A Year of Crappy Roleplaying
Caldis:
In response to your question, yes gaming can often be like that mostly because the games havent provided much focus for what the activity is supposed to be, but it doesnt have to be. If you can find a focus and convey it to the group things tend to run much smoother.
Sounds like you've managed to analyze the problems quite well. In big Model terms you've picked up on the Social Contract problems (the guy there have fun at others expense) the lack of Creative Agenda to focus your game and at the technical level you've realized your not all that into complex rule systems.
I think your idea for a focused gamist approach sounds ideal for your group. Check out this link for a strong example of a gamist scenario that doesnt suffer from not being connected to the game world. It has a solid setting that has impact on the game. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=21227.0
IMO picking out a system for such a game isnt all that hard. If you are comfortable with B/X D&D then by all means use it. The rules in these systems (D&D, Rifts from the example above, Savage Worlds from what I know of it) dont really accomplish anything all that complicated. By that I mean the rules mostly deal with combat situations which are important but like in the example above they dont totally determine succes and failure. It's up to the GM to determine timing considerations and how they affect the scenario as well as judging what affect players plans and schemes will have on the action, not to mention deciding on what opposition they will face.
I think the solid focus should help with some of your social issues but you really have to be firm about poor actions that lead to failure. Firm but fair is the old school D&D mantra and it applys in this case, dont let a bad impression from previous games spoil your judgement but if he puts his character in danger let him face the consequences.
aleric:
Hello Forge,
I've been a long time lurker, but was moved to post because my gaming group was stuck in a similar situation to InkSpot's and we just recently seem to be pulling out of it. I think the hardest first step was just bringing up the topic that you weren't happy with the game situation (constructively, instead of the usual Upper Midwestern gamer tradition of saying nothing until you find an excuse to explode and stomp away). It took a while - switching to mostly board games and discussing what we were looking for in a rpg for a year, and involved uninviting several regular participants (who we'd been gaming with for more than 20 years) until they dealt with their out of game behavior issues.
One of the big things we insisted on when starting this new campaign (Gurps 4E fantasy - I hope to post game reports at some point) is that all our characters had a common background (working for the 'Lorekeepers', an ancient group of knowledge collectors - also sort of fun because we have several librarians in the group) to avoid the 'why are our characters together in the first place' issue.
Eric,
Ron Edwards:
Hi Nick (and Eric too, welcome Eric!),
A lot of what came to mind after reading your first post has been covered already, and probably better, by Caldis and others. Here's my take on a couple of the last points.
First, after a lot of wrangling in earlier Forge discussions, it became clear that the relationship among (i) liking other people, (ii) being friends with them, and (iii) gaming successfully with them are really hard to tease apart. Especially since in our gamer culture, or more generally along the lines of the famous Five Geek Social Fallacies, it's often considered rude and evil to talk as if they were different things.
Although it's pretty clear that (i-iii) are related, or can be, or come to be, I don't know if we ever managed to get a good clear picture here.
However, a while ago, I was a little more successful in thinking about how in most social, leisure activities, especially those which rely on the participants doing something rather than merely spectating, everyone pretty much grasps that the following three things have be the case:
1. "I" (meaning each of the participants) must want to do this thing, at this moment at least, more than I want to do any other thing that we might be doing for fun.
2. "I" (same thing) want to do this thing with these particular people, because I like the way they do it with me.
3. Finally, we all understand that this thing requires a certain attention to do it well and most enjoyably, and we are going to help one another maintain that attention, and reinforce it when we see one another do it.
Again, thinking specifically in terms of what people get together to do, in groups, for fun, I can't think of anything in which those three statements are not baseline expectations. Even someone who's lukewarm on one of them is expected to step up a little to fill in that gap, and no one who is demonstrably wholly uncommitted to any one of these things will be invited back to do it again.
... except for hobby gaming. It's kind of appalling how thoroughly this set of expectations is not only left out of talking about the activity, but even rejected out of hand in many cases.
So Nick, I bring this up because I totally accept that you do like these folks, or most of them ... but I'm saying that liking people is not actually the same as those three baseline points. In fact, friendship itself (in the sense that friendship is a more dedicated thing than merely liking someone) isn't the same either. If I'm not mistaken, the problems you're talking about arise out of not having that baseline. I'm not there, though, not playing with these people or knowing them, so I'm interested to know if that makes any sense or seems helpful.
Best, Ron
Chris_Chinn:
Hi Nick,
I'll have to come back to your post and take some time to digest it, but it sounds like some of what you're dealing with has relation to some things I've written about:
http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/the-roots-of-the-big-problems/
http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/a-way-out/
http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/
The core issue of all three of those is that for any game to work, everyone has to actually want to play -this- game, -this- way, and, somehow, to coordinate that. Roleplaying culture has notoriously engaged in a lot of traditions which make that very difficult to achieve.
It'll probably be a few days before I can post in detail.
Chris
Callan S.:
It's worth raising the idea that in terms of doing this thing, alot of roleplay texts are actually disruptive to this qualification, giving one person the idea this thing is X, another that this thing is Y and another that it's Z. Other games, like chess, give everyone an the exact same understanding of what this thing is. While roleplay games have been scrambling peoples brains on it for years.
Or so I'd suggest they have. If anyone thinks they haven't, I'd just ask; what would a game have to read like to give people different impressions of what this thing is? Then compare that to traditional RPG texts.
So I suggest you've had one basic requirement undermined by the text itself, pretty much your whole roleplay career.
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