AMMF?
Alexander Julian:
Hi all
I’m interested in a similar style of play to John maybe so I thought I’d share my thoughts.
I think Raven’s overview has a lot of merits but in my experience it absolutely was the system that was the primary factor in the spiral into Sueness.
When I first started role-playing I wanted to be a badass action hero (still do really) but then I started play using Warhammer and find that 78% of the time I swing my sword I hit thin air, I mean I completely miss my opponent. So I get frustrated because I’m not being bad ass. Then I describe my bad ass doing some wicked cool stunt and the GM decides that’s my intent and re-describes the actual stunt as Effect. So he’s stealing my thunder and I become more frustrated. Then I come up with some badass way of dealing with a problem, but it doesn’t work because the GM already knows what the solution is and we go through the whole combination lock routine of trying various things until we hit upon the ‘right’ solution. Also Raven hit it dead on with the whole go down, resurrected by Cleric, damaged by Vulture thing.
So my response is to start hitting the nail of badass harder to actually be a badass because the GM and the system won’t let me. Then suddenly we’re in fantasy as Special forces operations land. I’d begin to find myself playing up and getting really annoyed over loosing because I’d not yet really had a chance to win. Being passive aggressive is a big problem of mine and so my acting up tended to be playing like a jerk bad ass instead of a hero bad ass.
Now in the play that John’s described it seems that some of the task resolution combat roles are too much in the tactical wargame department to provide consistent cinematic badassery. This could be my preference blinding me though and another big factor is how much real world play time is taken up by combat and how important it is. In my last campaign for example the protagonist killed 300 orcs single handily protecting a village. It took us about 2 and a half hours game time to play out but it was really fun. During this time several shops exploded, he went over a waterfall, destroyed a bridge, all sorts of things.
My single biggest annoyance as a PC was never being able to do that type of stuff until the forge theory forums allowed me to get what I want out of play. So yeah in that case the system mattered quite a lot. It allowed us to get to the same aesthetic understanding because the system became our tool instead of us being slaves to it.
John Adams:
So, to sum up, AMMF ...
... is in fact, A Thing.
... is a valid and worthwhile reason for role-playing. (Filip)
... pretty much describes classical sword & sorcery (Eero)
... is just Mary Sue wrt roleplaying, but that's in the eye of the beholder (greyorm)
... allows for setbacks, but setbacks just make PCs more badass
... PCs are big softies, not just stone cold killers. They need something to motivate them or there's no play. (Ron)
... is going to be the focus of Barbaren, which I really need to get ASAP! (Eero)
Ron Edwards:
Hi John,
Actually, I think you're blending two different points together in a way which overlooks problems.
The AMMF in classic pulp sword-and-sorcery, tough-guy film, and superhero comics is not actually an AMMF. He is eminently touchable, rather than untouchable; he seeks human contact and connection feverishly although tacitly or under the cover of denials, rather than avoiding it. Despite all the yipyap about "anti-heroes," he is in fact a hero, merely a rather unwashed and superficially iconoclastic one.
The AMMF as a role-playing goal is very different and represents the literally adolescent inability to understand any of the characters in those stories. The insecure, frustrated, and probably inhibited adolescent can only see two things: these characters repay disrespect or torment with savage retribution, and no one ever questions the fact that they are manly men. To that adolescent, this seems like heaven on earth. AMMF play is the way to try to experience a state that the person attributes to the fictional character, but which is not found in that character at all. (This translation often occurs in texts as well, as the character becomes an icon rather than a figure in a given story. I particularly call attention to the character of John Rambo in First Blood, as opposed to the Rambo franchise icon. That's the AMMF transition in a nutshell.)
All this is to say that Eero's point was incorrect. One cannot glibly replace "adolescent" with "primal," and "masturbatory" with "focused" and say, hey, that's just like classical sword-and-sorcery. Those aren't synonyms. If you replace the terms like that, then you don't get AMMF any more. You get Conan, Wolverine, et cetera, with the features of internalized softness and responsibility which are the real strengths of the textual characters - and that's anathema to AMMF goals.
None of this is a judgment, by the way. Should people care to play with AMMF as their goal, I suppose they could, but the fundamental contradiction I pointed out in my earlier post will act as a halter and a source of frustration at all times. As your own play-experience testifies, system or no system. I also think you've summarized that point incorrectly in your latest post - I am not saying, "Gee, if you provide the right motivation, the AMMF player will be happy." I'm saying that the AMMF player is absolutely uninterested in playing with such motivations at all.
Best, Ron
John Adams:
Ron, we're talking past each other a bit, so let me clarify my position.
None of my players qualify as one of your "Wolverine" players, and though I have heard about and can imagine them, I don't think I've played for any length of time with such a player. My players accept failure as long as there is no Force behind it.
We agree there are two different phenomena here, seperated by whether or not the player will EVER accept defeat. Would you call it Sword & Sorcery if the players accept defeat and AMMF if they don't? I see that distinction, but I would simply dismiss the case where players reject any kind of failure as clearly non-functional play. So let me draw up another distinction.
I'm imagining a Sim RPG where the driving goal of play is to make your PC look really badass. This is not the same as a Sim game where the goal is to celebrate the Conan material! So even if John Rambo (in First Blood) is a fairly deep, meaningful character and in the following movies he's a characature, that depth of character is beside the point. We need failure to make the game functional but not for any thematic reasons.
Now I would still consider such play pure wish-fullfilment. We don't watch "Predetor" or "Die Hard" or anything we'd call an action movie because of the emotional themes; we watch because we want to identify with this mythic badass character and see him be a badass. And it's much more interesting when he gets his head kicked in first then comes back to win. So it's still wish fullfillment and I'd still call it AMMF. For me Sword & Sorcery would fit either the Sim game celebrating Conan or the Nar game set in that genre.
Ron Edwards:
Hey,
Sorry - I got slammed with stuff outside the screen. I'll reply later.
Best, Ron
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page