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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8927423" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Let me be clear here. There are two related definitions of argument.</p><p></p><p>The primary definition of argument is:</p><p></p><p>"give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one's view"</p><p></p><p>We are now as far as I know having an argument in that sense, and from your description of events your table has arguments in that sense. </p><p></p><p>The other related definition of argument is:</p><p></p><p>"exchange or express diverging or opposite views, <em>typically in a heated or angry way</em>"</p><p></p><p>I'm not at all asserting that you are at your table having an argument in the sense of a heated or angry way. Nonetheless, my description of good gaming and game mastery does not depend on the assumption of heated or angry disagreement, but it does allow for it on the assumption that it can and does occur. And this heated or angry disagreement doesn't have to be particularly overt. Quite often people are doing their best to be civil and use normal voices and so forth, but you can definitely here the tension in the air when a player asks a question of the GM, gets an answer, and then not satisfied with the answer starts asking for an explanation, and then when given an explanation, starts offering up an opposing viewpoint, and then when they are answered again takes up a new argument, and by this point 9 times out of 10 I'm fully disgusted with my fellow player and what to start pushing him to just let it go and get on with the game.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No one is asserting anything about your examples. I wasn't there. There isn't much value on me commenting on them. I'm just thinking about my whole history of gaming with various groups with various degrees of familiarity with one another from ten-year-old friendships to perfect strangers. And I'm trying to apply the philosophy you are asserting and see how it could be fitted to all those experiences I've had and it just doesn't fit or work out - even in the case of groups with years of experience playing together. I am glad that your groups are so emotionally healthy that no one is ever asking to get his way at a time that is unreasonable and that you can always work out a compromise, but I don't find in my experience that is always the case. As for "bullying", while I have seen body language implying physical threat employed against a GM when a player wasn't getting there way, that's not really typical or what I had in mind. Rather, I consider it bullying when extroverted, boisterous, charismatic types argue however charmingly with a GM in an attempt to get there way, often trying to bowl over the GM with persistence and force of personality. And if you haven't seen that happen, then you need to get out more.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's this I have a problem with. Because while it's wonderful that you guys are so healthy that you can hold discussions that are never arguments, in my experience there are quite often discussions that occur where no side has a compromise they feel comfortable with and at that point the discussion is continuing until one side concedes. And however charming and friendly that discussion may seem, that's an argument and which side concedes comes down to which side can bully the other. In my experience, it's just best to avoid that altogether by a table agreement to respect the GM's authority.</p><p></p><p>Maybe if you spent more time at conventions, or if you had spent more time running games for strangers, or if your high school group had more autism spectrum nerd boys from the wrong side of the tracks, then it might alter your opinion. Or not. But I have a hard time fitting it into my experience.</p><p></p><p>I'll be sure to mention your description of this hypothetical to the player though. I suspect he will find it both dumbfounding and hilarious in equal measure. Asserting himself in <em>any</em> context is a struggle. (I have mostly shy players.)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not assuming jerk behavior. I'm just allowing for the possibility of it. I went to Origins this year, and was playing a game in a new-ish gaming system where no one at the table had played the game before. During that session, a one-shot comedy game, one of the players tried to rules lawyer the GM into a concession based on the player's knowledge of the rules compared to a guy who had been running the game for some time and had been the game creator's play tester and spent 5 minutes on his rules argument. And that may not seem like jerk behavior, but to me sitting beside him listening to this argument when I'd spent money to play a game and didn't really care too much whether we "won", it very much did.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This to me is probably the most telling statement you make that shows you have absolutely no idea where I'm coming from and we are talking past each other to an enormous degree. Of course, I assumed you would do the same thing for me. Why in the world do you think that would change my opinion? Do you really think that what I want from the GM is to get what I want? I'm not looking for a GM that validates what I say. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>What's that got to do with anything? To a large extent, I consider the whole question of, "What happens when the player proposes something not covered by the rules?" to be tangential to this discussion, and indeed to provide a sort of intellectual cover for disengaging from the core problem. I have written extensively on ruling and how to rule when the rules don't cover the proposition, and while it might possibly be true that rulings are more likely to be argued over than rules (or it might be intuitively the case that that is true), in my experience table arguments aren't generally provoked by bad or unexpected rulings exclusively or in the majority. Table arguments are much more likely to happen circumstantially to the chance of player success in a player highly invested in aesthetics of play the revolve around the Illusion of Success. Thus, your just as likely to find yourself in an argument about what the written rules actually mean and how they should be interpreted, or that the rules are wrong because "physics" or "history" or whatever, than you are in need of defending a ruling because it isn't backed up by the authority of the rules.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No, I think that's a reasonable reading. It might not be the most charitable reading, but I'll play by your terms. But I note that your statement here leaves out a big part of the issue and is indeed silent on it in a way that is well-poisoning. It is not that one of my allies got to do something cool that provoked resentment. The thing that provokes the resentment is why they got to do something cool. If my ally does something cool as a matter of skill on their part, or as a matter of engaging with the rules in the sense that clearly they were allowed by the rules to do the thing, or because they rolled a natural 20 and the rules clearly reward that as special, then that's a whooping high five moment we all enjoy in. But if my ally got to do "something cool" because he spent time arguing with the GM until he got his way to some degree or the other, that's just not cool and it's detracting from the enjoyment of everyone at the table but themselves and I do feel resentment about that at times.</p><p></p><p>Leaving out the context seems to be a deliberate attempt to color the resentment as being general envy of a player succeeding. </p><p></p><p>I will say that a lot of times these table arguments are actually motivated by envy at the table where some player has done some that was cool and earned that player plaudits from the other players at the table, and one player or the other feels left out and generally dissatisfied because they haven't been able to come up with a move that has garnered them equal spotlight and satisfaction. And those players are frequently motivated to stop engaging with the rules and either start fudging their dice to get the success they want, or to start rules lawyering or wheedling the GM to try to get that success they feel they are missing out on. I've frequently gamed with players who struggle with tactics or problem solving or role playing or whatever who instead of trying to get better at playing the game, resort to cheating or browbeating the GM. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Compared to potentially wrecking a friendship with an argument? Compared to getting in a heated debate with strangers? Compared to disrupting a session at a convention or a free session at a local gaming store? I'm trying by my behavior to be as polite and undisruptive as possible. Remember, quite often when this sort of thing occurs, I'm a fairly new member of a long-term group. I'm probably less than a half-dozen sessions into the experience with a group of players that have been playing for years before I was given the privilege and opportunity of playing with them. And if I decide that I can't enjoy a game where every session 30 minutes or an hour are spent on rules lawyering and the functional process of play seems to be GM wheedling, then I'm not going to tell them, "You guys are badwrongfun and you have to change the way you play to accommodate me." I'm just going to say, "Thanks for having me, but unfortunately I'm getting really busy right now and I don't think I have time to attend further." I don't find that to be particularly rude behavior.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Seems like you actually have little reason to even be disagreeing with me then. What exactly are you disagreeing with my statements over if you agree requests can be exploitive, abusive, or coercive? If you agree that requests exploitive, abusive, or coercive, why do you even have to ask me why I might resent a GM giving into such requests. It's not so much a case of envy in as much as I want to get exploitive, abusive, or coercive requests validated as well, as it is when a player is getting requests that are bad for the game validated because they argued with the GM, to me sitting on the sidelines it tells me that the process of play here is no longer engaging with the fiction and trying by cleverness to overcome the fiction - which I find satisfying. It would be like playing a multiplayer PvE video game, and discovering that one of my teammates was using cheat codes or a hacked console to gain an advantage. It's not so much that I would envy their success as that they invalidated the very point I thought there was in playing. Them saying, "Oh, well I'll share the exploit with you and you can cheat to.", doesn't make it better.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8927423, member: 4937"] Let me be clear here. There are two related definitions of argument. The primary definition of argument is: "give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one's view" We are now as far as I know having an argument in that sense, and from your description of events your table has arguments in that sense. The other related definition of argument is: "exchange or express diverging or opposite views, [i]typically in a heated or angry way[/i]" I'm not at all asserting that you are at your table having an argument in the sense of a heated or angry way. Nonetheless, my description of good gaming and game mastery does not depend on the assumption of heated or angry disagreement, but it does allow for it on the assumption that it can and does occur. And this heated or angry disagreement doesn't have to be particularly overt. Quite often people are doing their best to be civil and use normal voices and so forth, but you can definitely here the tension in the air when a player asks a question of the GM, gets an answer, and then not satisfied with the answer starts asking for an explanation, and then when given an explanation, starts offering up an opposing viewpoint, and then when they are answered again takes up a new argument, and by this point 9 times out of 10 I'm fully disgusted with my fellow player and what to start pushing him to just let it go and get on with the game. No one is asserting anything about your examples. I wasn't there. There isn't much value on me commenting on them. I'm just thinking about my whole history of gaming with various groups with various degrees of familiarity with one another from ten-year-old friendships to perfect strangers. And I'm trying to apply the philosophy you are asserting and see how it could be fitted to all those experiences I've had and it just doesn't fit or work out - even in the case of groups with years of experience playing together. I am glad that your groups are so emotionally healthy that no one is ever asking to get his way at a time that is unreasonable and that you can always work out a compromise, but I don't find in my experience that is always the case. As for "bullying", while I have seen body language implying physical threat employed against a GM when a player wasn't getting there way, that's not really typical or what I had in mind. Rather, I consider it bullying when extroverted, boisterous, charismatic types argue however charmingly with a GM in an attempt to get there way, often trying to bowl over the GM with persistence and force of personality. And if you haven't seen that happen, then you need to get out more. It's this I have a problem with. Because while it's wonderful that you guys are so healthy that you can hold discussions that are never arguments, in my experience there are quite often discussions that occur where no side has a compromise they feel comfortable with and at that point the discussion is continuing until one side concedes. And however charming and friendly that discussion may seem, that's an argument and which side concedes comes down to which side can bully the other. In my experience, it's just best to avoid that altogether by a table agreement to respect the GM's authority. Maybe if you spent more time at conventions, or if you had spent more time running games for strangers, or if your high school group had more autism spectrum nerd boys from the wrong side of the tracks, then it might alter your opinion. Or not. But I have a hard time fitting it into my experience. I'll be sure to mention your description of this hypothetical to the player though. I suspect he will find it both dumbfounding and hilarious in equal measure. Asserting himself in [I]any[/I] context is a struggle. (I have mostly shy players.) I'm not assuming jerk behavior. I'm just allowing for the possibility of it. I went to Origins this year, and was playing a game in a new-ish gaming system where no one at the table had played the game before. During that session, a one-shot comedy game, one of the players tried to rules lawyer the GM into a concession based on the player's knowledge of the rules compared to a guy who had been running the game for some time and had been the game creator's play tester and spent 5 minutes on his rules argument. And that may not seem like jerk behavior, but to me sitting beside him listening to this argument when I'd spent money to play a game and didn't really care too much whether we "won", it very much did. This to me is probably the most telling statement you make that shows you have absolutely no idea where I'm coming from and we are talking past each other to an enormous degree. Of course, I assumed you would do the same thing for me. Why in the world do you think that would change my opinion? Do you really think that what I want from the GM is to get what I want? I'm not looking for a GM that validates what I say. What's that got to do with anything? To a large extent, I consider the whole question of, "What happens when the player proposes something not covered by the rules?" to be tangential to this discussion, and indeed to provide a sort of intellectual cover for disengaging from the core problem. I have written extensively on ruling and how to rule when the rules don't cover the proposition, and while it might possibly be true that rulings are more likely to be argued over than rules (or it might be intuitively the case that that is true), in my experience table arguments aren't generally provoked by bad or unexpected rulings exclusively or in the majority. Table arguments are much more likely to happen circumstantially to the chance of player success in a player highly invested in aesthetics of play the revolve around the Illusion of Success. Thus, your just as likely to find yourself in an argument about what the written rules actually mean and how they should be interpreted, or that the rules are wrong because "physics" or "history" or whatever, than you are in need of defending a ruling because it isn't backed up by the authority of the rules. No, I think that's a reasonable reading. It might not be the most charitable reading, but I'll play by your terms. But I note that your statement here leaves out a big part of the issue and is indeed silent on it in a way that is well-poisoning. It is not that one of my allies got to do something cool that provoked resentment. The thing that provokes the resentment is why they got to do something cool. If my ally does something cool as a matter of skill on their part, or as a matter of engaging with the rules in the sense that clearly they were allowed by the rules to do the thing, or because they rolled a natural 20 and the rules clearly reward that as special, then that's a whooping high five moment we all enjoy in. But if my ally got to do "something cool" because he spent time arguing with the GM until he got his way to some degree or the other, that's just not cool and it's detracting from the enjoyment of everyone at the table but themselves and I do feel resentment about that at times. Leaving out the context seems to be a deliberate attempt to color the resentment as being general envy of a player succeeding. I will say that a lot of times these table arguments are actually motivated by envy at the table where some player has done some that was cool and earned that player plaudits from the other players at the table, and one player or the other feels left out and generally dissatisfied because they haven't been able to come up with a move that has garnered them equal spotlight and satisfaction. And those players are frequently motivated to stop engaging with the rules and either start fudging their dice to get the success they want, or to start rules lawyering or wheedling the GM to try to get that success they feel they are missing out on. I've frequently gamed with players who struggle with tactics or problem solving or role playing or whatever who instead of trying to get better at playing the game, resort to cheating or browbeating the GM. Compared to potentially wrecking a friendship with an argument? Compared to getting in a heated debate with strangers? Compared to disrupting a session at a convention or a free session at a local gaming store? I'm trying by my behavior to be as polite and undisruptive as possible. Remember, quite often when this sort of thing occurs, I'm a fairly new member of a long-term group. I'm probably less than a half-dozen sessions into the experience with a group of players that have been playing for years before I was given the privilege and opportunity of playing with them. And if I decide that I can't enjoy a game where every session 30 minutes or an hour are spent on rules lawyering and the functional process of play seems to be GM wheedling, then I'm not going to tell them, "You guys are badwrongfun and you have to change the way you play to accommodate me." I'm just going to say, "Thanks for having me, but unfortunately I'm getting really busy right now and I don't think I have time to attend further." I don't find that to be particularly rude behavior. Seems like you actually have little reason to even be disagreeing with me then. What exactly are you disagreeing with my statements over if you agree requests can be exploitive, abusive, or coercive? If you agree that requests exploitive, abusive, or coercive, why do you even have to ask me why I might resent a GM giving into such requests. It's not so much a case of envy in as much as I want to get exploitive, abusive, or coercive requests validated as well, as it is when a player is getting requests that are bad for the game validated because they argued with the GM, to me sitting on the sidelines it tells me that the process of play here is no longer engaging with the fiction and trying by cleverness to overcome the fiction - which I find satisfying. It would be like playing a multiplayer PvE video game, and discovering that one of my teammates was using cheat codes or a hacked console to gain an advantage. It's not so much that I would envy their success as that they invalidated the very point I thought there was in playing. Them saying, "Oh, well I'll share the exploit with you and you can cheat to.", doesn't make it better. [/QUOTE]
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