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Dragon Reflections #11 - The Sorcerer Speaks!
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<blockquote data-quote="Eirikrautha" data-source="post: 7758185" data-attributes="member: 6777843"><p>re: pemerton</p><p></p><p>I agree. I think there are a couple of things that directly inform this problem that haven't really been solved (though have been mitigated somewhat by players).</p><p></p><p>D&D has always played better as a cooperative game. When the game was "simpler" (in concept, if not in mechanics), that cooperation was easier to come by. In some ways, the cooperation was almost a default assumption of playing. D&D was almost boardgame-like: you know when you play "Sorry" that you are going to try to move around the board and get all your pieces home. If that isn't what you want to do, then you pick another game. Early D&D was like that; you're going to kill stuff and take its loot in order to up your characters' level. That was the end "goal" of the game.</p><p></p><p>With the re-imagining (or expansion, or evolution, or whatever) of the roleplaying genre that has happened over the last 30 years, the mechanics really haven't kept up with the shift in focus. Along with a change in culture (which seems focused on the individual to an almost narcissistic degree), the expectation in the game is that many players will want to create a unique individual with personal attributes, motivations, and personalities to bring their characters to life. But, outside of a concentrated effort established beforehand, there is no guarantee that the motivations and personalities within the group of characters will be conducive to group cohesion. In fact, these characters can have personalities that directly work against group cohesion or cooperation. And woe to he who tries to explain to those players that they are not helping the party with their choice of character behaviors!</p><p></p><p>I think that some of the most uncomfortable "metagaming" complaints within our hobby are rooted in this tension. For example, I believe that the railroad vs sandbox debate is often an outgrowth of this. A sandbox reduces the friction between the characters' motivations and the campaign; "OK, so you want to overthrow the government of this town? We'll roll with it." Likewise, a railroad avoids the problems of character buy-in: if the characters are whisked from one encounter to the next with little choice, then there is no problem with character motivation and action derailing the adventure.</p><p></p><p>The most common approach to solving this problem, in my experience, is outside the game completely. It's the social compact that most of my players make by default: an agreement to go along with the adventure despite their characters' motivations. For example, when I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the characters were faced with the town under siege (including flybys from a dragon), several characters should have just fled off into the wilderness and found another town. It would have fit their personalities much better. But to do so would have derailed the adventure ("OK, roll up another character that WILL agree to this adventure"). So they found a reason to stay, even though it partially invalidated the character concept they had created. This social contract seems to be the stop-gap for this problem.</p><p></p><p>So, basically, as the focus of the game has concentrated more on individual characters, the cooperative part has become more difficult. And we've all made intellectual compromises to try to mitigate it. I'm not sure how that gets fixed without a total rethinking of why we play, or a total rewrite of the rules...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eirikrautha, post: 7758185, member: 6777843"] re: pemerton I agree. I think there are a couple of things that directly inform this problem that haven't really been solved (though have been mitigated somewhat by players). D&D has always played better as a cooperative game. When the game was "simpler" (in concept, if not in mechanics), that cooperation was easier to come by. In some ways, the cooperation was almost a default assumption of playing. D&D was almost boardgame-like: you know when you play "Sorry" that you are going to try to move around the board and get all your pieces home. If that isn't what you want to do, then you pick another game. Early D&D was like that; you're going to kill stuff and take its loot in order to up your characters' level. That was the end "goal" of the game. With the re-imagining (or expansion, or evolution, or whatever) of the roleplaying genre that has happened over the last 30 years, the mechanics really haven't kept up with the shift in focus. Along with a change in culture (which seems focused on the individual to an almost narcissistic degree), the expectation in the game is that many players will want to create a unique individual with personal attributes, motivations, and personalities to bring their characters to life. But, outside of a concentrated effort established beforehand, there is no guarantee that the motivations and personalities within the group of characters will be conducive to group cohesion. In fact, these characters can have personalities that directly work against group cohesion or cooperation. And woe to he who tries to explain to those players that they are not helping the party with their choice of character behaviors! I think that some of the most uncomfortable "metagaming" complaints within our hobby are rooted in this tension. For example, I believe that the railroad vs sandbox debate is often an outgrowth of this. A sandbox reduces the friction between the characters' motivations and the campaign; "OK, so you want to overthrow the government of this town? We'll roll with it." Likewise, a railroad avoids the problems of character buy-in: if the characters are whisked from one encounter to the next with little choice, then there is no problem with character motivation and action derailing the adventure. The most common approach to solving this problem, in my experience, is outside the game completely. It's the social compact that most of my players make by default: an agreement to go along with the adventure despite their characters' motivations. For example, when I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the characters were faced with the town under siege (including flybys from a dragon), several characters should have just fled off into the wilderness and found another town. It would have fit their personalities much better. But to do so would have derailed the adventure ("OK, roll up another character that WILL agree to this adventure"). So they found a reason to stay, even though it partially invalidated the character concept they had created. This social contract seems to be the stop-gap for this problem. So, basically, as the focus of the game has concentrated more on individual characters, the cooperative part has become more difficult. And we've all made intellectual compromises to try to mitigate it. I'm not sure how that gets fixed without a total rethinking of why we play, or a total rewrite of the rules... [/QUOTE]
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