:
Oh, and this isn't to talk down Willem at all. I played with him several times over the weekend as well and had a blast. This game just didn't connect.
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