My argument was that the GM should not have either the duty or the authority to be the supervisor of the social contract -- a claim put forth by others in the thread. I, instead, said that this duty is shared equally throughout the social group -- that each and every person present has the duty to enforce the social contract, and that each and every person present has the authority to call out breaches and negotiate corrections.
This is what you're arguing against. To do so requires that you're arguing for the duty and authority to be vested in specific individuals or that no duty is present at all.
No, it requires me to consider it significantly more likely to work well for them compared to a random member of the group. Which as I've indicated, with most groups I do.
Since the latter is not what you've been saying at all, and the former is very close, then your position has to be that the GM has special duty and special authority to enforce the social contract. If the GM has this special duty/authority, then others do not, and that makes the GM the supervisor of the social group, responsible for ensuring the proper conduct of others. This is the source of my assessment of your continued arguments that people are bad as resolving in-group problems and therefor need a minder of some kind. I don't see how you can escape this conclusion given your continued arguments.
"Need" is a strong word, but if you're willing to use "Benefit from", it absolutely
is my position. Where I disagree with you is your assessment this makes gamers infantile. What I think it does is make them people.
I also agree that people are, in general, bad at resolving in-group arguments. This is, however, because people are uncertain of whether or not they can stand up for themselves without receiving social opprobrium. In other words, they feel disempowered to deal with the situation, and this is a reinforcing loop. Your solution is to further disempower them by stating that the GM is in charge and so if the GM says nothing, they're wrong about the situation.
Absolutely not. My solution is to have the person who is already operating on a different tier of relationship to do so. They're not trying to resolve every conflict, but they are trying to keep the game going smoothly, and they're already given the power to do that in other areas, so they might as well do it here.
While you might well get the situation where the less assertive are being intimidated by the GM, that's already likely a problem if its true, because they're having to deal with them on other conflicts relating to resolution and things like how they're handling initiative order and such anyway, and that's going to be much more frequent than "Could you find a way to play your character that doesn't make it hard for Eric's Champion to stay in the group?"
Given that GMs are only selected because they are willing to take on that role in a game, and that there's often quite a lot of power fantasy that attaches to that role, assigning this to the GM seems like a terribly idea -- they're no more qualified than anyone else at the table to successfully navigate in-group problems, and they're also often likely to confuse social contract issues with their role as GM (I mean, look at threads on this topic here and you'll clearly see that there's a strong feeling that GMs are special because they do more work and so their opinion carries more weight!). This is a poor recipe.
I'm not even going to argue against that. I'm just going to argue that the other options are worse. You clearly disagree.
Instead, I recommend that everyone be aware and empowered to understand that they have both the duty and authority to call out breaches of the social contract. This doesn't mean everyone for themselves, it means everyone for everyone.
And if I had the faintest hint that in most groups that would work with any reliability, I'd be all for it. I don't. And its not because gaming groups are special negative snowflakes, its because people in general aren't typically good at making that work.
If Betty is shy and has a hard time confronting Bob's antics, Paul or Angela should step in and say something, because they also have the duty. Please, though, in this example, identify who the GM is for me? Exactly my point -- you don't need to know for there to be a strong and healthy social contract here, and not everyone needs to be good at social issues or standing up for themselves. The difference here is that we're not putting this on the GM, who should not be the leader of the social unit just by dint of their role in a game.
The problem is, Paul and Angela are
also likely to think its not their business, and Bob will too, even if they don't. So when that cooks up, Betty is likely to feel even worse about it than if nothing had been done.
