[Sorcerer] Cascadiapunk post-mortem
Ron Edwards:
Hi Joel,
I apologize for making you wait so long.
The first issue is about you, the other people, and posting about the game, particularly your own reactions and feelings. You only represent yourself here, you're not finking on them or bad-mouthing them by talking about that stuff. If you need to work out whether it's appropriate in their eyes to say what you think, acknowledging that that is only what it is, then you should talk to them about it. If someone has a problem with it, then you decide what to do. But don't keep posting in this halfway, I-think + ooh-that's-mean-of-me way.
That's all necessary because, based on your post, I disagree that the failure of the game was due to the confluence of many factors, any of which would have been resolvable in isolation. That appears to be face-saving, let's-not-blame social rationalizing. I think you were far more accurate when you wrote,
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... we ended up rather at sea in a number of areas because of our careless approach to the game. I mean at every level: forming a play group, determining our aesthetic preferences, investing together in an SIS, learning the rules, etc.
That leads to the second issue, to consider role-playing, and particularly using a given game, at the most fundamental level. That level is represented by two concepts: Color and Reward.
Regarding the first, sure, you can have great characters, great setting, and great system, but without Color that rivets one's attention on those before they are experienced in full, then they'll never get into action. Color is superficial in some ways, but crucial in other, cognitive ways. In Sorcerer, the Color is all about arrogance and whether it can be heroic. Everyone knows it can be disastrous, sure; but you look at the red-haired woman on the cover and wonder ... can she do it? Could I? What might lead me to try? Combine that with the visceral response to the word demon and now you've got the Color.
Regarding the second, what is the payoff for playing? It's all about those four outcomes listed in the book, which by any logical thinking should have been in the first chapter (at least the arrogance part is), mediated through the Kicker mechanic. The latter is most importantly expressed by the opportunity to change one's character's descriptors at that phase of play, but also by the more fundamental opportunity for you to decide whether your character's story is over or not. If that sounds mild, then consider whether any role-playing game prior to Sorcerer included it.
So, given those two things, and this applies to them no matter what game we're talking about, you either buy in, or you don't. Absolutely every other aspect of role-playing boils down to some manifestation of either one, or of an integration between them. So if you don't buy into them for a given game, then no matter how long you sit there, no matter how many dice you rattle, and no matter what monologues you dredge up, you aren't fucking well playing that game.
For a person in that situation, the only option is to rely only on certain specific other priorities: (a) what you didn't like and try to avoid based on previous play, (b) some Story Before you're making up, and (c) social priorites that aren't centered on play itself. I suggest that many of the instances you described in your post arise from this option in action. The weird thing is, it's not about blame! No one can be faulted for falling back on these things if they don't buy into the Color and Reward, because there's literally nothing else they can do.
I wrote up some of my personal takes on those instances, and then realized it was not right to do so. I wasn't there. And most importantly, dissecting out such an instance and trying to pin down why it was "wrong" or "not fun for me" in that particular case is wasted attention, when the event arose very logically from the lack of buy-in in the first place. I think you arrived at that conclusion yourself in the phrasing that I quoted above.
I only have one more little point that may be more generally useful. As I see it, no one actually hates dice. Someone may well hate being marginalized by shitty systems, and in response, have mastered a particular strategy of play. This strategy is to control the events of play through narrating, such that dice either get elided, or they only affect things that won't be permitted to really change anything. (A pro at this technique can divert the game away from using dice at all for hours. A real master, however, knows that the GM won't ever really kill a player-character, so permits things like combat to be very dice-y, smiling slightly throughout.) This is, in the terms I used above, refusing to buy into the Reward, and therefore to reject the attendant system components within it, including mechanics-based resolution with actual consequences.
Well, that's what I got. Let me know whether it helps or even makes sense.
Best, Ron
Joel P. Shempert:
Ron,
Thanks. Yes, it makes sense. As for helpful, I'm still digesting. Let me digest out loud for a bit:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 02, 2008, 10:56:14 AM
I disagree that the failure of the game was due to the confluence of many factors, any of which would have been resolvable in isolation.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 02, 2008, 10:56:14 AM
the event arose very logically from the lack of buy-in in the first place.
Yes. When you throw it all out there in the light if day I can see that this is what I was trying to get at. Basically, "the game tanked due to lack of buy-in, which made a bunch of other factors unbearable, where they'd have been workable or solvable otherwise." But yeah, I flinched and ended up pussy-footing around the issue. "Face-saving, let's-not-blame rationalizing" is exactly right. While we had a pretty frank and open discussion of the game, in terms of how things went and how people feel about it, I do sense that there's an implicit group commitment to upholding a "it just couldn't work out, there were too many nails in the coffin" vision of events, so that personal judgment of failure is not denied (f'rinstance Jake said first thing that he didn't buy in and that was a personal failing on his part) but innocuously diffused.
So enough of that then. What you say about Color, Reward and Buy-In. . .it makes uncannily good sense to me. It's one of those things that you never thought of, but once someone says it, you start mentally plugging actual situations into it, and it fits! It's an interesting synergy of the concepts, where all the talk about Color in isolation, or ditto Reward, doesn't get you to the place you can see when you look at them both together.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 02, 2008, 10:56:14 AM
For a person in that situation, the only option is to rely only on certain specific other priorities: (a) what you didn't like and try to avoid based on previous play, (b) some Story Before you're making up, and (c) social priorites that aren't centered on play itself. I suggest that many of the instances you described in your post arise from this option in action. The weird thing is, it's not about blame! No one can be faulted for falling back on these things if they don't buy into the Color and Reward, because there's literally nothing else they can do.
I totally hear you here. I can only nod grimly, because I recognize that in cases where I myself didn't have buy-in, that's exactly what I've done.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 02, 2008, 10:56:14 AM
I only have one more little point that may be more generally useful. As I see it, no one actually hates dice. Someone may well hate being marginalized by shitty systems, and in response, have mastered a particular strategy of play. This strategy is to control the events of play through narrating, such that dice either get elided, or they only affect things that won't be permitted to really change anything.
I'm well aware of this strategy of play. I've done it and seen it done. Oh my yes. However, I just wanted to point out that Jana may be a different case entirely. She's very, very new to roleplaying, and is largely ignorant of, say, D&D and its surrounding, accumulated culture. I don't think there's any element of "marginalized by shitty systems" in her game experience. I think we're looking here at a genuinely different procedural preference, involving lots of sharing across all the categories of Authority, and large swaths of narration for which dice are a flow-breaker.
You are right that it's not the dice that she hates--it's not like she's averse to the physical objects, or picking up and rolling them per se, or anything. It's just that there are lots of roleplaying dice procedures--including ones that I believe are quite functional, like Sorcerer or Dogs in the Vineyard--that rubs her the wrong way and breaks her engagement with the game.
I'm not sure if that's an aside that's worth pursuing, though. I'll leave it up to you.
So. . .given all that, where do we go from here? I think I've got an intellectual handle on your major points, but I'm still mulling over practical application. So, in addition to further commentary on any of the above stuff, I'd like to try and address the following:
1) What kinds of techniques are useful for facilitating buy-in in the first place? I already identified that a more directed approach (in this case doing up a one-sheet with the Setting concept and Sorcerous Definitions, and using that to form a coherent game pitch) would have helped loads in this case. Anything else? Or is it just a sort of "you lean forward and go 'hardcore mermaid knife-fighters on the moon!' and if everyone gives you wicked shark grins, you're golden" kinda thing? (Which, incidentally, is exactly the method used for buy-in to an Immortal Iron Fist game with Classroom Deathmatch rules that I played with Jake awhile back, which was hella fun.)
2) How might one go about teasing buy-in out of an existing, floundering game? Are you pretty much doomed, or are there reasonably reliable ways to put on the brakes and solicit buy-in once it is clear you don't have it (bearing in mind that you can't make anyone buy in and you may still fail)?
3) It seems to me that there's an inverse principle to the necessity of buy-in: it's possible to be totally grooving on Color and/or Reward and have play still suck sour frog ass, because you don't know what to do with the Color or how to get to the Reward. In fact, I've been there many a time. I'm not sure if there's any cure that can be articulated though, any more specific than "know what you're doing and how to do it" (duh).
Peace,
-Joel
Ron Edwards:
Hi Joel,
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1) What kinds of techniques are useful for facilitating buy-in in the first place?
More directed, certainly. But I can't over-stress the actual content - first, that Color remains only color and doesn't become a detailed dissertation on, for instance, setting, or other for-instance, how to play your character and what will happen to him or her later ("when you hit tenth level, it's really cool!"). Second, that Reward be explicitly identified in mechanics terms, especially in terms of large and small cycles. (Check out Beating a dead horse? for my most detailed presentation on that concept, for which all credit goes to Nolan.)
It also helps to show some investment on your part and to share that investment rather than merely wave your three-ring binder's worth of prep that they can't see. In the case of our current Alyria game, I emailed around the spiffed-up story map graphic and it got everyone even more excited. I have always been a big fan of brief but punchy handouts.
The trouble with your mermaids example is that it's Color only. I think that might be a major issue in the discussion. It worked in the Deathmatch case perhaps because the author of a game is often skilled at conveying understanding of Reward very quickly during play.
Basically, anything like what I'm describing that gets away from the traditional bullshit that connotes "We shall play this kickass game and I (or it) shall make it fun for you, you just wait and see." That doesn't work for traditional metaplot-heavy design, and it doesn't work for fast-fun Forge-ish design either. (If I could kick the shins of every person who's slapped Primetime Adventures down in front of a dubious group, promising that this game will wash their windows for them, let's play it right now, I would.)
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2) How might one go about teasing buy-in out of an existing, floundering game? Are you pretty much doomed, or are there reasonably reliable ways to put on the brakes and solicit buy-in once it is clear you don't have it (bearing in mind that you can't make anyone buy in and you may still fail)?
I dunno. I suppose one should simply have the Color + Reward get-together at that point and see if it's possible to re-start in those terms, without having the fiction itself re-start. I haven't been in that situation because I'm typically willing to let the current game die and try something else. Then again, we usually start with that process anyway, so if we and the game aren't working out together, then we're sort of past that particular repair.
H'mm ... now that I think of it, we do practice a minor form of that repair when it appears that a given player is floundering. I remember that when we played the oldie-old-old alpha of Dust Devils, Maura and Tod both floundered a bit ... until I said, "We're not playing Hero Wars any more, and your character is not here to save the town." That was kind of a revelatory moment for both players, and I now realize it's because I was addressing Reward. What do you do in Dust Devils? You have your character grapple with his or her Devil, that's what. The local setting and all its hideous internal strife is a venue for that, not a set goal of its own; if you want to try to save it, that's just one thing to fixate on out of many.
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3) It seems to me that there's an inverse principle to the necessity of buy-in: it's possible to be totally grooving on Color and/or Reward and have play still suck sour frog ass, because you don't know what to do with the Color or how to get to the Reward. In fact, I've been there many a time. I'm not sure if there's any cure that can be articulated though, any more specific than "know what you're doing and how to do it" (duh).
Interestingly, I have no idea what you're talking about. To me, "totally grooving on" means actually doing it with everyone else doing it too, which negates your point entirely, so that must not be what you mean by it. Do you mean "anticipating" or "hoping," or maybe do you mean "individually/privately?" I'd like to know about one of your many times in detail in order to understand what you mean at all, especially the inverse principle.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Quote from: Melinglor on December 02, 2008, 11:13:48 PM
1) What kinds of techniques are useful for facilitating buy-in in the first place?
I've had a lot of hits and misses with this. I liked Ron's analysis, but I think an example would help. So, here's my shot at one:
"Hey guys! Come play Primetime Adventures with me!" (Color:) "It's like a TV show! What kind? Well, we'll figure that out together early on." (Point of play:) "The basic thing you do is play a character with a morally interesting Issue, and help tell stories that allow you to explore that Issue." (Large-scale Reward:) "You get to bring the character to a satisfying conclusion with respect to their Issue." (Small-scale Reward:) "In the course of that, when you try to succeed in conflicts, your ability to do so depends on points other players have given you for making contributions they liked."
Ron, is that reasonably close to what you had in mind? I couldn't think of a way to describe the largest Reward scale in mechanics terms... might just be my ignorance of PtA... "And then this happens in the fiction, which is cool, right?" is where I tend to wind up when describing my own game's rewards. I'm not sure whether that accords or conflicts with your recommendation.
-David
Ron Edwards:
Hi David,
I think your exercise will only make sense at all if you try it with a game you know pretty well - either played it and reflected on it, or at the very least, have read it carefully and genuinely are prepping for play.
Best, Ron
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