Lamentations of the Flame Princess is made of lies
Ron Edwards:
Hi Vincent,
The discussion may have proceeded past the point where my comments are relevant, but I'll dissect out the issues I had in mind when I posted.
Let's list the possible input into the preparation-into-play step of role-playing. I wish we had a name for this step - it's the moment when genuine committed imagined input is entering the dialogue, but before "the fiction" has started. It's rarely formalized in rulebooks, but as far as I can tell, it's the single most determinant moment of how well play will proceed. Exactly how it relates to character creation is terra incognita, at present.
Inputs:
A - The person who's "running things," often associated with the tasks of GMing and hence "the GM," as he or she relates to the instructions for play. Note, rarely the instructions for preparation; as I see it, instructions for preparation are rarely read and typically poorly read when they are. Nor is character creation widely understood as itself a significant portion of preparation.
B - Everyone else, receiving instruction from that person. This is not the same as their reading of the instructions, mainly because they hardly ever do, and even if they do, preferring to defer their understanding until the person above presents their version of it.
C - Simultaneously, everyone else (same people as above), internally interacting with actual instructions as received in any way. This is different from the above because they receive those instructions and internally interpret them distinctively relative to whatever expectations and desires they're bringing to the table at the moment. Those expectations and desires are deeply entwined with, perhaps even mainly determined by, experiences with similar games, with "similar" being any perceived identity regardless of actual content. This whole effect is exponentially more important whenever the words "D&D" are involved in any way, as they are here.
It should be clear that unless the group as a whole, not simply one person as director or leader, buys into shared Color as the fundamental starting ground state, that things can go extremely awry extremely silently.
Let's see what happened in your case and how what actually happened differs sharply from your own account of it in your first post.
1. You developed a strong Color orientation through the presentation and pictures of the text, "strong" meaning relevant toward the goals of play and a corresponding image of what starting characters would look like. Apparently this did not come from the rules, but from the descriptive prose and pictures.
2. You began interacting with the players as you described: (i) not summarizing your interpretation of the Color, but (ii) expecting them to arrive at it both through their own readings in some cases, through your name list, and through your presentation of a picture. Perhaps you expected the phrase "no dungeons" to play the role of (i), but I think it turned out to be a non-informative statement.
3. You all conducted character creation. Here, I have to bust out some very specific things, some of which strike me as doomed (in terms of generating a shared Color foundation).
i) You said "the rules" influenced the players to come up with something different from what you had in mind, but I don't think it was the rules except in a minor sense. I think what they had in mind, individually, comes from my C, above. The stated rules were consistent enough with what they had in mind to be folded directly into those expectations and desires. And what those expectations and desires were, as far as I can tell, never received any air time - especially not at the moment they should have, in a dedicated talking-space just prior to the first formal steps of character creation.
ii) You seem to have played zero role in contributing to character creation decisions. Perhaps this is an artifact of talking about Apocalypse World all the time, in which the need to do so is absent because the possible characters are locked down so tightly. For some reason, though, you're explicitly calling out the book as responsible for the fact that you treated your own role at this time as merely "catcher," i.e., they say it, so I guess that's what I'll GM. In other words, the words, "Eppy, that character is totally out of bounds given what I conceived and anticipated in playing with you," never left your lips. I can't see how the book can be responsible for that.
iii) Is it possible that certain OSR standards for being "Gygaxian," in terms of the exact steps of character creation, are indeed a problem, insofar as they serve as an irresistible template for people's C and therefore override any other means of generating a shared Color standard? This experience cannot answer that, as the group didn't do anything to work toward such a standard.
So that's probably enough for discussing at the moment, although I do have some more thoughts kicking around in my head about it.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Oh yeah, one more point that really struck me.
Putting aside the lies issue, and identifying what you're describing simply as a discrepancy between your personal imagery (relevant for play, not mere Color) and that of the other people, how in the world can anyone describe it as fruitful?
Flat fact: you sat down to "play this game" and you didn't get to do it. You had to play another game. The fact that you found the other game to be a viable alternative with virtues of its own is not relevant. I'm looking at the first two sentences of this paragraph - why or how can you consider this a fruitful phenomenon? To me, it's a mega-fail.
Best, Ron
lumpley:
Oh.
That's a break point, yeah, but I'm on the other side of it. I don't think that the game I didn't get to play is the real or interesting game. I surely don't need a thread about it.
I don't have any objection to anything you said! You've described the creative abortion of that game perfectly well.
But the reason I say "fruitful" is because I'm looking back from the point of view of the real game I'm actually playing and enjoying! If there's any earthly reason to examine my expectations before play, or our creatively difficult* character creation session, it's from this point of view, not the other.
* "Extremely awry, extremely silently," yes.
So the story of the game I'm actually playing is, I went away discouraged, thwarted, but then I got one of those subtle-but-thorough changes in perspective, and it brought the shared color we did have into place as a (potential) foundation, while also showing me how to create really hot situations with little effort. This is exciting! This is what I'm here to talk about.
Here's a thing I can maybe say. That moment you wish had a name? At the very beginning of the first real session, I said some concrete color things about longboats coming out to meet the ship, and the furs they were carrying, and how they traded the fur for the passengers to take to the beach. Then I opened the live fiction with the characters stepping off the longboats into thigh-deep water and wading to shore - but I think that moment of setup was significant beyond simple framing. If nothing else, I stepped forward with my own confidence in our ability to create, share and commit.
-Vincent
David Berg:
Are you sticking to your original contention of "the GM text gave me good reason to expect Weird Historical Horror" or not?
If so, perhaps an instruction, "GM, guide char-gen with what you've learned here, as the char-gen rules are mute on it," is what's missing?
I've been curious about this game for a while, with a mixture of hope that the GM text would provide vital tools and dread that it'd be irrelevant.
C. Edwards:
I've always felt that the unforgiving and hostile universe presented through the older versions of the D&D rules really highlight and lend gravity to any attempted acts of heroism as well as create a wonderful environment for moral drama. As in the real world, minimizing risk, maximizing profit, and accruing power and influence seem to be the most logical goals. But we're not purely creatures of logic. So even the most hardened mercenary/logical player can find their passions inflamed by some situation in the game. I imagine that the focus on color/situations of weird horror in LotFP will really benefit that aspect of play to a much greater degree than an average dungeon crawl.
Unforgiving, hostile universe as the ultimate fruitful void.
High level play tends to alter that as PC's start to resemble mythical heroes more than human beings.
Rampant character mortality is definitely not for everyone though, and I would guess that the next person to drop out will be the player of the first character that dies.
Out of curiosity, Vincent, I get the impression that old school D&D wasn't a formative part of your rpg experiences?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page