In which I become much more specific and discover the problem I am truly facing.

Zak S. had some good feedback for me on my last post and through our conversation I have come to a few conclusions.

• I don't mean collaboration. What I am talking about is participating. A game is created by mutual participation in the game. I am not talking about games where the storytelling responsibility is equally shared among all participants.
• The problem I am grappling with is when players either don't participate in the game or are hostile to the game.
• I am not talking about quiet players, quiet players participate - just not always vocally.
• This behavior begs the question of why are they playing.

Zak said this:

If someone is at your table it isn't necessarily because of some gameological compatibility--it's because they bring something (anything: creativity, friendship, snacks) to the table that you want at that table.If you want that at the table, then you don't get to change them. You, like any general, use what they bring (wanted and unwanted) to somehow fuel the game .If a player just wants to hit things with an axe, create situations where that desire makes the game more interesting for everyone rather than treating it as an obstacle.Your players have traits: you can use them for you or against you. If you use them for you, then you create an exciting game that will make everyone want to extend themselves in new ways.

I think this is very well-phrased. I think that deep problems arise when a participant is no longer bringing something that you want to the table or if  what the player wants is outside the scope of what you can provide in a game. At this point the game fails - at least in the context of that individual.

This is what I was talking about with the terms collaboration and consensus. We at the table all come together to play this thing and bring whatever we have to offer. If one of the participants either: doesn't give anything; or interferes with the ability of the other players to participate you have a failure of the game.

What I meant by rescue (which may have been a poorly chosen word) is: how can we invite a player who is not participating to participate? The problem may be that there the situation only occurs when there is no longer anything that the player can or wants to bring to the game which is compatible with the game the others are playing.

For whatever reason, I have noticed that this is most often an issue with people who have been roleplaying for a long time - hence the veteran player aspect. I suspect this is because some players may only have continued to roleplay for social reasons - and that over time the gap between their actual needs and desires from a game have increasingly diverged from what roleplaying has to offer - leading to anti-social play.

Perhaps why play with new players tends to be better is that there is no social impetus for the game to occur. This would also apply to online play. The game only happens because of mutual interest.

In terms of solving my particular problem? I think that sadly there is no game remedy, so the problem is inevitably a social one.

Game Through Consensus

I love playing with players who are new to the hobby. They have no preconceptions. I try to run my game as much as possible by consensus. Whether it be the crunchiest modern system or the lightest OSR system consensus is the aspiration at my table. Collaboration is the only vehicle to a successful game. As I play with new players more I find that they are more open to the collaborative and consensus driven nature of my game. I find that often the more exposure players have had to role-playing the less they are interested in the group story. I don't know why this is. Maybe as players gain more experiences they become more particular as to what they want the story to be about and stop listening to the others at the table (or even the gamemaster)? Or maybe it is just that they have had a lot of non-collaborative roleplaying modeled to them, so they have become habituated to a different style of game - whereas the new player learns from what I model and suggest which may be quite different?

In either case how can we rescue the veteran roleplayer?

I also wonder if this is a problem I face alone, but my experience as a teacher tells me that a problem one person is having is often just the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone have any thoughts?

on the modern game player

Holy crap, it's been over 7 months since I posted anything. I haven't been posting because I've been busy with work, life, and gaming! So I am content with that.

I've been running a lot of games in that 7 months including a nice sustained Swords & Wizardry game that lasted a pretty good while. Since then though the group has fallen apart and attempts to begin new games have been failures.

Last night I sat down with two key players and hashed around about why things weren't working and what we wanted to do about it.

Key points from the discussion: I find Pathfinder and most rulesy games obnoxious (for reasons I have posted about ad nauseum); Player A doesn't like OSR games because he finds character death upsetting and discouraging; Player B wants to play fantasy and doesn't want to get bogged down in rules adjudication.

We decided that I would run a series of one-shots with them and a few new prospect players to A) try get a group  and time established; B) try out some systems and settings and see what people like.

Then this morning I finally understood the modern game player in my group (Player A above) and I sent A & B this email:

After a good night's sleep I think I have an insight coming out of last night's discussion.

RPGs can be divided broadly into two categories: story games and traditional games. Story games have mechanics that can effect the narrative, in traditional games the narrative is totally the purview of the GM.

Within traditional there are modern and OSR (old-school) games. Modern games tend to be rulesy and tend not to include character death as a large part of play. Whereas OSR games tend to be rules-light and embrace character death. Until last night I was focused on the rulesyness as the main dividing line not thinking about the implications of the latter division.

The big difference I think is that in a modern game we are telling The Characters' Story, in an OSR game we are telling The Story - in which the characters are participants. That is why for me (and others who enjoy OSR games) character death is (while sometimes disappointing or frustrating) fundamentally not a big deal, because the larger story in which we are participating continues, and we get to continue participating through a new character. This can even be exciting.

Neither of these approaches is badwrongfun, but I think our discussion finally gave me insight in to the modern game player's preference.  Having permadeath on the table adds to tension, excitement, and ultimately the satisfaction in victory for the OSR player - because the OSR player is focused on the overarching game experience. For the modern player it is merely loss, because the focus is on the character in its individuality.

So for RP oriented players the rules heaviness may not be the important distinction at all.

I may run something other than Other Dust for the 1st one-shot game. It is most definitely an OSR game. So while it has awesome systems and lots of opportunity for sandboxing and RP there are mutants in the waste that want to (and can) eat your face.

-JD

Dungeon Crawl Classics - First Session

Got to play DCC last night!

I ran Portal Under the Stars for four players: one person very experienced with both OSR games and modern games (he had read the beta rules but not the final rules), one with some experience with both but no knowledge of DCC, one really only a modern D&D player, and one who had never played an RPG before. Each created four characters and 8 out of the 7 survived.

Things I noticed:

• Portal Under the Stars is a very solid adventure in play, nice to have something so high quality in the rule book. It is full of great opportunities for creative play and problem solving.
• For sustained play it would be really good to have multiple copies of the rulebook, with all of the table referencing that is required. If we keep playing in a sustained way I am sure it will wind up full of tabs like my old MERP book was.
• I would really like to see spells handbook, maybe spiral bound!
• It seemed like people rolled a lot of demihumans in character creation (1 elf, 2 dwarves, and 3 halflings).
• Modern RPG players are very concerned with distances and movement rates. I tend to be imprecise about these things when I am not forced to be accurate. This caused the only consternation over description, theater of the mind, what have you.
• Zero level play is excellent for new players. Having few rules and no abilities let our rookie player focus right in on what is important in the game - asking questions, exploring, experimenting, and problem solving. For example . . . [[SPOILERS!]] when the statue started shooting fireballs, she had her characters run and leap on to the statue instead of simply fleeing, from there the statue had no shot at them. Also, after collecting the demon horn, she searched around for places to put it.
• Except for my most dedicated modern-games-only player everyone loved it. Still two in my group who were out of town to test it out on.
• Luck is an awesome way to select targets.
• I don't foresee any problems mixing 0 and 1st level characters (although this is yet to be tested) making it a good game for inconsistent groups.
• Random occupation and equipment is awesome and brought out the best in my players. Most of the time they entered rooms pushing the wainwright's pushcart ahead of them for cover. Saved at least one life.

 Looking forward to playing more.

When ghouls attack! (and players do nothing?)

Something very interesting happened in our last Pathfinder session. Only 3 players showed up and carefully finished clearing out pretty much the rest of the first dungeon level that they had been working on. The only thing left was the earth elemental that had previously wiped out most of the party. So this time they approached with a plan and were prepared to fight it carefully. They went back to town to rest and make final preparations.

On their way back to fight the elemental they encountered 3 ghouls in the graveyard above the dungeon. They saw them a long way off and were not surprised. They did . . . nothing? To be fair the ranger attacked them with arrows, but the two spellcasters basically passed. These are 3rd and 4th level Pathfinder characters so the ghouls really should not have been a serious threat.

But here is basically what happened:

[I am leaving out the fiddly 3e maneuvering around crap, this is the essence of the fight]
 
Ranger shoots and kills a ghoul.
Remaining ghouls charge and paralyze the ranger.
Witch and summoner frantically begin casting summoning spells.
Ghouls kill the ranger.
Summoned monsters kill the ghouls.

Whoops.

If the spellcasters had taken their second round actions in the first round of combat the Ranger would have lived. Is this sort of thing common in other people's experience?