Reduced enjoinment playing RPG
Ron Edwards:
Hi Rocco,
You're being perfectly clear! I think we may be nearer to Creative Agenda discussion than I thought.
Or more accurately, we may be near to Creative Agenda preference discussion for you, which as a practical reality is unfortunately quite out of reach as far as your current gaming group is concerned. I think that you've been clear that we can't be discussing how to make play more fun for you in this group, because it is flatly not fun and shows no sign of possible improvement. This means that our conversation will be more hypothetical than I'd like.
This next part of our conversation may be difficult because I'm asking a weird question. It is ... if we were to be role-playing, and if such a character and such scenes were actually becoming the climactic, payoff moments of play, and if those moments were neither constant (because that's exhausting and trivializes them) nor forever in the future (which is frustrating) ...
... then would you like to see some kind of game mechanic that illustrates a change in the character when/after that kind of scene happens?
I need to be careful in talking about this because we all reflexively snap back to what's familiar to us instead of thinking about all the possibilities. I'll list some examples from existing games:
1. The chance of death, meaning the final end of that character, and in many cases, the end of that player's investment in the game to date
2. The chance of impairment or limitation of effectiveness for that character
3. The chance or guarantee of improved effectiveness and/or resources for future character actions
4. The chance or guarantee of cosmetic, visual alterations in the character
5. The potential transformation of views, values, relationships, and other psychological aspects of the character, or other characters
6. The potential transformation of features of the setting: other characters, communities, structures and other aspects of locations, or even large-scale phenomena
Casting all your previous experience with role-playing systems to the winds - for example, #1 and #3 are often assumed to be givens, and they don't have to be - which of these, perhaps more than one, and perhaps any you think of that I didn't mention, strike you as the most enjoyable risks and consequences of the kind of scenes we're talking about?
Note as well that the fully negative option exists too: that no such mechanic exists, and the character and the setting are not changed by such scenes - at least, not by referring to special numbers or check-marks or tokens or any other kind of procedural features. In that case, all that stuff I numbered above would be worked out or established strictly through people talking without structure, or even through one person's imposed decree. If you would prefer that, then say so.
I suggest that saying "all of them" is not especially insightful or practical. Remember, I'm not talking about whether these things happen, but rather about specifically mechanical aspects of a role-playing system, whose outcomes are strongly influenced by decisions and procedural outcomes during play.
Best, Ron
P.S. For those following along, the above questions are not a "GNS test." Any number of responses would be consistent with any of the three known Creative Agendas. The GNS-relevant information has already been established prior to this post; I'm merely not talking about it yet.
Ar Kayon:
Rocco,
To begin, your GM is clearly bad at what he does. A good GM can make an underwater battle - in space - against zombie pirates - the most fun you've ever had. It's all about build-up, proper cadence, and most of all: coherence, even if the concept itself is absurd.
If you don't want to put the effort behind trying to find a new group of friends, I suggest either game mastering yourself or having the "mastermind" do it, as someone who thinks everything through is least likely to fall victim to the pitfalls your current GM seems to chronically walk into: being guided by the players like the dog on the leash dictating where it wants to sniff around (in soviet Russia, Players GM you!); insisting on combat being the only real aspect of play, with all the other role-playing treated as obligatory filler-content, etc.
Finally, it appears as if the players are merely reflecting the GM; that they aren't immersing themselves into the story simply because the GM's story isn't immersive. You can't blame them for that. Show them a better way to game, and maybe they'll start playing along. Hopefully, instead of saying, "...but the combat was fun", your friends will start saying, "Hey, wasn't tonight's session awesome?" "Yeah, but the pizza sucked".
oculusverit:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 02, 2010, 09:04:40 AM
Ron, I know you're trying to have a one-on-one conversation with Rocco, but for those of us reading, a clarification. You seem to be asking if Rocco would like a game mechanic that reflects a change in the character after any of the situations listed, but the first one you list:
1. The chance of death, meaning the final end of that character, and in many cases, the end of that player's investment in the game to date
Doesn't this one imply a mechanical change no matter what game you're playing? After all, a character's death would in almost all cases indicate that the player can no longer play the character? Possible ways "out" of this, of course, are either some sort of resurrection or "ghost", both of which necessitate changes to the character (with resurrection, character is rendered unplayable until the resurrection mechanic is performed; if the character is now a ghost, then there are new mechanical limitations and perhaps even new powers as the character has undergone a critical phase change). Therefore, isn't character death inherently a mechanical phase change regardless of system?
Again, I ask this merely for clarification of this one point.
Rocco:
Hi Ron
I'm sorry of replying to your post so late, but this weekend one of my best friends married and I was quite busy (and happy too!).
Ok, I was tempted to say "all of them" but, thinking carefully about the options suggested I think that the two that I would prefer to see in the scenes we were talking about are number 6 (mostly) but also number 5.
On the other hand I don't think that number 1 should be a "necessary mechanic". I would like to be the one, also in agreement with the other people playing with me, to decide "when, where and how" a given character ends his usufulness for the scenes/story/idea we are playing.
Thank you very much
Rocco
Rocco:
Quote from: Ar Kayon on September 05, 2010, 02:51:52 AM
Rocco,
To begin, your GM is clearly bad at what he does. A good GM can make an underwater battle - in space - against zombie pirates - the most fun you've ever had. It's all about build-up, proper cadence, and most of all: coherence, even if the concept itself is absurd.
If you don't want to put the effort behind trying to find a new group of friends, I suggest either game mastering yourself or having the "mastermind" do it, as someone who thinks everything through is least likely to fall victim to the pitfalls your current GM seems to chronically walk into: being guided by the players like the dog on the leash dictating where it wants to sniff around (in soviet Russia, Players GM you!); insisting on combat being the only real aspect of play, with all the other role-playing treated as obligatory filler-content, etc.
Finally, it appears as if the players are merely reflecting the GM; that they aren't immersing themselves into the story simply because the GM's story isn't immersive. You can't blame them for that. Show them a better way to game, and maybe they'll start playing along. Hopefully, instead of saying, "...but the combat was fun", your friends will start saying, "Hey, wasn't tonight's session awesome?" "Yeah, but the pizza sucked".
Hi Ar Kayon
I appreciate your suggestion but, as I explained in a previous post, I realized that I don't really want to play with them anymore. And the cause it's something on a human person level, before than on a RPG level.
I tried many time to put something different in our playtime, trying to make the other understand my point of view about what is fun and what not for me. The majority of them simply don't care for the same thing that I do. Every time I tried to discuss these things with them they rejected my ideas, and every time I was more and more embittered.
As a tangential note, but related to your suggestion: some months ago I decided, feelin more and more disheartened with the playtime that I had, I decided that being the GM of another group could be the solution to my problem. It was difficult to create a group but finally I conviced my wife to give a try to RPGing, togheter with other two friends of us. They live in a different city, far away from us and so we decided to play using internet. After a bit of time (before starting playing) two cousins of our friends asked to be included and I accepted.
All of them, with the exclusion of my wife, had some experience with D&D 3rd Ed., playing togheter. I thought that explaining them my view of what constitutes a "satisfing" RPG experience was a good starting point, and I also asked them to give me suggestion on what was fun for them.
Here I encountered the first problems. They had problem explaining to me what was fun, without referring, in some way or another, to the "D&D mechanics". I was trying to communicate (maybe unsuccesfuly) on a human level, from player to player. They were answering only on a D&D level. I was a bit disappointed but tried to take their "suggestion" in count when preparing my first session.
Now I realize that there was a communication problem arising from the fact that their only experience was D&D and that, in contrast with me, they still enjoied D&D. They were not interested in anything different from "their D&D" (I'm referring with this sentece to a previous affermation of Ron in this thread that every group, through drift, play his own D&D, different from that experience by another group of players). I found out, in my limited experience, that a lot of D&D players have problem in explaining what is fun for them as persons, not as "D&D players". But this is tangential.
The first session was interesting but then, after some more play, my enjoinment started to decrease (this is not true for the other players, or so they say) in the same way as it happened in the other game. And it was even worse, because this time I was the GM. I was the one "managing" everything. How could this be possible? Moreover, with the passing time, I had less and less time to prepare everything for the next session. I was really ashemed of myself. And then I started to realize that it was not only a problem of time, it was also a problem of fun. Not having fun during play meant that I didn't have desire to put more effort in preparing our adventures. (On a side note, this unpreparation made every session worse for me). And one of the main reason for this unhappines was the complete absence of the other players input in the game. They were only reacting, during our game, to what I presented them. I felt like I was the only player, even though I asked them to give me some idea of what they wanted to do in game, what they wanted to explore through the game. Nothing happened.
During this time I started to read what was written in the Forge essays. What I read is starting to give me a better understand of the RPG experience. I think that the D&D system isn't helping me to have the kind of playing experience that I want. And without any other experience, is also difficult to explain to other players that can be more than D&D.
So now I have stopped playing with this second group, putting everything on a hiatus. And I wrote this topic searching for some help and a better understanding of myself in the context of the RPG experience.
Rocco
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