How do you coax individualist players out of a self-centered mindset...
mrlost:
Well first let me thank you for moving the thread to an appropriate forum, and for the response.
My current group has been playing together for several years. They often joke that they'd play every day if they could. But I have felt that the group has been dysfunctional for quite some time. Some of the hobby experiences I've had with them before I moved away have been compared to the Ab3 stories by other friends thankfully the worst offenders no longer play with us. I can see from the criteria posted above that one or more members have difficulty meeting item number two of the three.
One player certainly isn't happy trying new things, he's stopped playing with anyone since we are pretty much the only group he knows of in the area. The married couple are committed to gaming but have problem with trying to play games they might have had a bad experience with in the past. Actually every one of the players in the group has this problem to a varying degree. Trying something once was enough for many of them. We've got a newbie that recently joined. He's an old friend from way back, recently back from the military and interested in gaming.
Eero Tuovinen:
Don't let me confuse the dialogue - focus on what Ron is saying, he's going somewhere with this. I'll just put in a small practical angle that might or might not be fruitful for you:
I've found that starting from the beginning and starting small is a good idea to get the basic relationships untangled. You might consider playing something with much less weight and texture than the average traditional game or Burning Wheel. Something that gives you some concrete payoff in the first session, during the first hour of play, and hopefully allows everybody to basically see that it's possible to have fun and communicate in a genuine manner without all that antagonism. Something like... 1001 Nights might work, if you've heard of that one: it's a simple game with a (hopefully) compelling topic, and it's somewhat difficult to turn it into a power-play. Puppetland... Basically anything with simple rules and simple purpose of play, and an innocent topic that brings people closer together in communication.
My logic in this - and practical experience backs this up pretty well - is that if you can't make play work on large scale, you might want to try something humbler, simpler and more friendly. If that works, even if it's not amazing... it's something to build upon after you've proven to each other that you can cooperate in something at least. Going back to something that is so simple that you all believe it's going to be fun, and you all basically expect to play it the same way, that might help you avoid all the crossed expectations and problems you usually have. Find the lowest common denominator, in other words, and focus on that. If you can't find even something small and simple to make work together, there's not much chance of making something complex like D&D or a Whitewolf game fly off the ground.
mrlost:
To sum up. Yes, my current group is dysfunctional. It has been for awhile I suppose.
To Eero Tuovinen, I own a copy of Powerplay/Puppetland. I have it somewhere, its probably in box with Nobilis. I suppose I could pitch that to the group. I've never tried to play it, but I have collected a few scenarios for it.
I believe it would be best to conclude the discussion about what to do, before I go off an start running Puppetland though. I would regret my rudeness otherwise.
Ron Edwards:
Hiya,
I agree that it's way, way premature to be considering game titles. Eero's right in warning against adopting some huge new buy-in for the grand solution. That is a common method, as you probably know, either with some new highly-advertised setting for the D&D edition de jour, or perhaps with a new White Wolf game guaranteed to encompass 20-plus supplements in the next year, or something like that. Anyway, it seems like you're already aware that isn't the way to go. So - yes, what to do?
Full disclosure: after four solid years of amazing and fun role-playing with a bunch of people in the mid-late 80s, I moved away from Chicago, then came back for a summer a couple of years later. We happily anticipated playing together again. We organized. We committed. We got into it. We played ! ... and it was the big donkey-dick suck of all time. Total creative, personal, social, and enjoyment breakdown, in the face of total good intentions and total buy-in to the basic content of play. Although not all cases are comparable, I did focus a lot of my attention on this phenomenon among other people too (it was happening a lot in my age group), and what follows is based on some of my conclusions. I do not have a pre-set diagnosis in mind for your group, but at least I know what questions to ask to dope it out.
I'll start with the idea that "dysfunctional" is a blanket term and although important, doesn't itself yield much insight, if insight from reflection is what we're after in this thread. Granted, the real aim as I understand it is practical, expressed by the thread title, but it should start with some examination.
Given what you've described, especially in the later post, the first thing I see that individualist, or even competitive preferences in play are not what we're seeing here. To play even the most savagely competitive, back-stabbing way and have it be fun requires a baseline of cooperation, much in the same sense that rugby does in fact have rules which must be honored by everyone. You can be the most elbow-to-the-face rugby player imaginable, and people are OK with that, but if you consistently ignore the real rules, then very quickly, no one plays with you. So this isn't about people who simply want to pursue unique character interests in play (a fancy phrase for brutal conflicts among characters); this is about people who will not, or cannot, play together in the most basic sense of the phrase.
It's up to you to consider why this is, or what this has to do with getting together to socialize for, in the first place. And that may not actually be relevant to what we can achieve here in the thread, anyway. Here's a list of things that are worth considering for practical purposes.
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?
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?
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?
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?
I'm a little unsure whether barraging you with these questions is what you want, but as I said before, I'm neither fishing to fill space, nor doing a Socratic-style lead-in to something specific. I'm pretty sure your answers will yield what we need to nail some specific things down, though - especially the direct advice you're seeking.
Best, Ron
RedFox:
Hello,
I'm the player referred to in mrlost's post as B. I've been following this thread with interest since he started it and sent me a link. I just wanted to say that if there's anything I can add to the discussion or otherwise do to help, I'd be more than happy to.
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