Sunday 9 March 2014

Balance of Power Part II: The Associative Game

In a traditional role-playing game, most of the participants will be playing the associative game, so we will take a look at that first. The reason that most participants will be playing the associative game is threefold: (1) any given GM can run a game for a number of players, and in most cases, the game is more fun if there are at least 3 participants in the associated game, allowing the players to react to each other as well as to the game milieu, (2) it is the easier of the two games to play, in that it requires both less prep and a less skill varied to do well, and (3) for many people, it is where the majority of the fun and interest of role-playing games is to be found.

In its purest form, the players of such a game would not need to know or understand any rules at all. Who and what their characters were could be conveyed descriptively, and the players could make choices from that standpoint without knowing the rules that underlay their outcome.  Of course, most players prefer to have some understanding of the basics of the game. The traditional rpg splits rules between those that the players should know, and those that the GM must know. In the early days of the hobby, it was very much discouraged for players to examine the GM rules, not because it removed the authority of the GM, but because it deprived the player of the opportunity to learn how the game milieu works from actual play; i.e., from an associated stance.

How to strengthen the associated stance has been a question that many groups, and many game designers, have tried to answer over the years. In some groups, for instance, the large-scale creation of the game milieu is devised by the players and GM as a unit - in other words, everyone participates in the dissociated game - so that the players will have the basic knowledge of the world that their characters would presumably have. Other games stress a world in which knowledge is scarce and precious. Still other games, like the classic Traveller and Hârn setting, produce materials that are designed to convey background information to players and GM alike.

Although some games have moved far afield in layering dissociated mechanics on the player's side of the table - 4th Edition D&D being an obvious example - much of the fun and interest in playing a traditional rpg comes from discovering the unknown within a game milieu where the player is able to act from his or her PC's point of view. If this is what you are interested in as a player, excessive dissociated mechanics are undesirable. Likewise, excessive input into the game milieu's composition is undesirable. Gamers love to tell stories about those moments in which the game turned 180° from what they expected, when they came to a sudden understanding of the connections that created a rational whole from what had seemed to disparate parts, when they miscalculated, when they came up with a solution to solve what had appeared unsolvable.

It is easy to find a player who will talk animatedly about when he resolved a mystery, or encountered the unexpected. It is very difficult to find a player who will be so enthused about when thing occurred exactly as expected.

This is the primary tension one sees in rpgs - The players want to win.  They want to manage risk so that they increase the odds of their winning.  Ultimately, the players strive to play it safe, BUT "playing it safe" only retains its interest so long as there is no way to play it completely safe. Managing risk is only fun when not all risk is manageable. A flat track does not a roller coaster make.


40 comments:

  1. I have to disagree with the premise of this post. You seem to be positioning the associative gameplay as the one that leads to twists, turns, and a sense of discovery whereas games that front-load the milieu creation as a group exercise do not, which is a false dichotomy. I think we should talk about social contracts again, because that's really what group generated-milieu is about.

    For games like Traveller, DCC, or most variants of D&D, the premise is built into the rules. You're playing adventurers/explorers and are going to interact with the world/planes/universe, and take risks for reward (loot, XP, both of which make you more effective adventurers/explorers). While you can certainly do other things within those rulesets, each one is written with a specific goal in mind. D&D, for example, is a largely a game about killing monsters. I don't say that in a way that denigrates it, but you do what a game has rules for and that is the bulk of them for any edition.

    Group generated milieu allows groups to build the premise, but what happens in the game is still just as unknown. You are essentially saying, "this is what I want this game to focus on." That's it. The players still need to explore the world, take risks, puzzle over mysteries, but all of that is done within the framework of the premise you decided upon as a group.

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  2. Except, Vanguard, you're ignoring the fact that one cannot discover that which they have created. If the milieu is generated by the players in a large amount, it diminishes that which they can discover. A writer is not surprised by their own book. It is the difference between discovering a setting through a character and creating a story as a participant in the act.

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    1. Comments like this lead me to believe the person making them has limited experience with this sort of thing. I don't mean that as an attack; I've just seen the same criticism levied against this idea literally every time this has been brought up on the internet, but I have never experienced this in an actual game.

      For the sake of clarity, let me provide examples of the sort of thing this group milieu creation has produced in my own personal games.

      I'm running a game I would describe as "medieval walking dead." That was how I pitched it to the players, and from there we made a few things canon before creating any characters. This disease was not the work of a sorcerer or necromancer, but more akin to the black plague. We decided it was possible to be cured, but no one knew how and there was no record of anyone ever being cured. We set the level of ruin as being moderate; kingdoms had fallen, but there were a few strongholds pushing back against the encroaching darkness.

      From there, the players decided tat they were part of a mercenary company and their current job was to rescue a cardinal from a faraway city no one had ever visited. That was the extent of the setup.

      In the few session we've played, the group encountered a rival mercenary group claiming dominion over the now-abandoned tracts of land, a gravedigger who the walking dead ignored who agreed to lead them to the city, and finally arrived at the city only to discover the cardinal has no plans of leaving, that one of his aides wrote the note asking for rescue fearing for his own life and forged the cardinals name.

      I'm curious what sense of discovery was lost in this setup.

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    2. " This disease was not the work of a sorcerer or necromancer, but more akin to the black plague. We decided it was possible to be cured, but no one knew how and there was no record of anyone ever being cured."

      Discovering this!

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    3. Did we actually lose anything? I mean in a way that harms the game, as that was how Raven positioned this use of "dissociative setup." I would argue no.

      The necromancer that summons hordes of undead to do his bidding is a pretty well worn trope. We, as a group decided we weren't interested in that kind of story. We wanted to focus on the effects of widespread disease, resource management in a crumbling world, and what people do to survive in a lawless land. Having an easy off-switch, where the players can find the source of the problem would likely be to shift the focus to doing just that.

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    4. Vanguard, it seems fairly obvious to me that the only things you lose discovering are those things that you decide together as a group, and the possibility of anything that would invalidate those decisions. The second part, for example, includes the idea that the un-dead are the result of mind flayers working from the dark side of the moon, which is precluded from your set-up.

      Anything you decide as a group is not going to be discovered through play. By minimizing what you decided as a group, you minimized your loss of this aspect. That does not seem to me to contradict what I said in any way. Surely you are not arguing that, had you decided a great deal more as a group, that this would not have impacted what was to be discovered in game? Or that the amount that you decide as a group doesn't directly impact the amount of potential discovery that is lost?

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    5. In fact, AFAICT, what you describe is addressed in paragraph 3 of the blog post.

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    6. I'll reply to both of your posts here.

      "Vanguard, it seems fairly obvious to me that the only things you lose discovering are those things that you decide together as a group, and the possibility of anything that would invalidate those decisions."

      I don't think lose is the right term for this. If you've ever run a module, I'm sure the players heard/read the blurb at some point, or failing that, got read a bit of background information for the setup. Would you consider that losing anything? I think not. You're setting the premise. I see no difference between that and deciding what the premise is going to be as a group.

      "That does not seem to me to contradict what I said in any way. Surely you are not arguing that, had you decided a great deal more as a group, that this would not have impacted what was to be discovered in game? Or that the amount that you decide as a group doesn't directly impact the amount of potential discovery that is lost?"

      This is all hypothetical, as my games seldom begin with more than a handful of props on the stage, so to speak. I'm particularly arguing against the idea that the game is harmed by this method (as you suggest), which so far as my experience dictates, it is not. So sure, some of these decisions close some doors while opening others, but no more so than the top-down approach, but no more than say, choosing what edition/game to play (ie, race as class a la DCC or the existence of Dragonborn in 4th edition).

      As an aside, the issue of it not being the product of black magic is addressed within the fiction of the game. When the sickness first appeared, nearly everyone who dabbled in the arcane arts was put to the sword or run out of town. As such, magic is feared and distrusted and the few cities that stand have all but outlawed it.

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    8. If you'd like a closer look inside the game, I wrote out the Prologue to it here:

      http://earthlightacademy.blogspot.com/2014/02/burning-dead-prologue.html

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    9. I hate to be contradictory, but when making a tradeoff, one needs to be able to balance what one gains with what one loses. If you do not address gains and losses as such, you lose the ability to do this effectively. So, no, "losing" is the correct term.

      There is a great deal of difference, in terms of discovery through play, between being given background information that your PC may know (which increases association of decision-making between player and PC) and devising background (which makes the player an author, and dissociates her from the position of her PC).

      "A strange sickness appears, and nearly everyone who dabbled in the arcane arts was put to the sword or run out of town. Magic is feared and distrusted, and in many places outlawed." increases the questions that the players face, and aligns those questions with the same doubts that the PCs would have. Magic may still be the root cause. There may be no cure. Etc. It remains possible that mind flayers on the dark side of the moon are performing a ritual that will destroy the world through a tide of dead, or that Daleks have bombarded the planet with organisms intended to destroy the native sentient species.

      "It is a natural disease, akin to the Black Death" ends all speculation, and completely removes the sense of discovery when one realizes that it is a natural disease akin to the Black Death. It ends all speculation and doubt on that point. In fact, it suggests that isolating oneself as far as possible from all other people is the best way to survive. Smart players may well decide to hunt down disease vectors.

      But, I am guessing, that is not the social contract at your table. Instead, the players must now avoid acting on what they know. This definitely stands between association with the PCs.

      Again, as I stated at the top of the first post in this series: Your social contract is your own. You do not have to agree with me. You and your group get to decide what trade-offs you think are worthwhile. I am describing what I do, and why. The purpose is to open a dialogue, and I appreciate your participation in it!

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    10. Weird.

      I got a 404 error following your link, but I swear it is the same as I cut & pasted when I scrolled down and located the post. http://earthlightacademy.blogspot.ca/2014/02/burning-dead-prologue.html

      In your prologue, you say "All that is known...." and then describe something the world as it would appear from the PC's perspective. But, if it is also true that the players know that it is not magical, that it is a natural phenomenon akin to the Black Death, it must perforce be true that you wish them to act as though they are not aware of information they possess.

      This is in no way akin to choosing a rule set, or a character class. Neither of those forces you to act against the interests of your PC. Your players may not actually be strongly interested in the associative element, or they may feel that the tradeoff of creating the background is worth the loss of the associate element to this degree. I can't say.

      What I can say is that your comments, taken in contrast to your prologue, highlights a difference between what the players know and what the PCs know.

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    11. But all of those things do not matter within the scope of this game, which is why I said lose is not really the appropriate term. The players aren't trying to cure the disease. They're not trying to discover the origins of it in the hopes that it may shed some light on how to stop it. They're mercenaries who make a lot more money from the existence of the disease. Their line of work puts them in direct contact with it. The win condition for this scenario is not predicated on them doing anything other than rescuing this cardinal and returning to the city to collect their reward. So I'll ask again, if the players have no interest or intention (and we know this because it was discussed during the setup) of curing or learning more about the disease, what did they lose? Hypothetical harm in this situation is not actual harm.

      "But, I am guessing, that is not the social contract at your table. Instead, the players must now avoid acting on what they know. This definitely stands between association with the PCs."

      This doesn't really come into play since the players aren't rooting out sorcerers and looking for clues about the disease. They've spent the bulk of their time trying to find a safe route to the city, dealing with the sick, keeping watch against the walking dead, and making sure they avoid the mercenary camps they've run into a few times now.

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    12. I did it again to test, and your link worked fine. I don't know why the 404 error occurred. InterWebs gremlins, I guess. :/

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    13. You really don't see any relationship between deciding what caused the disease before play, and the players not trying to discover the origins of it? You say that all those things do not matter within the scope of the game, whereas I say that those things place limitations upon the scope of the game.

      And I also say, it does matter that the players are being asked to dissociate what they know with what their PCs know. You may one day decide that there is a sorcerer-type being stoned by a mob. The PCs would have no way of knowing that the sorcerer did not cause the disease; the players know that he did not for a fact. On at least one front, the complexity of the scenario collapses.

      In addition, why would the players have any interest in learning more about the disease, when they are already well informed before play even begins? Can you really not see how and why their interest and intentions might be different without this information?

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    14. Sorry, that last comment was poorly written, with Paras 1 & 2 being almost identical.

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    15. Because they're the ones who made the decision in the first place. The question was asked, "Do you want to be trying to find the cure to this disease?" They said no, they'd rather do something within the framework of living in a world wracked by the disease. This led to the question, "Is it even curable?" And the answer was yes, but no one knows how. Again, the group decided this.

      And of course they place limitations, but no more than any other game setup.

      I think we can sum up this debate with a simple question: if one does not experience something they have no interest or desire in experiencing, are they losing out?

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    16. If you put it that way, the answer is Yes.

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    17. And I have to add that, yes, you have also added limitations to your game setup that other setups do not have. You may be happy with that, but that does not mean that the limitations do not exist. Moreover, I note that when I address specific limitations, you do not respond to them.

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    18. "If you put it that way, the answer is Yes."

      I would disagree. I have no desire to be robbed, for example, and I don't feel like my life will be measurably worse if I don't experience it or measurably better if I do.

      I have acknowledged these decisions do limit the game. I just think those limitations are different, not a more/less equation.

      Could you please highlight the specific limitations you want me to address?

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    19. As an example, "You may one day decide that there is a sorcerer-type being stoned by a mob. The PCs would have no way of knowing that the sorcerer did not cause the disease; the players know that he did not for a fact. On at least one front, the complexity of the scenario collapses."

      While I do appreciate your taking the time to comment, and I do like reading the POV of others, I am also curious how you imagine that limitations do not become part of a "more/less equation" by their very nature?

      I will grant you that, when the player input into the creation of the milieu is limited, whatever may be lost as a result is limited to the same degree. Surely you would acknowledge that, were you to run Bone Hoard of the Dancing Horror unaltered, and were I to participate, the fact that I devised the scenario would perforce limit my ability to play a PC in a fully associated way? By which I mean, I would be forced to stand outside the PC's mindset and determine what the PC would make of the information presented, in the same way that I would do so for an NPC were I GMing. I simply would not gain a true "player experience".

      This is not to say that I could not have fun. I obviously enjoy the dissociated game; I GM.

      So let me try to rephrase the main point: The more information the players have about the scenario that their PCs do not, the more the players must dissociate their knowledge with the PCs' POV. The more that this is true, the more the ability to play the PC within the associated game is lost, and the more the players' experience resembles that of the GM playing an NPC.

      While this may not be obvious when the difference between PC/player knowledge is small, it nonetheless exists, and it grows exponentially as the difference increases.

      I hope that is clear.

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    20. "As an example, 'You may one day decide that there is a sorcerer-type being stoned by a mob. The PCs would have no way of knowing that the sorcerer did not cause the disease; the players know that he did not for a fact. On at least one front, the complexity of the scenario collapses.'"

      This kind of scenario would be unlikely in the game. None of the character's have Beliefs (see below) about this kind of thing, and none of them particularly care about the lives of innocents.

      "While I do appreciate your taking the time to comment, and I do like reading the POV of others, I am also curious how you imagine that limitations do not become part of a "more/less equation" by their very nature? "

      Because I don't think there is an objective rubric we could agree upon to count them. One consideration in all of this is the system used, which is partially the sorcerer situation you mentioned would never happen. I'm running this game using The Burning Wheel. It has no classes, no XP, and the characters codify Beliefs on their character sheets. None of them have Beliefs about magic being/not being the cause of the disease (Belief has a particular game function within this system; it is a little different than just the general usage, and the game necessitates that you do this kind of group scenario creation).

      How does system affect limitations? In DCC, which is your game of choice (and a great one), you have 7 main options with a few variations (alignment, deity, patron, occupation, etc.). You can produce a lot of different outputs from tweaking the nobs, so to speak. Burning Wheel, on the other hand, has 200 pages of character options (four races: Human, Elf, Orc, and Dwarf), 50 pages of skills, 40 pages of traits. It goes without saying that sheer amount of options available dwarfs that of DCC. That doesn't make it better, it is simply a difference. Apples and Oranges of course, but if we're counting, a greater range of possibilities exists within BW, both numerically and conceptually.

      "The more information the players have about the scenario that their PCs do not, the more the players must dissociate their knowledge with the PCs' POV. The more that this is true, the more the ability to play the PC within the associated game is lost, and the more the players' experience resembles that of the GM playing an NPC."

      I disagree. It has overwhelmingly been my experience in games with the more top-down style of management that I have felt less like an active participant and more of the hand that turns the page in the GMs story. I do not believe this is just a problem with my groups; I've played D&D for 15 years now and this has been the case more often than not.

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    21. Apparently all of the "in a traditional role-playing game" bits must have missed your attention. Lol. I have been pretty careful about qualifying my statements in this regard. Storytelling games may be fun, but storytelling games are not what I was discussing in this series of blog posts..

      Part I paragraphs 1-2 also might be of interest to you.

      In any event, you seem to be arguing with something other than the contents of the post ("top-down management style"? "story"?). It is a pretty simple question: Do you agree, or do you not agree, that if you ran a scenario that I wrote it would impact my ability to play the game from an associated standpoint?

      I could write a whole series of posts on how codifying your character's personality as a game element stands in the way of the associated game, but I actually find your "hand that turns the pages in the GMs story" comment more interesting. Can you define what you mean by "story" in this context?

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    23. Burning Wheel is not a story game by any stretch. It is a traditional roleplaying game (as per your definition, one GM many players) that puts the focus on the players goals.

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    24. I will be happy to address this when you have answered by questions in the 12:52 comment.

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    25. "In any event, you seem to be arguing with something other than the contents of the post ("top-down management style"? "story"?). It is a pretty simple question: Do you agree, or do you not agree, that if you ran a scenario that I wrote it would impact my ability to play the game from an associated standpoint?"

      Top-down style of management = only the GM creates the milieu, places the toys in the sandbox, etc. It would impact the game, and I know where you're going with this. Designing a module and then trying to play it without using any of the information you have as the creator is not the same thing as collectively designing a situation and then playing it out to some logical end.

      "Can you define what you mean by "story" in this context?"

      Story simply means the narrative threads happening in game.

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    26. Of course you know where I was going with that, because it is pretty obvious. Designing a situation and then trying to play it without using any of the information you have as the creator is exactly the same thing as collectively designing a situation and then trying to play it without using any of the information you have as the creators. In fact, using your own comments, it is repeatedly brought up that AFTER the collective design phase, you designed additional material (generally during play) which the players were not involved in designing. Unless I misunderstood, you seemed to argue that nothing was lost due to the collective creation on the basis of the subsequent individual creation.

      If you want to argue that collective creation has no limiting effect because you don't notice the small effects from very limited collective creation, you should be able to see the effect by extrapolating from a less limited example.

      If story simple means the narrative threads happening in the game, I fail to understand how you felt like you were just turning pages in the GM's story. Did you feel that you had no input into the narrative threads of the ongoing game? That your choices didn't matter? What?

      I am sorry, but your answer doesn't explicate the statement.

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    27. "Designing a situation and then trying to play it without using any of the information you have as the creator is exactly the same thing as collectively designing a situation and then trying to play it without using any of the information you have as the creators."

      No, it's really not. Let's review this one more time. The situation we created was as follows:

      -The world overrun with zombies
      -These zombies were the product of disease not magic
      -The players were playing mercenaries, trying to make a quick buck by saving a cardinal stranded in a faraway city

      You've been hammering on this point about because the players know that it is not the product of sorcerers/magic that it is somehow affecting their play. Again: it's not. Why? Because that has nothing to do with what the characters are trying to accomplish: rescuing the cardinal. So they can get paid. Because that's what they were hired to do.

      Now pair that to your example of playing through a module you designed. The reason why these are not the same is because none of the details of the world they experienced (that is, the world in between the city they were leaving and the city they were traveling to) existed before they encountered it in play. There was no world map. All of that was handled on the fly through actual play.

      In your module, however, there was a set of procedures and situations that, assuming I stick to, you are familiar with. To repeat, that particular kind of information was not available to the players because it did not exist until it came up in actual play.

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    28. Gravity bends space-time. This is not directly observable most of the time, but it is nonetheless true. It is true not only for super-massive things such as stars, but for much smaller things, such as a speck of dust. The smaller the mass, the smaller the effect. But just because you do not notice the effect, it does not mean that it is not there.

      It took witnessing the apparent displacement of stars during an eclipse to demonstrate that gravity curved space-time, but once people saw the big example, few of them continued to claim that the little example was still untrue.

      And, again, you are arguing that the shared creation has little impact BECAUSE OF the independent creation. Really, you cannot disprove a thesis that independent creation is necessary because enough independent creation can outweigh a small amount of group creation.

      I keep bringing up the point about the players knowing that the problem has a natural cause because, according to your description, that is pretty much the only detail of shared creation that exists. Therefore, it is the only detail that is relevant.

      Your example is similar to Matt's example with the laundry from a previous post. Given that the players are not involved in determining the game milieu, and given that the information in your prologue is true, there are a great many things that the PCs might do. Not all of them involve trying to make a quick buck by saving a cardinal stranded in a faraway city. In fact, if the players are making decisions based upon the POV of their characters, if they are playing the associative game, they may decide that money doesn't have any real value in the post-apocalyptic world they inhabit. In a traditional role-playing game, choosing your goals is not something that happens immutably before play begins; goals are something that constantly evolve as the game milieu is revealed. And when I say "revealed" I do not mean dictated by the hand of a tyrannical GM; I mean uncovered through the agency of actual play.

      You say that the issue doesn't come up because none of the players have Beliefs about the cause of the disease, or, presumably, about what should be done about it. Why is that? Because they accepted the limitations of the scenario prior to making their characters. Well, okay. So be it. The limitation occurred upfront, and they agreed to it prior to gaining any information about the independent creation that you subsequently did. That's still a real limitation. And they can't really take part in what was one of the biggest things happening during the real Black Death - speculating about what caused it, and what to do about it - because the most natural POV activity in the scenario is removed before the scenario began.

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    29. There is a reason that the characters go to the CDC in The Walking Dead, rather than just starting with the Guv. And Lo! if another play on the root cause didn't come up recently. Why? Because this is the natural trajectory unless some form of "gravity" pulls the scenario out of shape.

      Likewise, you are unable to see how the "should we save him or let him get stoned?" sorcerer scenario can be used because of those earlier decisions, even though such a dilemma is extremely likely within a "Medieval Walking Dead" scenario.

      I get that these don't seem like limitations to you. They seem like glaringly obvious limitations to me. Your reasons why they are not limitations are like hearing someone defend a linear dungeon scenario with "That doesn't apply! You couldn't have chosen another route because there was no other route to choose! Besides, they decided to go straight!"

      Look, I get that any kind of scenario design perforce limits choices. You cannot slay a dragon if there are no dragons to be slain. But there is no point in looking for a dragon, either, if you know that none exist. Nor can you be surprised by the occurrence of a dragon in a world where they are believed to not exist, if "dragons do not exist" is more than what the PCs believe, but is in fact a rule of the world.

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    30. My definition of a traditional rpg also includes: "In a traditional rpg, the players are granted the opportunity to experience and take action within an imaginary milieu as though they were making decisions for an inhabitant of that milieu."

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    31. I just went back to YagimiFire's comment that started this long back-and-forth:

      "Except, Vanguard, you're ignoring the fact that one cannot discover that which they have created. If the milieu is generated by the players in a large amount, it diminishes that which they can discover. A writer is not surprised by their own book. It is the difference between discovering a setting through a character and creating a story as a participant in the act."

      Vanguard then says: "Comments like this lead me to believe the person making them has limited experience with this sort of thing. I don't mean that as an attack; I've just seen the same criticism levied against this idea literally every time this has been brought up on the internet, but I have never experienced this in an actual game."

      Clearly, in everything that follows, Vanguard is attempting to disprove the thesis that "If the milieu is generated by the players IN A LARGE AMOUNT, it diminishes that which they can discover" (emphasis mine) with an example that does not counter the premise (i.e., one in which the majority of milieu creation is done by himself, and in which the player involvement in milieu creation is minimal).

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    32. Okay, so Burning Wheel is a traditional RPG then. Moving on.

      I stand by my comments that no amount of prep has ever limited the scope of discovery within my games. I also stand by the fact that these comments are made largely by people who have little experience with this process. Have you ever personally used group fiction creation, RCK? This is a yes or no question.

      To the larger point, group milieu creation is just a jumping off point. You're essentially placing props on a stage. but how they get resolved, how this play ends (to extend the metaphor) is all determined through play, ie players playing the associative game (to use your terminology).

      In any of the games where we have done more than average world building, this hasn't limited the range of possibilities in my experience at all; it's actually had the opposite effect of making things more unpredictable as there is more moving pieces.

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    33. Vanguard, glad you are still in the conversation. I would like to answer your question with a Yes or No, but I would appreciate it if you told me what you consider a Yes answer to entail. Is the creation of a milieu with others enough? Or do you mean the creation of a milieu, while creating the PCs at the same time, and determining what the storyline is to be as well? I cannot answer accurately until I know just what you mean.

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    34. Sure: have you generated a shared fictional space with your group and then played a game using said fiction? Since we're particularly interested in this from the players perspective, as that's where most of your criticism lies, I want to know if you've played in a game where you did this, and, if so, how did these issues manifest? Did you have to dissociate your character knowledge at all (btw, I think we can just call this metagaming)? Did you find that your game lacked surprise?

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    35. Vanguard,

      I had responded to you, but the Internet went out, and I lost the comment. So, short form: Yes, but I am sure not as much as you. Yes, and we have already discussed the manifestation quite a bit: one cannot be surprised that a secret nest of vampires hides in the sewers if you determined this before play. Yes. Yes.

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  3. "In its purest form, the players of such a game would not need to know or understand any rules at all."

    After my son and his friends tried their hands at 4e, I started an LBB game for them. They don't really know the rules at all, but I'm fairly sure they're having fun learning as they play! As a bonus, there is almost NO meta-gaming!

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  4. Yeah, I introduced some kids to RPGs and didn't really bother trying to explain the rules up front... I didn't even give them character sheets because I figured that would be a distraction. It wasn't a decision made out of wanting 'control'... but giving an opportunity at that sort of total immersion from the start, letting the rules drift in naturally... similar to what I had when I first played. As a player I'd ideally prefer that for myself as well... only interacting with the game through my PC's mindset... no meta-concerns at all (though rolling dice is still fun).

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