[Rifts] -- Who's responsible for fun?
Andre Canivet:
I should add that we didn't know about those other games until well after we'd gotten tired of playing Rifts. The joys of living in a small town, I'm afraid--only one game store, and all they carried was Palladium and D&D (2nd ed., I think, at the time). The really bizarre part is that now I'm living in the same small town again, almost two decades later, and all people STILL seem to play is Rifts and D&D... and maybe a little Warhammer.
-A.
Callan S.:
Quote
because suddenly everybody wanted to be a Juicer, and the GM's are wondering how the heck they're going to deal with them
This is kind of what I was trying to get at but perhaps missed in my post - your talking about how the GM deals with it. I'm thinking this is a code word for how the GM takes this big pile of mash potato the players have all made and actually wrestles it into some sort of story.
What I was trying to say, and Kevin Siembieda (Rifts author) may not have intended it or played it this way/actually played the rules he wrote, but with what's actually presented in written text, if everyones playing a kill 'em all juicer, then that's it - wham, bam, thank you mam! There is no story element. At all. They are all juicers. That's it...really, that's it. That's all there is to it. There might have been some simple story derived from a rise to power campaign, except wham bam, everyones as powerful as they are likely ever gunna get, right at the start of play. Juicers. The end.
It's not about blaming yourselves as teenagers - with what was actually presented in text, your group played the game that was actually there, as far as I can tell. And about author responsiblity - well, the only responsibility I know of is providing the product paid for and legally whether that happened. Not sure that battle is worth taking up.
So yeah, a random author wrote a text which basically threw alot of obstacles into your teenage group, and teenage friendships...well, they are kind of brittle as the bonds have only just started growing. So I totally agree about your observation on heavy gear and mekton and whether that honestly would have been a better start - as a group at that age, you honestly didn't need a bunch of contentious rules issues between you. Or maybe I'm just saying this for myself, but back then we were vulnerable and didn't need texts where the damn author really had no idea passing on a document to a group of teenagers who also had no idea, but who's friendships and to an extent formative years were on the line.
Getting back to your original question of how much of the burden is on players, I think the question is missplaced. Your question is looking for some sort of structure in what was just chaos. Imagine I wrote a program that generated random rules, printed them and handed them to some kids and then years latter they are asking what was the logic in those rules, how much should they have worked on them to generate fun, etc etc...when there was no freaking logic, because it was just random! It'd be entirely missplaced to look for structure in my example. That's pretty much the situation you were and are in - Kevin just drew randomly upon rules from wargames, changing 'em a bit, which he pretty much doesn't use in his own play, from my research on the palladium boards.
So you can invent a rule about who's responsible for fun. But there is no answer that just existed back then, or exists now. You were all in a chaotic no mans land, but the text kept repeatedly telling you you were in structured civilisation.
That's my take, and what scraps of evidence I provide as support. And I know it's really hard to accept there isn't an answer - particularly on a subject that was to do with younger, vulnerable formative years and what they said to you and what you said to them and old, old regrets about splitting friendships.
But yeah, that's my take. We can decide to make our own invention on who's responsible for fun. But there isn't a structure there already, as if were just somehow failing to see it. Well, nothing beyond the 'premature' model I describe.
Andre Canivet:
Shit... You're right--it is a completely random game. I knew that part, but I didn't realize the implication...
In truth, it's easy enough to accept as an adult. As an adult, I know that "shit happens," and that there are really no rules to life; or game design, except those you set for yourself. But as I kid, I didn't know that, and that's the real thing that still sticks in my craw... Back when we entered the hobby with Rifts, myself, and I think a few others in my group, were looking for an escape from the random chaos prevalent in school, social, and family life--which for pretty much everybody in that gaming group; or really anybody that age, totally sucked. I was looking for structure, consistency, fairness, balance... Some kids join the military looking for that stuff, I guess, but for us it was games. And in a game like Rifts, it just isn't there. Instead it's a lawless power fantasy which mirrored all the things we were (or at least I was) trying to escape.
I suppose it's pretty unfair to expect Kevin Siembieda to be the missing voice of reason in our lives. He certainly didn't sign up for that job just by selling us a game. I just wish we'd known going in what it would be like--that what we were expecting wasn't really there.
You're right about the other stuff, too. I did sort of miss what you were saying initially; but it's true. You pick your character concept, and that's what you are until that character inevitably winds up a fine red mist facing the wrong end of a boom-gun. There's no growth or development to the characters in a story sense. Heck, leveling-up doesn't even increase your abilities much in a power / effectiveness sense, for most OCC's.
Well, anyway, you've pretty much answered my question--and in a way it was actually kind of cathartic to sort it all out--so, thank you, Callan :) If Ron or anybody else is out there reading this--you have my thanks as well for creating a place where us psychic refugees can come and figure out what went wrong at the table.
I guess what it all really means is that when I finally get my own games sorted out, I make damn sure I tell the players / customers what they're buying and what the game will do for them, and what it won't. In big, bold letters.
Anyway, thanks.
-A.
Excalibur:
RIFTS, in and of itself, is a wonderfully interesting and fun setting. Palladium's unified game mechanics are a combination of AD&D and RuneQuest with the worst parts of both.
If you've ever noticed, as the expansions came out, classes and races became progressively more powerful. Almost as if Kevin and the gang were creating them as their characters gained levels...
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.
Andrew Norris:
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.)
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