Re: (TFT) Pitching game to newbies

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Jesus.
--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 5/11/16, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: (TFT) Pitching game to newbies
 To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>
 Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2016, 1:41 AM
 
 Would You like to play a
 game involves a social contract and, in the case
 of role-playing especially with new Players (at
 this point everybody) I
 like to make
 explicit just what it is I'm offering (as Game
 Organizational
 Director) and just what is
 expected of a Player.
 I've seen my share
 of new group startups go boom over the course of... well
 four decades next month and it's not like
 there's a common theme but
 implicit
 assumption twixt Players and GM is top of the list as
 identifiable
 "that's why"
 reasons. Speaking personally I note that I'm a bit...
 hummm.
 ...
 Okay lookit, The
 thing is I've found that working to make something in
 a
 medium You've invested Yourself in
 from the other end is a GREAT method for
 purging oneself of any traces of fanhood and
 becoming hypercritical so I
 ain't the
 best guy for the downside analysis but I will note a pet
 peeve of
 mine as Player and that's when
 I get offered to play a game and what I get
 is somebody telling Me a story with some dice
 tossing that is by and large
 inconsequential
 as the "GM" has a plotline and the most effect
 Your gonna
 get on it is dying which
 doesn't matter either way really except Your
 characters name isn't on the list at the
 happy ending. The more the style
 is fly by
 the seat of the GM's pants the more likely it is they
 are relying
 on a scene A to B to C
 progression which is the model most viddie's follow
 with the Choose Your Own Adventure branching
 narrative popping up on
 occasion although
 often with inconsequential choices or with main branches
 grafted back into the trunk up where You rock
 the baby so in the end You
 get the red,
 blue, or green background and some exposition about
 defeating
 the Borg by being dead in some
 galactic Masada and fini because all those
 war assets You were running around gathering?
 Red herrings because twist
 ending. SURPRISE!
 It was a story.
 I'm playing a bit of
 Boarderlands currently and note that all the button
 mashing between cut-scenes is for all intents
 and purposes separated from
 the CGA such
 that they're two different things being shuffled
 together to
 give a gestalt illusion. (I made
 My disbelieve) No matter how well or
 poorly
 the play to get to the next clip goes the same clip rolls
 and then
 it's off to trigger the next
 clip.
 I still enjoy the game but that's
 in part because I've ID'ed the pattern
 and don't expect anything from the form so
 when the really good voicing and
 writing in
 one of these shows through I can appreciate it for what it
 is
 without expecting it to be anything but
 movie and it's not like I can't get
 on board with a ... clap Your hands for
 Tinkerbell story performance or
 whatever but
 the thing is if Your gonna tell Me a story say so elseif
 it's
 not going to fly for Me expecting
 interactivity not the motions thereof
 like
 the way banks go through the motions of using money in the
 loan
 process but they ain't putting risk
 into it they hand You debt and a set of
 keys
 and You think money is involved in the process especially
 with fresh
 payments hanging over Your head
 but not for the paper person institution
 with fractional reserve currency behind the
 curtain Oz says pay no
 attention to. I have
 texts on game design that call for precisely this when
 the story dichotomy is assumed heavily as an
 essential aspect. Give the
 Players the
 illusion of choice when choice would obviously play hell
 with
 plot because the authors don't know
 how to make a game like that... at
 least
 implicitly. Talk about Your poor art.
 I
 think at this point I can make something of a case for what
 happened to
 bring about the creation of a
 Game Master role and why I'm quite sure it
 was a mistake to elevate a meta-Player from a
 group of Players and it has
 to do with what
 table top face to face gaming brings to said table as
 rather unique features of the particular medium
 as opposed to others
 specifically
 cooperative story creation through the act of play rather
 than
 the passive viewing of a complete work
 with no input. By definition a story
 is an
 accounting of something that has ALREADY HAPPENED. This puts
 story as
 directly opposed to participatory
 play and seeing how that participatory
 play
 is a strength of the mediums form and preformed story needs
 passivity
 to progress point to point which
 it only gets if it reserves the right to
 ignore Player choice when it conflicts with
 plot but why tell the Player
 when giving the
 illusion is a principal of design? Oh yeah that social
 contract thing... Do You wanna play a game?
 Yeah I do... do You have a game?
 I'd be very clear first to Yourself on this
 so You can be clear with Your
 Players as new
 to role-playing are actually fairly close to My way of
 thinking. Avowed RPG'ers actually are
 fairly indoctrinated some with no
 experience
 with a non-story narrative whatsoever who think a story
 driven
 narrative is necessary to interactive
 games and that's the GM effect, D&D's
 biggest mistake purportedly needed to deal with
 the "rules lawyers" but in
 digging
 a bit as well as coming outta experience in miniatures into
 D&D
 first ed I note that not only were
 much of the rules half baked and failing
 to
 meet the basic concept (that being cut a single figure from
 the unit
 herd a center play on it i.e.
 individuals not groups) MA10 is straight
 outta table top mini's and has not been
 worked up as individual at all for
 example.
 and the white-box is rife with it but worse still is the
 rules
 themselves a disorganized mess of
 unclear to plain unintelligible concepts
 with poor layout and generally speaking few and
 far between were the groups
 with nothing but
 the ruleset to work from who managed to play a full blown
 game as conceptualized because the ruleset
 failed to communicate that and
 yet We hear
 the role of "whatever I say goes" Player^2 was
 created to deal
 with the rules lawyers who
 asked too many questions as though the ruleset
 were so clearly written and executed as to be
 self-evident therefore
 questioning the rules
 amounts to nitpicking that wastes playtime but here's
 the rub.
 In shared creation the
 game tools, i.e. periodic tiling, miniatures, stats,
 dice, etc. are about fixing everybody on the
 same imaginative page as
 closely as possible
 while remaining gameplay back of the envelope casual
 but the game master thing flys in the face of
 this by vesting a Player with
 because I say
 so now shut up power that quite literally amounts to stop
 playing and listen to My story from the, dare I
 say narrator? GRIPES is
 Generic Role-playing
 Independent Player Environments System and the Game
 Organizational Director role is a tutorial
 device that allows Players to
 feel out an
 open world sandbox experience with familiar structure to
 assist
 them until they catch on at which
 point killing GOD should be obvious which
 doesn't preclude referees overseeing play
 to verify procedure is proceeding
 properly
 and clarify sticky situations but not to direct the course
 of
 action along the lines of a predetermined
 plot or pull fodder from their
 nether
 regions because the story needed a tough fight the the
 Players got
 lucky dice against so here come
 more because that's not cheating and
 doesn't violate design at all as it's
 serving the climactic scene which has
 nothing to do with how many Orcs currently
 inhabit the fortress it's about
 the
 wounded party finally making their way into the throne room
 to see the
 antagonist who's trap drops
 them near death but just when all seems
 hopeless the cavalry arrives just in the nick
 of time and rescue the
 Players via bad
 cliche and there was much rejoicing and randomized
 treasure
 rewarding, The End
 So to that end I ranted this rambling babble as
 a bit of a warning sparked
 by Your mention
 of creative types new to RPG's who might notice a
 staged
 progression easier through creatively
 poking at said plot where others may
 not...
 Mostly it's a Me
 thing likely I'd think, formulating My why statement
 has
 proven one of if not the roughest part
 of the actual writing and I'm
 guessing
 there is more than a touch of justification seeping through
 into
 what I think are key points but I
 can't quite kill 'em off in toto which is
 why I mentioned the social contract and suggest
 an explicit approach with
 it.
 As far as "timing" I've done
 extensive fiddlin with it as I feel that
 offering sessions of a more defined period
 allow Players to commit when
 life's
 served them a full plate of todo's and I use Poe's
 short story
 formalization of able to be read
 in a sitting tagged at ~90min although
 some
 of it is tied up with formalization I made of the play
 environment
 itself with the purpose being
 components that could adapt somewhat to
 different environments and an overall
 standardization of the "table" such
 that Your designs drop onto My table and vice
 versa without breaking the
 game so to speak
 because if that's not the rule but instead it's
 the
 exception it begs the question is it the
 same game on My table being played
 on Your
 table and etc.
 Just because the things are
 all titled Dungeons and Dragons for each
 edition does not mean Your playing the same
 game anymore than the term
 federal makes the
 federal reserve part of the federal government which is
 the flipside of the shared imagination
 communication thing writ large
 across play
 table a game component as sure as the dice rolled upon
 it.
 That should give You enough to give Me a
 yea or nay on bothering to do a
 write up on
 it or skip it as it ain't the droid Your looking for.
 There's
 nothing wrong with story driven
 narrative as the engine powering play I
 just
 think there are other forms the medium supports that
 haven't been
 explored because of profit
 for the sake of profit business practices that
 seek to repeat the proven profitable products
 and have no consideration for
 the community
 of hobbyists or the product that's foisted at them
 evidenced
 by regular releases of new
 editions that rewrite not improve as well as
 assumptions made about gameplay and what is
 necessary to it and why. I'm
 more than
 tickled to try and help if it sounds like something
 You'd wanna
 lookit but if it's
 sounding off or not Your thing I'm in sore need of
 time
 and would rather avoid dead ends where
 I can. I get enough of that from My
 computers these days and the absolute stupidity
 of what passes as legit
 practice even if one
 isn't on the hsd list a gifted with the performance
 hits you get from spyware with massive
 footprints and minimum wage
 operators
 because there's this thing about playing with concepts
 and
 pushing narrative as entertainment where
 it can become something more that
 rises into
 the mythology as unintentionally as the flip phone period
 We
 endured owing to Star Trek communicators
 not from a perspective of good
 design so
 much as so many minds fixed on that flip "Kirk to
 Enterprise" bit
 (functionality
 similarities in reception I'm not so sure of ;-} ) or
 the
 idea that police are a necessary
 component that prevent chaos and protect
 citizens which is obviously hard to do lacking
 a physical presence but they
 do show after
 the fact mostly and if paperwork equates to protection I
 stand corrected elseif I'l note that the
 amount of those speeding has been
 estimated
 at a constant 70% no matter time of day or which particular
 day
 or year and regardless of law
 enforcement efforts to the contrary but the
 narrative is a very different story. How many
 bad boys get away much less
 beat a cop on
 Cops?  My fav was the kung fu flick set in New York The
 Warriors. "Can You COUNT suckers?!?"
 Silas calls out to the crowd and lays
 out
 the figures upon which He's gunned down and at a
 gathering of all the
 gangs of the region who
 were just told the count a few cops show up and...
 everybody runs... When does that kind of thing
 move into propaganda? But
 that's neither
 here nor there when the question is rule of thumb timing
 of
 session play so I'll grab this chance
 to stop Myself before it's too late
 and
 get back to My over full plate and mayhaps even some
 sleep... what a
 concept.
 
 
 
 
 On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 1:45 PM, Rick Smith
 <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
 wrote:
 
 > Hi Meg,
 >   To start, make sure that the
 environment is pleasant and that there
 >
 are snacks, etc.
 >
 >   Start with a simple subset of
 rules.  For example, I would not use
 >
 HTH rules until you are sure that they are committed to the
 game.
 >
 >   I might do a sample session
 with pre generated characters.  Let
 >
 them know that this is a learning session and that there
 will be no
 > consequences if they mess
 up.  Second session they can write up
 >
 their own character or stick with the pre-gen that they
 picked.
 >
 >   The key thing is to make the
 first few sessions fun.  Make sure that
 > they level up a couple times, make sure
 that their is some fights that
 > are not
 too difficult.  Make sure that non-combat skills are used
 and
 > generate some exp for them.  (In
 my campaign, I occasionally give
 > 5 exp
 for 3 die saving throws if the throw is vital and the
 players are
 > low level.)
 >
 >   An
 interesting story with the sense that something important
 will
 > be discovered 'just next
 session' will help them coming back.
 >
 >  Steve Jackson Games
 sells, "Robin's Laws of good Game
 Mastering"
 > by Robin Law, which is
 a good resource.
 >
 >   Warm regards, Rick.
 >
 >
 >
 On 2016-05-10, at 12:59 PM, Meg Tapley wrote:
 > > I'm thinking of starting an
 in-person campaign sometime this
 >
 summer-fall, with my friends from school, if I can get
 enough people
 > together for a weekly
 session. They're a creative bunch and this semester,
 > a couple of them did a collaborative
 storytelling project that attracted a
 >
 fairly enthusiastic audience. Still, most if not all of the
 players will be
 > newcomers to tabletop
 roleplaying. Since this will be their introduction to
 > the genre, I'd like to make the
 campaign as engaging and high-quality as
 > possible, while keeping session length
 short (two hours per week is asking
 > a
 lot of busy music majors, so I'd like to maximize their
 enjoyment-to-time
 > ratio as much as
 possible). I've run campaigns before, but none trying
 to
 > meet standards this high.
 > >
 > > Does anyone
 have advice on how to make this happen? What kinds of
 > plots/adventures might you recommend in
 this scenario? Any hints on
 > fostering
 in-character interactions among the group, while also
 providing
 > interesting challenges to
 overcome? Tricks to help a group stay focused on
 > the game? How to manage logistics and
 prepare for sessions?
 > >
 > > Your wisdom is valued and
 appreciated!
 > >
 >
 > - Meg
 > > =====
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 > >
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 >
 >
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