non-play
KevinH:
Quote from: contracycle on October 30, 2011, 03:58:18 PM
So, there are people out there who eat food, but they aren't chefs!
I have to respectfully disagree, it's more a case of "there are people who turned up at the pot luck and didn't bring any food."
I recently went through this with a game of PTA where one of the players was extremely passive, disengaged from play and unwilling to contribute in a meaningful way. Admittedly, PTA requires a lot of player effort, but this player would not contribute at all.
Week after week, for a five episode series, the rest of the players would have to coach him through scene creation. Generally, his scenes would just be a continuation of the previous scene. He seemed to be playing the game as though it was D&D and it was just his turn to act.
The final straw for me was when it came to his turn and he sat silently, apparently thinking about his scene. This went on for so long that everyone else got bored and started a side convrsation, at which point he "woke up" and got involved in the chat. At that point, I decided his behaviour was deliberately destructive to play and stopped the game, which was a pity as everyone else was really enjoying it and bringing a lot of energy to the table.
The question raised is, is what such people do play? I'd probably say no. If we're meeting up in a pub to drink, chat and discuss movies/books/RPGs, that's one thing. That's general socialising, no different than if we'd met up to drink, talk about football and try to get into the pants of that hot blond at the bar, no the pretty one.
If we've met up, in whatever venue, to play then we should play. I'm not going to argue for some kind of time-in nazism, but I think it is part of the social contract of gaming that we owe it to the other players to get involved and remain involved, in the fiction.
Callan S.:
Quote from: KevinH on November 14, 2011, 10:23:08 AM
If we've met up, in whatever venue, to play then we should play. I'm not going to argue for some kind of time-in nazism, but I think it is part of the social contract of gaming that we owe it to the other players to get involved and remain involved, in the fiction.
Gah. Be creative because the social contract demands it? You owe someone creativeness?
I think you create when you enjoy it. I think the way creativity works (as far as I estimate) the social contract aught oblige someone to consider if they enjoy creating stuff, ever, and if not, not to attend. The guy in your account sounds like he doesn't enjoy creating (heck, it sounds like creativity doesn't even 'fire' in his head). Or even if you've had a hell of a week at work and have no creative juices, estimate that in yourself and don't attend (and under the SC, others are to understand and even value that sort of choice of someone not attending. This isn't just about 'being together', it's actually attempting to craft something).
I mean, why was that guy invited? The traditional gamer paradigm of including everyone? It's kind of not his fault if he has no creative impulse, yet he gets scooped up by others into an activity he has no talent for.
David Berg:
I'm with ya, Kevin. Though I am curious about how that situation arose. Was it a simple, "We want to roleplay and hang out with Bob, but Bob hates roleplaying," dilemma? There's certainly no magic solution to that! Not unless you have a lot of free time in your schedules, anyway.
Filip Luszczyk:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 30, 2011, 10:27:47 AM
So, my take is that in the case of gamers, we're talking about the social identity of "gamer" without reference to actually playing. Even sitting around a table and rolling dice and "having a character" - it's not play. It's just ... being "there." And in which case, my attention as a practitioner and as a reflector upon the experience, is instantly diverted away. This is emphatically not about styles, modes, goals, or techniques of actual play. It's about playing at all. No play? Off the screen.
So, "off the screen", but how?
Like: "You, you and you. Off the screen, now, and close the door while you're leaving"? Probably not what you mean?
So, you seem to be saying it's not worth taking into account in a gaming discussion, which sort of makes sense but also makes no sense at all when I think about it. Not worth dealing with in actual practice, too? "Their" presence "in the hobby" appears a fact difficult to ignore, no matter how inclusive or exclusive view of the hobby one holds (as in: which systems or practices or whatever still count as part of "it"). Many if not most groups have at least one person like that. Some groups are composed mostly or even entirely of this (broad) type. I think it's safe to assume "they" were a factor in a significant number of sessions discussed in actual play forums here and elsewhere, potentially leading to inaccurate conclusions when the factor remained unspoken. Heck, there are people who design with such audiences in mind, and possibly it was often the case historically, shaping the prevalent forms of gaming texts and traditions and through that the hobby at large.
I'll posit it's pretty much impossible not to encounter "them", unless someone's lucky enough to have a single perfectly dedicated and functional group for their entire time "in the hobby", which seems like a rather unlikely thing to me in most conceivable cases.
I do wish "they" could be put "off the screen" in everyday gaming practice as easily as for the purposes of online discussions. Personally, year after year I'm getting increasingly tired filtering new people, and the only alternative seems to involve no longer inviting at all. That's no alternative however, in the long run, as long as I want to continue gaming and in a manner that is more or less satisfying to me.
For one, how and where to actually draw the line between your "serious practicioner" and "off the screen" type? How serious is serious enough? At what point is it no longer "lack of experience" or "poor skill" or "bad day", but rather "off the screen"?
I find it funny how whenever I state publically that I refuse to play with people who do this or that, there's always somebody waiting to aggressively remind me they are humans too. Also, you know, "gaming should be fun not a chore!"
Filip Luszczyk:
Quote from: David Berg on October 30, 2011, 12:35:47 PM
I wonder if RPGs are more prone to this phenomenon (people who don't want to really do the activity showing up to it anyway) than other social endeavors?
Well, probably "no", but is it actually that important when discussing gaming matters specifically? More important, I guess, is how the phenomenon impacts this particular hobby compared to others and how to handle it.
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My second thought is that maybe conventions are a weird special case, where you roleplay with strangers.
I didn't want it to sound like the issue is limited to conventions, see my latter post. Conventions just make some things painfully obvious, as social bonds are weak enough not to cloud the judgment.
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Which, I guess, might be a tall order, as the non-activity folks don't have too much personal incentive to identify and communicate the difference.
A tall order indeed, so perhaps it's worth to consider other options?
And yes, with some experience one typically knows who one doesn't want to play with, sometimes to the point of accurately spotting warning signs before even starting the game. It doesn't change the fact that the segment of the hobby in question is still there.
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While I think interfering non-participants must go, I think non-interfering non-participants can be integrated. In high school, Andy's 5 best friends in the world all played in my Pitfighter RPG during the main time that he was free to socialize. So, he joined us, and even though he had little interest in roleplaying, he didn't interfere with us doing it, and he got to see his friends.
It reminds me of my high school AD&D group. One of the players was only there because he and some other players were good pals. He played a fighter and his only contributions to the game involved: being there regularly and rolling to hit when asked. As in, literally, rolling to hit and damage and tracking hit points, money and experience were his only activities at the table, 99.9% of time. I plain fail to remember the guy doing anything else throughout about two years of more or less regular gaming together.
Was he interfering or not?
There in fact was a clearly interfering player in that group, but that one was actually more of a "serious practicioner". The fighter player wasn't actively backstabbing the party or anything. He wasn't diverting our attention with needless and unrelated chit-chat or jokes. He also wasn't paying attention that much or offering solutions to problems or combat strategy or even role-playing his character (which we didn't do a lot in AD&D, but still).
He did however consume his share of our DM's attention, our time, our loot, our experience points, our physical table space and our snacks. It's just, an NPC hireling would do the job well enough, at the same time consuming less of our general gaming resources.
Is that enough to call that interference?
Because players like that always drain some resources, even meta-resources like time and attention (and snacks). It's just unavoidable. You can't have an additional player in the game without some additional strain, as trivial as it may be.
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The last bit of your last post reminds me of my friend John's account of a Shadowrun game he checked out. The GM kept the fiction moving, while everyone else wandered in and out of the game itself and the room the game was played in. When a new person sat down and got interested, another player would summarize to them what they'd missed. I believe the event was billed as "come play Shadowrun" but was understood by everyone as, "come to this party, at which there will be Shadowrun".
Does that sound similar to what you've seen?
Ah, not really. I don't think I've ever been in a gaming situation where playing the game wasn't explicit and "official" purpose of the meeting. It's more about how people involved seemed to understand "playing the game".
But obviously, this account seems to fit into the general topic.
Did your friend say whether they his guests were newcomers to the hobby, or people already identifying as gamers, or people with some gaming experience who did not identify as gamers, or some mix?
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I actually think it'd be interesting to design a system that's optimized for this kind of play. I'm working on an attempt called Mead Hall Tales, where there's one Bard telling a tale of various Heroes, and the Heroes have specific, themed ways to interject their accomplishments into the fiction as the players desire. So, people can come, go, watch, or participate, and the GM gets to keep the activity alive, and everyone knows what they're getting into.
I must ask, what's the point of designing for such an audience?
Other that, you know, design for its own sake?
Because, how do you optimize play for something that is not play?
Dead end is all that comes to my mind.
However, I have some thought on designing games optimized for this sort of audience rather than this sort of play. I think the game should be designed as a thick full color hardcover with eye-catching layout and abundant interior art, a remarkable genre artifact in its own right. It should be designed to fit the 40-100$ price range, so that the audience feels it's an important purchase. It should be designed with robust chapters like character creation, equipment, skills and powers, fluff heavy setting written in the best fanfic prose style, some standard issue basic GM advice section and perhaps an appendix with a few example enemies to fight. It should be designed to communicate an overall sense of richness and promise beautiful supplements to come. It should be designed with no real concern for being a complete or working game, more like a box of toys that the reader can randomly take out on a whim and play with a little bit. It should be designed to constantly remind the reader it's not imposing it's systems and content on the group's desired activity.
In other words, it should be like Fluffy Bunny, only 400 pages long and with bunny-free content.
It should be designed as a physical totem, as that's all it ever needs to be.
Lastly, something strikes me as wrong with the "everything goes as long as you know what you are getting into" approach. Hmm, no, I don't think it's like that. You never know exactly what you are getting into before you try. Even if you actually read the manual, no matter how many times you read it, it's not the actual experience. And in the end, that you know what you are getting into still doesn't mean it's in any way good. If I state "this is broken" on the cover it won't change the fact it's broken, even though now everybody who reads the small print knows what they are getting into.
I think it's not very fruitful to disclaim the responsibility or shove it onto the audience. I think it would be more fruitfuil to design the game so that it actually changes the audience through play, teaching participants how to play and more importantly how to enjoy play via tools that wouldn't be possible to ignore. Still, in the tabletop medium, that's probably a fucking utopia. Some video games do a decent job with that, I guess.
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