Reduced enjoinment playing RPG
Rafu:
Everybody: Rocco is suffering of a problem of diverging expectations from his fellow players. He can't "move away from serial combat" unless the other participants also want to move away. Thus, just adopting a different ruleset from D&D (assuming he can even make the other players bother, btw) can't, by itself, solve his problem. Suggesting he checks out The Pool, FATE or Dogs in the Vineyard or whatever is currently pointless (*).
(* Actually, reading gaming instructions is never pointless, especially if those are from games widely different from your habitual one(s). But it's not going to solve Rocco's problem right now.)
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone,
The core problem with threads about any version of D&D is that they are simultaneously (i) incredibly individualized, in terms of what the primary poster has experienced as the rules and what they think about that; and (ii) presumed to be common ground because "it's D&D" and "everyone knows" what that is. Which is kind of a disaster under normal circumstances, but if two people who each want to talk about problematic D&D play start criss-crossing threads ... well, it turns into a mess. Plus the secondary fun of further participants posting emotionally either in attack or defense mode concerning their issues with the game (or rather with that title, as there are simultaneously too many D&Ds and absolutely no identifiable "original" version).
So I'm saying, Nick and (just in case) Rocco, until we get to substantial "yes indeed" moments that are specific to each of your excellent thread topics, then I recommend that you not post in one another's threads. After that, fantastic, 100%, I'm all for it. But here I'm speaking as weary moderator of ten years at the Forge, and even here, where arguably emotionally-reactive posting is whipp'd from the room more fiercely than at any other website known to humanity, D&D threads are a lurking pit of randomized menace. (Huh - funny how that works, considering the subject of the game is often ... well, anyway.) Let's keep the two dungeons threads separate at the moment.
Again, this is no reflection upon either of you and I am not moderating you in the ordinary sense of the term. My aim is to keep us all sane and especially, not to descend into too much game-bashing, unless it's kept local to your group and exactly what happened in it.
Best, Ron
Alfryd:
Quote from: Rafu on August 23, 2010, 07:46:35 AM
Everybody: Rocco is suffering of a problem of diverging expectations from his fellow players. He can't "move away from serial combat" unless the other participants also want to move away. Thus, just adopting a different ruleset from D&D (assuming he can even make the other players bother, btw) can't, by itself, solve his problem. Suggesting he checks out The Pool, FATE or Dogs in the Vineyard or whatever is currently pointless (*).
I'm sorry if recommendations were premature, but I got the impression from Rocco's posts that he's already recognised a basic incompatibility between his own interests and that of the larger group, and was prepared to 'move on'.
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
Rocco, let's deal with your explicit requests in this thread, because they need some work.
First, your list of what you like about role-playing is not going to help much with Creative Agenda discussions. Although your specific list is not universal for everyone, it addresses something that is universal for any kind of effective role-playing.* I call this something "Exploration," and it's composed of ... well, pretty much everything you listed. Characters in Settings face Situations and stuff happens (System), all in an engaging and relevant Colorful way; the capitalized words are formal terms in my so-called Big Model (the first couple of pages in the The Provisional Glossary lay this out as well as I can, with a diagram.)
Therefore what you're asking is a bit like "For what purpose or what kind of enjoyment do I run," and then providing only the information that you would in fact like to run successfully as opposed to being tripped or otherwise sabotaged by others for whatever reason.
All of this means that I think we should revisit your question. I don't want to plunge into the waters of Creative Agenda talk if you're actually more interested in how to get the basics of playing at all under way (and they involve a hell of a lot more than merely having people willing to show up, as I tried to point out in A year of crappy roleplaying). If that's the case, then I have some specific questions for you, and if you feel like it, the older thread HERO System, M&M and assessing incoherence seems like it's describing frustrations similar to your own.
Conversely, I don't want to miss talking about Creative Agenda if that's what you think you're ready for. But to do that, we should get a better idea about a specific time that you genuinely enjoyed, and just as importantly, that you enjoyed as a participant with others rather than as an isolated or private experience that the others never noticed or cared about.
Let me know which of these two approaches seems right to you.
Best, Ron
* For the legally-minded as well as the hyper-sensitive ... the term "role-playing" is unfortunately a legacy term with no definition and diverse applications. Here I'm referring to what's often called "table-top" hobby gaming and talking about when it does or does not work at a very basic level. I'm not claiming that different activities within gaming like boffer LARP, or entirely different non-gaming activities like therapy techniques, job training, or staging little costume games for sex, shouldn't be called role-playing.
Rocco:
@ all
I would like to thank you all for your reply. Every suggestion is interesting and every post is useful in its own way.
Ok now I would like to say that Rafu got part of my problem. I have diverging expectation of what is a "satysfing" play in regard to my fellow players. And that I realized only recently. Before I got this revelation I tried to understand what wasn't working, from my point of view, in the actual plays we had. This lead me to the Forge, in a way to better understand what is behind the actual play I experienced.
@Ron
I'm trying to better understand all the fantastic theories that have been elaborated here. But it's something that must be done slowly and clearly. Therefore I suppose that my "exploration" of the Creative Agenda was done too early. Considering this I think that the first approach you suggested could be more in line with my actual needs. I will read the topic you suggested and if you had in mind some question for me, please come along with them.
But after exploring this first approach, I don't exclude delving more deeply into the Creative Agenda issue.
Thank you very much
Rocco.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page