Players of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Behold, the new Marxism of Gaming!
__________________ Two-Fisted Tales from the kitchen. My blog about my cooking (mis)adventures.
Truth of Tangency: When IronRa and Unheilig play the dozens, everyone wins.
Hmm. That's interesting. The games I'm playing now are better because of those theories, and because of applying them.
Yet I haven't changed players.
So the power of theory, therefore, must have turned someone (no idea who) in my group, who was formerly a dickhead into something else (no idea what).
Behold, the power of theory!
I for one actually appreciate the theory that the internet has helped to create and spread. At the same time you have to wonder to what degree the GM-Player conflict you have problems with is some honest miscommunication, or an outdated idea from the good old days of historical wargaming where this kind power relationship was based on historical accuracy with just a touch of possibility that a battle's outcome could be different from the books.
__________________ Two-Fisted Tales from the kitchen. My blog about my cooking (mis)adventures.
Truth of Tangency: When IronRa and Unheilig play the dozens, everyone wins.
Old Geezer, what you have to remember is that a lot of this rpg theory stuff comes from this idea that game groups are like a more depressing version of Knights of the Dinner Table. The GM forces them all to go adventuring, never listens to them, tries to kill off the characters, and most of the time the players are bored. Most of this rpg theory stuff, all these long words, just come from people who've had really crap game groups, and look for elaborate theories to explain it. When it's simply that someone was a dickhead in the group and fucked up the game, or that the group just plain didn't get along.
Or, people could have been dissatisfied with currert ideas about how RPG's work and wanted to understand them (as a practice, not particularly a game) in order to build games that they would like.
It's not all that some one was being a dickhead, but theory tries to understand what is and is not dickheadish behavour. Explaing away peoples hard work on and preferance for Theory by implying their just ignorant of the real cause is... well... rude.
I for one actually appreciate the theory that the internet has helped to create and spread. At the same time you have to wonder to what degree the GM-Player conflict you have problems with is some honest miscommunication, or an outdated idea from the good old days of historical wargaming where this kind power relationship was based on historical accuracy with just a touch of possibility that a battle's outcome could be different from the books.
Honestly?
Jim Bob is almost right.
When I first started GMing, I was terrible. Just awful. And played with bad players. So I do have some incredibly stupid stories. Slowly, I got better at running games. And slowly got better players (many of whom who had, in turn, been not-great players in their earlier days).
And we all had these different 'perfect games' in our heads. Leery of old bad stories and events, we stayed to our safe, calm habits. And the books told us to keep those habits. But slowly, we've been figuring out that we just don't need a lot of those habits anymore, despite what some of the books tell us.
It's finding and spotting what we don't want anymore that's tricky. And finding cool new things we never tried, and stories about how they worked.
To me, codifying that stuff is the important thing in theory. The rest of it can go hang.
"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."
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Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries that mislead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
It's funny, and possibly enlightening, to note the political-economic parallels throughout this thread. The model of GM as bourgeois-managerial class is pervasive, and the rhetoric mustered in its defense is strikingly reminiscent of liberal defenses of capitalism.
Players of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Yes, because the communist countries worked so much better than the capitalist ones, let's emulate their brilliant success in how we run our groups. It's a roleplaying group, not a fucking anarcho-syndicalist collective. Collectives always split when someone bonks the wrong person, anyway.
I also gave a model of a GM as a taxi driver. But you ignored that, I notice. I'd also give a model of a GM as an officer with their soldiers, or the director of a play, or the coach of a football team, I just gave the one that seemed to explain things the clearest at the time. That's the purpose of an analogy. Certainly the analogies we choose tell us about the person choosing them, and the society they come from; but likewise, the parts of a piece which you notice, and those which you choose to ignore, also tell us something about you, and the society you come from. You noticed the part which sounded bourgeois, and ignored the part that didn't. Bourgeois liberal capitalist sensibility is like obscenity - you can see it everywhere if you try hard enough, and ignore stuff that doesn't support your ideas.
Or, you know, you can just look at things as they actually are, and see that I talked about managers, but talked about taxi drivers, too. So maybe I'm not saying we should run our games like some Harvard MBA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Levi Kornelson
Honestly, that right there would be better advice than I've seen in a lot of books.
Some of your points there, dead on. Nicely done. I wish that more books were as clear as you've just been.
Cheers, Levi. You should check out d4-d4, which is 2/3 rules hardly anyone comments on, and the back 1/3 practical gaming advice in this sort of tone which everyone seems to like
Quote:
Originally Posted by droog
"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."
Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach, point 2 of 11. If you're going to quote, you should attribute, it's only courteous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Marx, 11th of the points
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
What it comes down to is that Levi has had some crap game groups and is wondering if it was the rules, or the people in his groups. It's the people. Good rules help a good group play better; bad rules do not stop a good group playing well, still less do bad rules make a good group, bad.
Levi and most gamers need good, clear, practical advice, not obscure unattributed quotes of Marx and other bad writers. Even Marx knew this,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Marx, 8th of his points
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
In other words, "don't fuck about, tell me what to do, and how to make sense of what I'm doing."
Recruiting Gamers, this kind of fizzled here on rpg.net, but I cross-posted it to sjgames as Getting game groups and keeping them, and it was more successful. Notice that people pretty quickly started talking about what they think good GMing is. In other words, "if you run a good game, you'll keep your players." This touches on what we've been discussing here - what's a good way to run your game?
Also from SJGames site (no particular preference for that over this place, it's just that SJGames has a search function while here we don't, so it's easier to find old stuff there!),
"Forcing" players to act a certain way, very relevant for this thread, how much does the player get to decide, and how much does the GM get to decide, about which adventure to do and what the character's doing, etc.
And there are many others. For example, there's a thread going on now called Rules Light Games: Whats the infatuation???, and in that thread people talk a lot about the sorts of games they enjoy playing, and how much effort a GM or player has to make, and so on.
What I often pick up on here at rpg.net is that a lot of people have contempt for other posters at rpg.net, and the greatest contempt's reserved for anyone who seems to enjoy just rocking up with their dice and cheetos, and having a laugh with their friends for the evening. If there's not some Grand Theory behind it, they must be idiots. There's no sense of humility, no sense that we're all here just to have fun, and that Marx and Prodhoun and existentialism and ritual discourse really don't have a goddamned thing to do with that. There's no sense that, "we are gamers, and we have a lot to learn from each-other." It just seems like a lot of theorists really don't like gamers, they think we're idiots who don't know how to have fun, and if we are having fun, we're not really, we're just morons deluding ourselves.
I've learned a lot from rpg.net and other conversations with gamers, because they tell me a lot. When people describe a great game session, or a crap game session, or even when they make up a story for a Creepy Gamer Thread, it tells me something about their idea of what should go in a good game session. It's made me a better GM, and player.
Playing and GMing aren't an art, and they sure as shit ain't a science. They're a craft, a trade. You can learn and get better, but you learn and get better by doing it, by looking at the mistakes you've made and fixing them or covering them up as best you can, and moving on. A lot of rpg theory, and a lot more rpg book introductions and gaming advice, quite simply don't talk about what happens at the gaming table. There's no mention of
spilling coke on your character sheet,
Joe who always hunches protectively over his cheetos,
Jane who squawks and whines and avoids the adventure to get more attention from the group,
what to do when the players completely miss the adventure hook,
how the hell the GM is supposed to play every NPC when the players can barely manage one,
what if NPCs are talking or fighting, should the GM play it all out with the players watching, or just summarise it,
what do you do when one of your players is a good friend but a dickhead of a player, and you know he doesn't have any other friends outside the group, so you don't want to boot him out, but he's fucking up all of your games,
... and so on. Most game books don't talk about this stuff. Instead they babble on about Pacing and Plot and Theme and sometimes if you're really unlucky some more obscure shit still, misused abstruse latinisms.
Rpg.net is full of wonderful people, wonderful to me because they talk about these things which are much more important in having a good game session than all this other nonsense. Respect rpg.net. Respect the gamers on it. Sure, some of them might be bourgeois liberal capitalists who are immersed in the homogeneity of the dominant paradigm while feeling discomfiture and an essential pathos about the meaninglessness of their materialistic life, unaware that with a proper consideration of scientific dialectical materialism in the context of the praxis of the contemporaneous understanding of roleplaying as ritual discourse, they could in fact have such an intense gaming experience they might just jizz in their pants...
But probably not.
Respect rpg,net, respect gamers, and talk about real stuff, what actually happens at the gaming table.
P.S. I apologise for all those stupidly long words in that paragraph at the end. It's just mockery, don't worry.
What I often pick up on here at rpg.net is that a lot of people have contempt for other posters at rpg.net, and the greatest contempt's reserved for anyone who seems to enjoy just rocking up with their dice and cheetos, and having a laugh with their friends for the evening. If there's not some Grand Theory behind it, they must be idiots.
No, JB. You're the one that consistently mouths off about how anybody who talks theory must be talking shit. Look at your entry into this thread.
You take my joke very seriously, JB. Something to be ashamed of?
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Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries that mislead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
Cheers, Levi. You should check out d4-d4, which is 2/3 rules hardly anyone comments on, and the back 1/3 practical gaming advice in this sort of tone which everyone seems to like
Indeed I shall.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Bob
What it comes down to is that Levi has had some crap game groups and is wondering if it was the rules, or the people in his groups. It's the people. Good rules help a good group play better; bad rules do not stop a good group playing well, still less do bad rules make a good group, bad.
I sort-of agree.
Good rules help a good group play better. Good advice helps a good group play better, too. Absolutely.
However.
A lot of things that I'd consider good advice are impossible to find outside of referencing people that play with theory. Not that it's always easy to find what I consider the good stuff inside the big theories, mind you, but there's stuff coming out of theory, that I never see elsewhere.
Dogs in the Vineyard, for example.
So, to put plainly, I contest the general tone of "it's all wank!", which, intended or not, you seem to be standing in for (okay, maybe just in my head, but still).
I had started to write a defence of theory, and it's practical uses both in terms of design (of which I know little) as well as play (of which I know well). But in the second paragraph I felt I should stop before the bile got ban-worthy.
Instead I will inform you that if your game d4-d4 contains material similar to the above, you have completely unsold me.
Okay. Much of my gaming was at the U of MN gaming club, which had, for many years, a routine attendence of 20 to 40 people.
This gave us an 'economy of abundance'. That is, people would play in a game for 3-4 sessions to see if they liked it. If they did, okay. If not, they'd go elsewhere.
No harm, no foul, because there were plenty of other GMs and plenty of other players. It worked because there was a copious supply of both players and games.
We've always done 'strongly typed' games (Oh, Christ, computeriod technobabble has drifted into my everyday speech! Somebody please shoot me!).
ANYWAY...
That is, "It's PENDRAGON just before Uther dies". "It's four-color supers in the DC/Marvel universe using CHAMPIONS rules". "It's Call of Cthulhu. You're ordinary 1920's US citizens". "It's Star Wars just after Empire Strikes Back. You're Rebel pilots".
In other words, the initial setup pretty solidly describes the GM's vision.
We've always presented our games as "This is what I'm going to run".
Yeah, it does limit some player choices, but the feeling has always been "If you don't like cottled greeps, why did you order them?" That is, if you didn't want to play part of a Rebel Spec Ops team getting orders from General Madine, why did you join this game?
(Note the implicit assumption that the game is clearly defined. This assumption is often fallacious. This generally ends in tears.)
But the unclear definition is a problem with implementation, not ground rules.
Yes, we've had the usual problems with different reward schedules and different expectations, and all the frustrations that occur when people don't clearly state their preferences. But again, these are implementation problems.
Now to a couple of Levi's examples that he came up with to try to help me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Levi Kornelsen
Okay. This is an example. It's a spun-together mass of several real situations I've seen recently.
Let's say you've got a gaming group together, and you've got a long-term player in the group. He's kind of a mediocre player, from some viewpoints - he has really great character ideas, but he never really follows through on them, and often he either pushes his character a bit too hard on the group, or, in other places, doesn't focus on the game all that much. This has shown up in a lot of places, and you've always tried to correct it through actual play. It hasn't worked.
Now, let's say you talked to that player, and asked what was up with that.
Let's say that through some miracle, he actually managed to articulate his problem, and here's what it is:
He doesn't feel like he's really invested in the game in any real way. Plainly put, he doesn't really feel into it. In order to feel into it, he'd really need to take more control over the little stuff that surrounds his character.
My response: "Like what?"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Levi Kornelsen
He wants to describe what happens when he makes a great roll, instead of you.
Again, "Like what?" Please note that as an unrepentant wargamer, my descriptions tend to be utilitarian.
If it will make this person happy, I'm willing to listen to suggestions though. But it would have to fit both genre and ruleset. PENDRAGON has no rules for kung-fu kicks. (A faceteous example, but I hope you take the point.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Levi Kornelsen
He wants to have a kind of 'ownership' over the place his character came from, and just make stuff up relating to it, without needing to consult you or bother you with the little stuff. He wants...
...Well, he wants a lot of stuff like that; a lot of it is small, but there's just so much of it, all on the same theme. And it's all stuff that traditionally comes from being the GM.
Again, "like what?" Frankly, based on my experience, MY first reaction to the above two paragraphs is "Good, does that mean you're finally going to write up the fucking character background I've been asking for for SIX GODDAMN MONTHS NOW?"
But honestly - I promise, I'm not trying to be obtuse, it's just happening - my true gut feeling if somebody had this conversation is "This person is sure all tangled up about a lot of really unimportant shit". I've never decided what somebody's family history is. (PENDRAGON has you roll it up, but again, if you don't want to play PENDRAGON, then why.... etc)
I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to be dismissive or trivializing. I guess we just must have really different histories in gaming.
I should probably just sharrup before I totally derail the thread.
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