innerdude
Legend
First of all, there's really no cake here at all (the cake is a lie, haha!). Although, if you do want to talk about German chocolate cake, for instance, or the late 1990s band Cake, creators of such notable radio hits as "Going the Distance" and "Short Skirt, Long Jacket," then by all means, please do so.
On the other hand, I wanted to talk about something that was brought up in the other "Gaming Fundamentals" thread about gamer rewards, which was the idea of player trust--trust in the GM and trust in the rules.
Garthanos brought up originally, I think, an example of a time when a player "cheated" on some dice rolls, because he didn't want to give up "control" of the outcome of his character. And it got me thinking.
Every single one of us plays RPGs because we get something out of it. We get a sense of "achievement," camaraderie, exploration, psychological drama, and the like. Each of us has our own personal "niche" of what we find most enjoyable in our various gaming experiences.
In the other thread, much has been made about the fact that "ego gaming," or "twitch gaming," though frequently a valid mode of "play," can have detrimental effects on a gaming session, both on other players and on the GM. If the need for constant, repetitive "reward achievement" is taken too far, it can force other players to engage in encounter types and designs they may not always want, and it can force the GM to create encounters that cater to the "button mashing phat lewt" cycle of the gamer in question.
But I wonder if "ego gaming," or any other type of "problem gaming," is also in some regard based on a lack of trust? Meaning, the player in question doesn't believe that without their most direct, repeated intervention, that the game/session in question isn't going to deliver the type of enjoyment they really want. And as we all know, there's nothing more frustrating than investing something--in the case of RPGs, time, energy, commitment, and money--and really not getting the enjoyment we expect from it.
I don't want to start an edition war, but I think one possible factor of the "Edition Wars" is the feeling by players on both sides that we don't trust the system in question--regardless of GM or player skill--to maximize our investment.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that we as individual players do invest a trust, or faith, if you will, that the experience we are looking for is the experience we're going to get. In today's world, we simply don't have the time to spend 3-5 hours a week doing something that really isn't providing us the gratification/reward/enjoyment we want.
In the past, when many of us were younger (I'm 34, by the way, in case anyone cares), we could spend 3 hours on Tuesday, 3 hours on Thursday, and 4 hours on Saturday "puttering around" with 1e, 2e, or BECMI, and it didn't really matter much if the rules were "balanced," because we simply didn't have an expectation that our "enjoyment" of the system had a rational limit of time.
The other thread also made an interesting point about GMs being "lifestyle gamers," which is an adjunct to this idea. As each of us has aged, few of us have the time or patience to tolerate bad gaming groups. Our gaming time is a damn precious commodity. We have limited amounts of time and money to game, and we simply don't want to have to deal with an "Ego GM" railroading us to death, or "Ego Gamers" playing Pun-Pun Diablo Phat Lewt Monty.
Ultimately, I think the more strict codification of rules aspects (both 3.x and 4e do this in varying degrees) is a reaction to this phenomenon. "Balanced" rules are an attempt to say to the player (and GM), "Hey, you can trust this system to provide the experience you want, even if GM Bob or Player Dave tries to break it." Obviously it's impossible for the rules alone to create the experience--but it seems that mechanical rules balance is now a naturally assumed starting point for successful role-playing.
Such an idea makes me wonder what this says about us as gamers, and as a society. I wonder if rules systems would naturally gravitate, or shift in focus, if the number of good, solid, "lifestyle gamer" GMs increased--GMs with the know-how and sense of fair play to make role-playing sessions fun. And last but not least, what effect does a game's design have on successfully creating these types of GMs?
On the other hand, I wanted to talk about something that was brought up in the other "Gaming Fundamentals" thread about gamer rewards, which was the idea of player trust--trust in the GM and trust in the rules.
Garthanos brought up originally, I think, an example of a time when a player "cheated" on some dice rolls, because he didn't want to give up "control" of the outcome of his character. And it got me thinking.
Every single one of us plays RPGs because we get something out of it. We get a sense of "achievement," camaraderie, exploration, psychological drama, and the like. Each of us has our own personal "niche" of what we find most enjoyable in our various gaming experiences.
In the other thread, much has been made about the fact that "ego gaming," or "twitch gaming," though frequently a valid mode of "play," can have detrimental effects on a gaming session, both on other players and on the GM. If the need for constant, repetitive "reward achievement" is taken too far, it can force other players to engage in encounter types and designs they may not always want, and it can force the GM to create encounters that cater to the "button mashing phat lewt" cycle of the gamer in question.
But I wonder if "ego gaming," or any other type of "problem gaming," is also in some regard based on a lack of trust? Meaning, the player in question doesn't believe that without their most direct, repeated intervention, that the game/session in question isn't going to deliver the type of enjoyment they really want. And as we all know, there's nothing more frustrating than investing something--in the case of RPGs, time, energy, commitment, and money--and really not getting the enjoyment we expect from it.
I don't want to start an edition war, but I think one possible factor of the "Edition Wars" is the feeling by players on both sides that we don't trust the system in question--regardless of GM or player skill--to maximize our investment.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that we as individual players do invest a trust, or faith, if you will, that the experience we are looking for is the experience we're going to get. In today's world, we simply don't have the time to spend 3-5 hours a week doing something that really isn't providing us the gratification/reward/enjoyment we want.
In the past, when many of us were younger (I'm 34, by the way, in case anyone cares), we could spend 3 hours on Tuesday, 3 hours on Thursday, and 4 hours on Saturday "puttering around" with 1e, 2e, or BECMI, and it didn't really matter much if the rules were "balanced," because we simply didn't have an expectation that our "enjoyment" of the system had a rational limit of time.
The other thread also made an interesting point about GMs being "lifestyle gamers," which is an adjunct to this idea. As each of us has aged, few of us have the time or patience to tolerate bad gaming groups. Our gaming time is a damn precious commodity. We have limited amounts of time and money to game, and we simply don't want to have to deal with an "Ego GM" railroading us to death, or "Ego Gamers" playing Pun-Pun Diablo Phat Lewt Monty.
Ultimately, I think the more strict codification of rules aspects (both 3.x and 4e do this in varying degrees) is a reaction to this phenomenon. "Balanced" rules are an attempt to say to the player (and GM), "Hey, you can trust this system to provide the experience you want, even if GM Bob or Player Dave tries to break it." Obviously it's impossible for the rules alone to create the experience--but it seems that mechanical rules balance is now a naturally assumed starting point for successful role-playing.
Such an idea makes me wonder what this says about us as gamers, and as a society. I wonder if rules systems would naturally gravitate, or shift in focus, if the number of good, solid, "lifestyle gamer" GMs increased--GMs with the know-how and sense of fair play to make role-playing sessions fun. And last but not least, what effect does a game's design have on successfully creating these types of GMs?
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