The Game for Non-Gamers: (Forked from: Sexism in D&D)

[Ariosto]

In a social interaction, though, each participant has an objective which may or may not be in conflict. ... Coming up with a single mechanic to handle this situation (it has to be a single mechanic, otherwise you could tell immediately whether I was lying or not by which mechanic was used to resolve the question) is a tricky business.

If it's PC versus PC, can't we do without a "mechanic" and it leave it to real social interaction between the players, if there truly exists such a limited-information aspect? If the players already know the real state of affairs, then nothing is revealed by the choice of mechanic.

 

[Rel]

You know, as an aside, I don't particularly care for people with two middle initials.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

You know, as an aside, I don't particularly care for people with two middle initials.

But what about George R.R. Martin?

 

[Rel]

But what about George R.R. Martin?

Nevermind.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

But what about George R.R. Martin?

Yeah... talk about pretentious.... just like his writing...

2 middle initials is like having Cougar for a middle name...

 

[Ariosto]

I agree that action-adventure games and those with other emphases are fundamentally "different hobbies" with only slight overlap. I think it would be an impoverishment rather than an enrichment to turn, say, D&D into a "tea party" game. My thoughts have turned to the prospect of making new games of the former type with wider (or at least different) appeal. Making new games of the latter type does not personally interest me much.

Slight as it may be, I don't think we should dismiss the potential overlap.

I played in elementary school, before encountering D&D, an "educational" game in which players took the roles of (if memory serves) members of a "city council" voting on different proposals and then seeing the results. It was, like Diplomacy, basically a game of pure strategy with social interaction as the primary mode of play. Like GDW's (much later) game Red Empire, competition was moderated by the fact that everyone could lose.

That was not quite an RPG, at least by the measure of D&D and its ilk. However, it got me thinking on lines similar to those that had led to the development of D&D, and led me to introduce some "role playing" elements to the war games my friends and I cooked up. I started then with a vague idea of a Marvel Comics game that did not quite crystallize until D&D hit me with its "lightning bolt".

What this recollection suggests to me is that wider exposure to things at least in some ways similar to D&D is likely to "prime" people already inclined to be "gamers". Those other things may reach demographics D&D itself does not. Some people who don't "get" the game now might come back after one of those other experiences in a more receptive frame of mind.

There are "non-gamers" ... and there are "gamers who don't know it yet".

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I remember in the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide II there were rules given for running a business and having a mentor or apprentice. Player's Handbook II introduced rules for joining an organization.

I would wonder, though, whether an RPG like D&D needs rules to support stuff like that or just needs to appear to support stuff like that.

 

[Mallus]

I would wonder, though, whether an RPG like D&D needs rules to support stuff like that or just needs to appear to support stuff like that.

Personally, I'd like to see guidelines for all manner of activities that players could conceivably involve themselves in. I'm not sure I want to see rules, at least not rules that carry a heavy freight of expectations.

Like I said, guidelines.

I prefer the non-adventury part of the game to be informed by real experience, or at the very least, from reading outside the hobby.

Also, I'm not fond of elaborate rules for social situations. I like talking and interacting with people (even when they're not real). I find abstracting talking into some kind of mechanical simulation of talking sucks a lot of fun out of it.

 

[Jack7]

As a point of reference, my wife loves fantasy, castles, fairies, the whole thing, but is 100% a non-gamer. Although she fully supports my hobby, enjoys the art, and encourages me, she has never shown any interest in rolling up a character. I asked her about this once after I played Oblivion for a bit. I made a character that looks like her, and she likes watching her wear medieval gowns, nice jewelry, and hanging out in castles. Anything else, though, brings her no interest. "All she ever does is run and fight things. She can't get real relationships with anyone. She can't fall in love. Could she do some housework?"

The housework comment surprised me. A bit more discussion, and the comment became clear: building and beautifying the area would be a far more important and noble goal for her than slaying monsters. She'd want to deliver medicine to the sick. She'd want to find pretty jewelry. The whole slay monsters thing, that's what you hire oafs to handle for you.

I've found it frustrating in the extreme that AD&D (and many other games) seems to actively discourage any sort of 'base-building' or social ties being forged to a particular area, with even thematically-linked Adventure Path style campaigns often turning into 'wander off and kill X' missions, which end up abandoning / penalizing other styles of play. 'Builders,' whether builders of castles or social movements or crafters of magical items, tend to be told 'no, you can't take six months off to do X, the adventure is this way. Saddle up and abandon the part of the game that you like to go kill something.'

That sort of play is more of a defensive game (building a community, or becoming integrated into one) as the characters stay in one place and the adventures come to them, while the standard adventure is more of an 'offensive' game, with the adventurers going out to meet danger in it's lair, and leaving behind any sort of social / political ties they've built at the city gates.

Even as a long-time gamer combat can after many years of combat-centric campaigns turn into, as you put it, "if you take out the trash enough, you'll become better at taking out the trash." Wonderful phrase, by the way.

It would be wonderful if more gaming systems had the kind of openness that actively supported the kind of play you descibe as an alternative - not only to encourage the non-gamers, but also to allow for a change of pace for the regular gamers.

I agree with these set of comments, and in some ways it is a far better expression of some of the ideas I was expressing here. Especially in the idea that women shouldn't have to prove they are men or need to act like men to be equal to men. But the comments expressed here encompass a far wider range of subject matter, and better express what I was driving at. Or one of the things I was driving at. Just as you have people with different physical capacities, you have people with different motivations and interests. And the way they approach problem solving and action will vary according to their natures. But I don't want to restart that discussion here. And that wasn't my point anyway, so I have no intention of arguing it. I'm merely echoing your comments in a different way.

However I don't see why the game can't do both things, or many things for that matter. That is I don't see why it can't have elements that appeal to everyone in some way. Build the game big enough to accommodate various impulses and then let the players choose what avenue or avenues they wish to pursue (combat, social interaction, political advancement, religious experimentation, and so forth and so on). That's the way I've tried to manufacture my setting and milieu.

In any world, real or imagined, there are many possibilities of what can be built and how. So to me many of these issues could be resolved not so much as by rules restructuring, or even game restructuring (though to some extent that would be necessary in some cases), but by different types of Setting Constructs. My daughters and some girls from church play in the same setting in Byzantium or Samarkand as the guys have, but sometimes they play for different objectives or in different ways. Because over time I learned they liked doing things their own way and had their own interests. With emphasis less military and historical and political and more psychological, sociological, and "architectural" for lack of a better term.

I like goal/ performance based XP that may or may not involve combat and looting. Achieving goals by whatever means required earns XP. The more progress towards those goals that happens in a session, the larger the XP award. If the players see that their actions have an impact on the reward level then they will play towards the highest reward. This is why there are so many PC's looking for fights constantly in the standard reward system.

I like this EW. And use something very similar.

A great many people are not interested in a "system" at all.

That's a good observation as well, and one I agree with generally speaking, but then again perhaps methods could be developed that are so fine that the "system" effectively disappears in play. It still functions but it is not an "Operating System" that needs constant maintenance or referral, but it operates almost invisibly in the background, or can operate in different ways according to different circumstances or for different users. I though agree with you in that I still think much of D&D is still in the Nerd and Geek stage, where there is a sort of self-interested fascination with the "system itself" as you said, but as with any technology, for the technology to grow it must become so user friendly that only specialists are primarily concerned with the system itself. Many people like using airplanes and flying them, but only a few are aircraft maintenance personnel. If only aircraft "specialists" could make practical use of planes, then flying would be a very small enterprise.

To grow everything must outgrow it's own complexity, or outgrow the appearance of necessary complexity (at least) in order to interest and be useful to the masses. A computer that operated without constant maiantence and technical skill would be far more popular that the computer that requires one to be an engineer merely to use it.

I'm sure others have brought up interesting points. And that I may have merely echoed others. But I'm pressed for time right now and could only read the first page. I'll try and read the rest of the thread later this evening.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Personally, I'd like to see guidelines for all manner of activities that players could conceivably involve themselves in. I'm not sure I want to see rules, at least not rules that carry a heavy freight of expectations.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. You mean you want the books to have advice on people really go about doing things?

(If I'm remembering correctly) I think the PHBII organizations was a good step: as you did things the organization liked you got a bigger bonus to you "organization relationship score", and you could make checks using that score if you needed something from the organization. The fact that your relationship with someone or something comes back to benefit you is probably a good window into the sorts of things an "other stuff" D&D would support.