How do you coax individualist players out of a self-centered mindset...
mrlost:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 23, 2008, 09:02:53 AM
1. What habits or expectations of yours have played into the negative aspects of gaming so far, with this group of people? This is important because, assuming fun play for you in the future (somehow, with somebody, somewhere), it'd be a shame to see you recapitulating the same issues for no good reason. Bearing in mind as well, that sometimes the nicest, most peace-keeping member of a dysfunctional group often becomes skilled at facilitating those same negative dynamics without realizing it - after all, the primary skill for such a person is getting others to tolerate the current trouble-maker, right?
Well, I am confrontational (as well as blunt which I have trying to curb as of late) and I feel that most of the group isn't. I'd rather people express their problems rather than keeping them in, and simmering and most of the group have demonstrated its willingness to not confront problematic issues or negative habits for fear of offending the person committing them even when the action ruins their fun.
I have developed into an authoritative GM in that I hate having my spot rulings questioned during play. "Are you running the game? No? Then sit down and shut the book. I don't care what it says and I'm going to dock you XP for arguing the point." I am happy to discuss rules after the game or before the game but during the game I like things to proceed quickly and smoothly. When players doubt my calls it really pisses me off, especially when I routinely go to the trouble to memorize the rules and read the errata. This leads to yelling and bad feelings all around because for the most part my group is distinctly non-confrontational.
My other negative habit is my inability to refrain from prepping. I write dialog and catch phrases for each and every NPC, I work out their stats, and given time I find sound tracks to capture the mood that I'm trying to express for each scene. If I'm doing historical fantasy or modern occult I tend to do way too much research. When run Conspiracy X or Unknown Armies I frequent fringe conspiracy sites and comb through their mailing lists. Benefit of my aspergers syndrome, I suppose.
Quote from: Ron Edwards link
2. What's the real aim of role-playing for you, in the total absence of considering this particular group of people? Actually, let me turn that around ... it doesn't make so much sense to ask about it in the abstract, but how about, what game were you playing, and with whom, that was reliably and fully fun, both throughout a session and from session to session?
I love difficult choices that change the character. I love when things don't come easy. My favorite fiction involves this sort of stuff. My favorite characters are those that have to crawl bleeding through broken glass to strangle their hated nemesis. I hate railroading people into doing something that they wouldn't naturally decide to do, although I appreciate when they cooperate with me to create fun situations.
Quote from: Ron Edwards link
3. Are you the habitual GM/DM in the group? If not, who is? Did that person (you or otherwise) fulfill that same role back in the college days? In fact, what's the whole game-mastering history of this group? Was there someone else who started as such in the distant, original past who either left or stepped "down" at some point?
Yes. I started running games for these people when I was sixteen, and most of them were twenty something. Back then, I just ran the game but I wasn't in charge of scheduling or anything. One of the players has a lot of experience running online rpgs/MUDS but nobody else has run much more than the occasional short lived game. Most of the players aren't happy running games which is unfortunate.
Quote from: Ron Edwards link
3. Finally, I'm interested in the new guy. Has he played anything with the group of you yet? If so, what happened with his character and with him personally throughout the first session? If not, what kind of things have you and he talked about regarding play? Oh, and are you his primary contact with/into the group? If not, who is?
He's played Star Trek with us. I built all the characters for the game with integrated back stories in (a first), he came in late and so got stuck playing what was essentially an NPC ringer (body jumping alien parasite on the TOS starship). We haven't played with him much and the first character he has made for a game was a Republic naval captain for a Star Wars game. He's a big time history buff and loves the Napoleonic Wars as well as WWII (especially Rommel and Patton) and is working on a History-degree at the moment. He just got accepted to university and will be with us for perhaps three more weeks, I plan on visiting him since we've been friends since elementary school and I only recently got in touch with him for the first time in nearly a decade after loosing touch when he joined the Army.
mrlost:
Actually the group used to be evenly split between confrontational people and non-confrontational ones. Though at the moment one of them doesn't play with us anymore and the new guy is willing to take the path of least resistance so the majority of the players are now non-confrontational. Sorry. I don't know how helpful this is.
Ron Edwards:
I apologize for the delay in reply. I hope to finish my draft later today, and wanted to let you know I've been thinking about this thread a lot.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Hey guys,
Based partly on my own experience, I think I may be seeing a case of "whose story is it anyway" plus "be my fun, oh no, you're not doing it right." GMing in the way you're describing can be a rush, sometimes. It's your story, everyone says you GM the best stories, "the group" may perceive itself as a cut above other groups, and so on. I found it quite ego-gratifying until I realized that I was exhausted and that visible individual satisfaction during play was rarer and rarer, no matter what people said afterwards.
What did you think about my comments about collaboration and competition? My claim is that without the bedrock collaboration of sharing what we imagine (speaking and listening), then no play is possible, no matter what other goals are involved.
It's probably presumptuous, and I fully admit that I'm leaping over some steps of my chain of reasoning, but my advice is to start a whole new game, including only Redfox and the new guy, period. The three of you can hang out for a while, you can put out some games you'd like to play on the table, and everyone can leaf through them and hang out, and choose one. I just posted some extensive stuff about Color and Reward in [Sorcerer] Cascadiapunk post-mortem which is pretty relevant here.
I'm not saying the other folks are bad people or that you need to reject them as friends. You can do this without disrespecting everyone else, and if anyone does have a problem with it, that's enough signal that they want to exert a controlling interest over your fun - most especially the notion that you owe them their gaming. All of you can always reconvene at a later date anyway.
Redfox, thanks for joining in and I definitely have a question for you. Looking back at the games during college, what was one of your best and most enjoyable experiences then? What game was being played, what was your character like, how did people speak and play together, and anything else. That'll help me a lot, so my thoughts here won't fall into the trap of being only relevant to me.
Best, Ron
P.S. It's not required at the Forge, and if you don't want to it's OK, but please consider letting me know your real first names. I'm merely more comfortable talking to people that way.
mrlost:
I'm still digesting what was said over in the Cascadiapunk thread. I'm going to invite both Redfox and the new guy to play a few sessions of Greg Stolze's In Spaaace! with me because firstly its a very bare bones game that makes the GM into a player, and I think I might have fun with that. It was a ransom property that I donated $15 for, and now its free.
I'm quite relieved that the new player has decided to stay for the time being and delay entrance into university so my friend won't be leaving as next week as he'd previously planned.
Also both Redfox and the new player both like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and space opera so it might be a good fit.
Though I'm a big fan of privacy and leering of posting personal information on the internet, I'll go ahead and share that my name is Philip because as this line of reasoning goes a first name isn't much disclosure and really I probably shouldn't use the same handle on every forum I frequent both hobby and professional even if I do need a compass or a GPS to navigate.
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