Semi-Rant: Maturity and dumbing down a game

[DragonLancer]

Take the above "I hit 'im, etc." In narrative game play this becomes;

DM: The massive hulk of fur and claws rises on its hind legs to tower above all of you. It bellows a primal cry before it comes crashing back down to all four with an impact that jars your legs before hurtling forward towards you, teeth bared and mouth frothing.

While I would love to do descriptions like this, theres two things that prevent that for me.

1. Even after 20 years of DMing I couldn't do this with a straight face or without feeling embarrised, even around good friends. Its just not me, and I guess thats the same with some other gamers.

Player 1: I spit on the ground and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm. I go to a side stance, clasping my battle axe in two hands like a club. My weight shifts back and forth from foot to foot as I sway with anticipation.

Player 2: My breath catches at the sight of the incoming beast. I swallow hard and brace my spear against the ground, leveling it at the creature's chest. My hands keep shaking but I tighten my grip to hide that and hope the others don't see it."

DM: The beast gallops towards you, a chaotic shapeless mass of hair and power and mean. It covers half the distance to you and now you can smell the stale dead of its previous kills. And then the world darkens as its huge shape comes between you and the morning sun, draping you in its shadow, and then its but an arm's lenght away..

Player 1: I brace my feet and twisting my hips and my back swing my hammer with everything I have letting out my own primal yell.

Player 2: I sidestep the beast as it comes close, my nerve breaking at the last minute, and jab at its side.

(there is some dice rolling. there was no reason for player 2 to sidestep other than his character has a background that doesn't afford the courage needed to stand before such a beast. because of it he won't get to double damage for bracing his spear against a charge. he takes a negative in game mechanics to satisfy the story telling. he actually does hit, while the barbarian misses and gets trampled by the oncoming bear.)

Again, it would be nice but I don't want a session length scenario to last 3 sessions because combat becomes a Shakespearian drama. Some RP is involved yes, but in combat RP is secondary IMO.

Am I wrong? Is it too much to try to get players to play up to the narrative style instead of playing down to where they are comfortable? Is it just me that feels this way?

Different strokes for different folks. It just boils down to us saying that if it works for you go for it, but it won't be to everyone's tastes.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Don't confuse, "I like to floridly describe fight scenes" with "I am mature".

Depending on how you're describing the fight scenes, it might even be a symptom of the opposite condition. A lot of florid description of combat maneuvers is followed up by florid-- and morbid-- description of the effects of those maneuvers when successful.

Not that there is anything specifically wrong with gore-- but compare Mortal Kombat with Fight Club. One of these was clearly designed for twelve-year-olds, rating systems be damned. You'll also notice that Fight Club does not linger on violent scenes-- the cinematic equivalent of a roleplayer taking several seconds to describe an action-- but instead uses them to lend emphasis to the themes of the movie.

If you want high-flying martial arts spectacular, then describing combat maneuvers helps support the style; it's generally inappropriate for high fantasy, where violence is sanitized, and sword and sorcery, where it is short, sweet, and brutal.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Yeah, but: when you get both social reinforcement ("Dude, that's cool, you should get a +2!") and mechanical benefits for doing so ("I need to hit this guy, so I should come up with something cool!"), the benefit from role-playing is much greater!

[So, while it is bribing, it gives you more rewards for the type of play that you want. What could be wrong with that?]

You don't need a rule like this to role-play - Gary taught us that - but a rule like this will bring it out. Just like a rule that gives you a reward for killing things will lead to more killing things and more efficient ways of killing things.

Now it may be a lame rule, because it relies on the group to validate it, and people have to stop and think "Is that cool or not?". That's probably because I came up with it on the fly. But you can see the point behind it, no?

The only game I've seen that has been able to consistently provide mechanical benefits for providing creative descriptions is Donjon, which can be found in my sig. However, there are many games that are available these days from independent companies that use what you might call a new-generation system. That is, the authors spend a lot of time talking to each other about how role-playing works and how it interfaces with rules in order to provide the kind of experience they're looking for. With this kind of underlying theory, they write rules that encourage that experience. Often an author will want to elicit a certain kind of emotional response or pose particular moral quandaries, and having a set of rules that naturally lead to those sorts of conflicts will help to ensure that the tone of the game stays consistent.

Rules can be used to create roleplaying, but they need to do it in subtle, sneaky ways. They also can't do it in a game that's intended to support multiple styles of play, like D&D does. There's lots of good discussion over at www.indie-rpgs.com.

edit: oh hey, look...someone beat me to it.

 

[Dremmen]

Thank you all

I appreciate all the replies, positive and negative, with the exception of the useless replies that call for a repost of this elsewhere. I realize some folks can't properly verbalize their opinion or disagreement so I guess that's why they chose to interrupt some very insightful commentary. Everyone else - I wanted to make clear again that I was stating my opinion. It is what it is, and others will have different ones and I understand and respect that. Despite all the arguments against, I still do believe that a narrative style is what RPG makers intended their games for and folks that play that style are "qualitatively" playing the game. Can folks play without that and have fun? Absolutely. Do I believe that, despite the fact that they are having their own fun, they are missing the point of this particular and very beloved hobby? Yes. Me and a buddy could grab fishing poles and spar with them. Would that be fun? Yes, and probably a little dangerous. Am I missing the point of the fishing poles? A hard edged fisherman that loved the sport would be mortified. Well, the point is that, in my opinion, the narrative is as intrinsic to the game as dice rolling. In the game as I invision it players put as much into the game as the DM, in effort of making detailed characters and in time they spend talking during a game. With narrative players they guide the action as much as the DM and the DM just needs to interject to describe the surrounding, play NPCs or resolve conflict. Some of you say I'm bitter - and yeah, I'll admit to it. Nine out of ten players out there scuff at narrative style, or at least in my experience they have been. I've met maybe 2, 3 players that can pull it off, and another few that were genuinely interested in stepping their game up. The rest could care less and they have the effect of peer pressuring the rest of the players to a mechanical miasma. They glare at them into piping down because narrative players among nonnarrative players will hug much more game time. So they eventually bend to the masses. And this indeed was written for selfish reasons. As a DM I very simply enjoy narrative players SO much more than this hack and slash glory hounds that are a dime a dozen. In my games I will always encourage RPing and I'm about done making everyone around the table comfortable - time to step their game up and I will help them and encourage them to do so.

So those that differ in opinion, more power to you. Those that feel my pain to some degree - thanks for speaking out so I know that indeed there are those out there that value the art of the RPG over just the thrill of the kill. And mechanics are important and if you can be both narrative and mechanical in your description then that's all gravy with me. The Exalted game actually does reward players for good descriptions and narrative, but then again White Wolf has always weighed more towards the storytelling and plot and characters.

So in the end, I am sorry if I offended anyone. I still feel that players that can pull off a narrative style consistently are better at playing RPGs and hence why they are more rare, and this is purely based on the essence of the game we are talking about. Hack and slash in, say, Diablo, or Hero Quest, is just fine. RPGs are different from these for that very reason. I don't want to come off as hard headed, this is far from the first time in the last decade that I have discussed this topic with others, and for a long time I was of the camp - play it however you enjoy it. But then I realized that it was hack n slash over and over and over. Narrative is quality and if my having a strong opinion and sticking to it makes me an arse well then so be it.

Thanks all for at least reading this and having an informed opinion

 

[scourger]

...the Lowest Denominator...

The mechanics have to be imbedded under the storytelling or it becomes a...video game. A meaningless pissing contest.

Its the well played, interesting character, the funny one, or flirty one, or clumsy one, or even cowardly one, that is memorable and lives on in stories told laughingly to gamers around the table.

Its the interaction with the other people in the game...

Computer RPGs...boil things down to collecting XP and toys.

The original post reads as a little elitist, but I agree with some of the points as quoted above. So, I'll add my voice to the rant a little. I have found over 25 years of gaming that D&D is the lowest common denominator. It is the game that everyone knows & wants to play. Unfortunately, it tends to bring out the worst in players. Often, it devolves into the kill-loot-rinse-repeat cycle that I have grown to abhor. I loved d20, but I've discovered that it is a magical arms race in a war of hit point attrition. It's so over-codified that it is virtually unplayabe after mid-levels as it is really a reverse engineering of a computer game into a paper RPG (ironically). Collecting more power, specifically magic, becomes the focus of the game; and the escalation of magic just makes the game more difficult to comprehend as the numbers and modifiers explode.

That being said, it doesn't have to be that way. It's not the fault of the players or the DM, really. I've discovered that different players play differently because they enjoy different aspects of the game. This article is instructive: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html
but there are others that I've read that classify player types. I've learned that most people favor one style of play but enjoy all aspects at some level. A nice mixture is the most satisfying to me, although I do tend toward action-oriented characters & games. I've found Savage Worlds to be very liberating lately, but I cling to hope that D&D/d20 will be salvable at some point. I haven't found the solution yet, but I'm still working on the problem.

I guess my point is that the game is what you (and the group) make it. As long as you (and the group) are having fun, you're doing it right.

 

[gizmo33]

Player 1: I spit on the ground and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm. I go to a side stance, clasping my battle axe in two hands like a club. My weight shifts back and forth from foot to foot as I sway with anticipation.

Quoted for emphasis.

I think most combat descriptions are boring. I think good descriptions are a matter of deciding what to describe, not lingering over stuff that isn't worth it. I don't particularly care for the thespian-style game. I do prefer that players try to immerse themselves in the game, understand NPC's motivations and such. That can make for some more interesting gaming. Players who don't really see the world like that just wander around and wait for things to attack them. That's boring regardless of how many different ways you can describe a battle axe swing.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

See, to me, I want to get throught the mechanical fighting bits as quickly as possible so I can get back to role playing.

So roleplaying stops when initiative is rolled? Interesting.

Actually he said the mechanical fighting bits as what was distinct from roleplaying, and I agree. Florid descriptions of your sword technique are not roleplaying, they are simply being descriptive. Just like a 5 minute description of your character's well tailored cothing is not roleplaying. Being descriptive is nice and all, but its not roleplaying.

Personally, I like to see roleplaying in combat, but it has nothing to do with verbosity. More making decisions based on your character's personality and feelings rather than just tactical considerations. When my gladiator wannabe refuses to swap out her twin shortswords for a bastard sword with more of a chance of penetrating her foe's DR because her longterm goal is to improve that fighting style (and she'll never be good at it if she uses a differnt weapon for the tough opponents!), that is roleplaying in combat, regardless of whether I spend two paragraphs describing her two sword technique or just say "She dismisses the suggestion angrily and full attacks again. Here's my attack and damage." When a chaotic neutral cleric who just spend half the session roleplaying a massive religious feud with the party tank risks an AoO to keep him up because he knows he can take the damage and that's the strategicly best move, that is not roleplaying in combat, imho, no matter how descriptive he is about his defensive casting and just how he invokes his god.

I will also go so far as to say that if you are into roleplaying but go objective/tactical once initiative is rolled that it is qualitiatively worse by the standard of your style decision (immersive rp). The decision of whether to give detailed descriptions of your combat manuvers, on the other hand, is to me unrelated to your commitment to immersive RP.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I realize some folks can't properly verbalize their opinion or disagreement so I guess that's why they chose to interrupt some very insightful commentary.

this is not going to get you anywhere. Take it to usenet, alt.snark or something.

 

[Thotas]

There's that word! Umbran used it. "Elitist". And, though I proudly consider myself to be an elitist bastard, I have to go with his and many other criticisms of Dremman's POV here. Not only is "maturity" conflated with "narrative description", but "good" is over identified with what I would call "sophisticated". And while sophistication is generally a good thing, they aren't the same thing.

In Dremman's original post, and in Shaman's defense there of, we find astute references to a developmental process. Take an analogy to reading -- nobody starts with Proust. A good many never get there; some lack the capacity, some have other interests. Most everyone however, encounters Dr. Seuss along the way. And some Proust readers may have fond memories of their first reading of "Green Eggs and Ham". They'd never call it sophisticated, but they won't let you tell them it's not a good book; and likewise on an adult level, there are books that aren't terribly sophisticated and can be great fun. Likewise, a book call have all the technical hallmarks of sophistication, but lack the ineffable inspiration that makes it good. In the world of RPGs, we find some brilliantly sophisticated people who are just want the catharsis of hacking some ogres to bits on the weekend. We also find some pretentious types who think they're special 'cause no one was called upon to roll to hit in their last gaming session. And there are some who wouldn't play with either group I've just described.

As far as the fishing pole analogy goes, Dremman, you've already pointed out half of it's failure. Despite what the poles may have been designed for, they can be used for other things. Using something only-as-designed-for is at best an ettiquette question, and there are some things in the world more important than ettiquette. The other half of the analogy's failure is that I have no indicator that you're right about what RPGs are designed for. I haven't studied in depth, but I've read a few opinions and observations from game designers and I've yet to see one that claims we've all missed the point because we don't describe the sweat on our warrior's arm as he braces to block the hobgoblin's next attack.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

At a guess the original poster was a fan of the old White Wolf school of RPG.

Nothing wrong with that - the storyteller system is simple and lethal enough (when not played by munchkins) to allow long narratives every round. D&D has a much more complicated combat system and a combat lasts long enough that the long narratives would become a much bigger problem.

He may want to check out Adamant's Narrative Combat PDF. Not my cuppa, but that is a taste, not a quality, issue - it seems well written, just not what I want right now. For my games only the first round or so gets role-played, if the combat takes longer then it becomes a little closer to the typical game.

However I do object to the original poster's 'my way is more mature!' whine. If he does not like the group he is with then he should go and find some players that fit his style better. Probably smoking clove cigarettes and communing about the angst of existence. (Seriously, it does sound like WoD players may be more to his liking, burning cloves aside.)

Heck, taking 'maturity' in the sense of 'age' then it is the narrative style that is the young pup here!

The Auld Grump