[Rifts] -- Who's responsible for fun?
Locke:
Rifts is a broken system and Shadowrun has a near broken system in many many ways. You don't play these games because of their inherent mechanical value. You play them for flavor. Its easy enough for the GM to do a modification to limit attacks and balance characters to make it equal and fun for everyone. Rifts also has a near broken level mechanic. So keeping characters balanced becomes more difficult as time goes on. I have found as a GM trying to run these games that the players generally whine and cry their pants off when you tell them that something is restricted or that they can't use a certain book.
So go into these games knowing that you can't keep up with the mechanics and play for flavor with a grain of salt.
Excalibur:
Or take a nice system like, say, RuneQuest and play in the RIFTS setting.
Andre Canivet:
Quote from: Excalibur on March 26, 2010, 07:18:35 AM
The rules for RIFTS were all "WOW! THAT'S COOL! LET'S PUT THAT IN!" and not much else, sort of like the 1st Edition AD&D Monk. :)
The responsibility of fun is squarely on the combined shoulders of the players and the GM. I think the problems you described were based on the lack of a unified contract on how to interpret the rules. I also remember the arguments about the quality of Kevin's writing and what we should do, but I was blessed with friends who enjoyed examining the game mechanics from an analytic point of view. We were power gamers, yes, but we all agreed to a particular style of play. Enemies were raised in power, situations were set up where combat wasn't the way to win, that sort of thing. We had some fun but it was a group effort.
The problem with a lot of gamers that I've met recently is that they're expecting a movie and the GM to be the director. The GM is not there to entertain you, it's a collective effort. I sort of see that in your description of events.
Definitely--"BECAUSE IT'S COOL" was pretty much the only justification for anything in that game. Admirable enthusiasm--but with no thought as to how those parts fit together as a whole.
As for the group dynamic, well, it was kind of mixed. There were certainly people who were better at analyzing and discussing problems--and there were certainly times when that sort of thing became easier; like when it was just two or three people talking. I'm still good friends with most of those people. But when you got 5 or 6 or more of us in a room, not all of them with analytical dispositions, it became much harder to resolve the disagreements. Theoretical discussion and consensus building at that level would be met with statements like: "This is gay, when do we get to kill stuff?" by the more aggressive members of the group. So gaps in the rules didn't often get addressed until somebody's character was about to die and tensions were high.
I think if the Rifts rulebook had included some discussion on how to actually manage a group of diverse personalities, command their interest, establish player roles & responsibilities, and resolve disputes, well, it might have been easier to establish a shared interpretation of the rules. Games like Spirit of the Century, Dogs in the Vineyard, or Over the Edge all seem to do it; either in some explicit GM section, or embedded in the descriptions and tone of the system. Granted, these games came later, and I'm sure the writers of most of them had already learned the hard way that some mention of gamer etiquette was probably a good idea. But, still...
I can't guarantee we would have listened even if that stuff had been in Rifts, but at least we wouldn't be able to blame the writing for our disagreements.
Quote from: Andrew Norris on March 26, 2010, 11:21:56 AM
God, I don't think the image of RPG text handed down as stone tablets from the mount has ever "clicked" for me as strongly as it did while reading this thread. Interesting.
I mean, it's reasonable and obvious to think about adolescent experiences having a strong, long-term effect, but that feeling of being fifteen, and thinking "Home and school are uncontrollable, but within the scope of a game played within these sacred rules, life WILL make sense!" resonates with me a lot more than I thought it would.
Sorry, I'm not sure that this post advances the thread at all, but I wanted to chip in and say this particular formulation of the issue is surprisingly helpful to me. ("Surprisingly" being my response, only because I've thought about it a lot before.)
I'm not sure about advancing the thread, but thanks for saying this :) It helps to know I wasn't the only one who had this experience. The realization that I'd depended so heavily on the game, and felt so let down by it, really took me by surprise as well. I guess the question for the thread is "were my expectations reasonable?" To some degree they weren't (although what 15 year old has reasonable expectations?)... but on the other hand, there's certainly a question of quality control. Sure, the game can't sort your life out for you, but maybe it should at least attempt to address what can go wrong in play. Programmers write error checking routines into their code, to address things that can go wrong; should a game designer be expected to do the same?
Quote from: Locke on March 26, 2010, 11:23:11 AM
Rifts is a broken system and Shadowrun has a near broken system in many many ways. You don't play these games because of their inherent mechanical value. You play them for flavor. Its easy enough for the GM to do a modification to limit attacks and balance characters to make it equal and fun for everyone. Rifts also has a near broken level mechanic. So keeping characters balanced becomes more difficult as time goes on. I have found as a GM trying to run these games that the players generally whine and cry their pants off when you tell them that something is restricted or that they can't use a certain book.
So go into these games knowing that you can't keep up with the mechanics and play for flavor with a grain of salt.
It was complicated in our group, because almost everybody took turns as GM for particular adventures, so no one was really "in charge" of what books could be used and what couldn't for longer than a few sessions. And of course, every time a new book came out, everyone rushed out and got it and everybody wanted to play with the new toys it contained.
Quote from: Excalibur on March 26, 2010, 02:51:55 PM
Or take a nice system like, say, RuneQuest and play in the RIFTS setting.
That's maybe not a bad idea. There's elements of the setting which I think are a bit too over the top, but if it were reigned in a bit, with much better rules, it might be a lot more fun to play.
-A.
Callan S.:
I think Curt (Excalibur) is blurring your own written revelation about randomness, Andre.
The way he's phrased it
Quote
The responsibility of fun is squarely on the combined shoulders of the players and the GM. I think the problems you described were based on the lack of a unified contract on how to interpret the rules.
It's once again come down to blaming the group as the fault, as if if they got it together, that's how the game works and is actually functional.
It's a random game. There is no answer, there is no 'if we'd only done X...'. There is no 'if only we had more analytic guys...'. Curt needs to realise this as well. Hell, alot of gamers need to realise this. Same goes partly for Jeff (Locke), even with his 'play it for flavour' comments - because it's still acting as if your playing 'it', rather than something that's his own invention (and that draws upon components of procedure listed in the rifts book texts)
You can make your own game - you can canabalise procedures from other games in making it. That's entirely possible!
Having advice in a book for how to handle randomness in the procedure - it's only advice for making an entirely new game of your own invention. It does not enable you to play that game, because it is not a game to begin with. It's pieces of floating procedure.
Here's a writing exercise - especially for Curt since I know he'll argue this vehemently - write a 'game' that has a broken procedure and there is no right way or some social contract gimmicktry and somehow allows you to play it right.
It shouldn't be hard at all to write a 'game' that does not work, EVER, even if it involves gripping a pen in your fist and scribbling maddly across a page. Surely atleast in that case it's obvious that no, there's no social contract or analytic frame of mind or zen approach that is the 'right' way to play that scribble 'game'.
Once you've drawn your own line in the sand on what is an entirely unplayable procedure that aught not be called a 'game' (particularly saying this to Curt and Jeff), you might start seeing paralels to that line in the sand with the texts called 'Rifts' and 'Shadowrun'.
I can relate to Andrews comment
Quote
I mean, it's reasonable and obvious to think about adolescent experiences having a strong, long-term effect, but that feeling of being fifteen, and thinking "Home and school are uncontrollable, but within the scope of a game played within these sacred rules, life WILL make sense!" resonates with me a lot more than I thought it would.
I'd say that too - it seemed (just seemed) like a method of both socially interacting in not the most base, lord of the highschool flies ways, and of releasing creativity into a social activity. Also to me it didn't just seem to make sense, it seemed like a way of making sense of real life, without the risk of being killed or hurt or hurting others in finding that sense in real life (and I mean life outside of highschool as well).
Quote
I guess the question for the thread is "were my expectations reasonable?" To some degree they weren't (although what 15 year old has reasonable expectations?)... but on the other hand, there's certainly a question of quality control. Sure, the game can't sort your life out for you, but maybe it should at least attempt to address what can go wrong in play. Programmers write error checking routines into their code, to address things that can go wrong; should a game designer be expected to do the same?
I think as a society we don't allow minors to view rape scenes in movies, or torture scenes. It's for various reasons, ususally only felt but if reflected upon, actual phisiological changes can be identified.
Games which act like they have a structure but don't? Maybe in the future that too will be policed. If it indeed does do damage in the way the rape scenes and such might do.
Andre Canivet:
I'm sure there's no perfect social contract that makes an unplayable game playable, but if the rules had simply acknowledged that it's a group activity and that disagreements are inevitable in a complex activity like an RPG (with maybe some advice how to deal with them)--I think that would have gone a long way to preventing difficulty.
All the Rifts books have disclaimers about supernatural & horror content. If K.S. had included one about rules disputes and social dynamics; that warning alone would have allowed us to step back from the rules a bit when things got too intense. I suppose it's just ironic that it wasn't the horror content that drove us crazy, but the mechanics.
I don't know if the game itself did damage like a rape scene might--or if we were already sort of damaged / unstable going in and the game just made it worse. But maybe it's a lot like television. Maybe our parents should have played the first few sessions with us to make sure we were okay (but what parent has time, and what 15 year old wants to play with their parents?); the same way a lot of people recommend watching television with your kids. I don't really know.
Either way, it's definitely something for the industry to consider, especially in the way these games are marketed, and to whom.
For now, I'm happy to count it as a lesson learned. I'll just try to do better in my own games.
-A.
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