Monday, July 31, 2023

Collectivity, Cooperation and Challenge

Failures of Collective Spirit

Everyone on the internet, and many people who aren't, have had an experience like this:

-"Hey guys don't we all love this boat we're on!"

-"Yes we do! Or, at least--it is better than having no boat!" all agree

-"Ok, do whatever, have fun doing your thing just please nobody press the red button or the boat will explode!"

-Someone--just for funsies, or for clown clout--presses the red button.

-Boat explodes. Everyone regrets this.

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This is a failure of collectivity.

That is: a set of behaviors that everyone involved acknowledges benefits everyone, including themselves, and someone just cannot stop themself from putting some other short-term personal goal first.


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In a role-playing game one of the fun parts is having your PC do weird or funny stuff, things you wouldn't do in a more practical world--the fun of being someone else.

In a role-playing game with a heavy challenge element (one where there's a real threat that you will lose a character and therefore no longer be able to play the game in the specific way you were having fun playing it and have to start over and do it a different way) the usual best strategy to succeed in the challenge is to engage in collective thinking.

This can involve explicit planning--"We all benefit if we kill the monster and get the treasure, so let's pay attention to who we each are as a group and figure out how to use those aptitudes to best do that", but it can also involve just, as a player, being aware of who the other peoples' characters are and what they can do.

Many people experience a mild conflict here in the moment:

  • They want to succeed!
  • They also wanna do what they wanna do because its playtime, dammit!
  • (Also sometimes failing because one PC cannot help but be the squeaky wheel they are is fun, too.)

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Outside a role-playing game online there are other obvious examples of this in forums online:

For example, there's no piece information that can be passed on via namecalling on a forum that can't be passed on in some other way, but someone will, eventually, always do it even when there's an explicit rule against it. Somebody gets bounced and nobody is hurt but them.

Every time somebody does one of these things they're failing to act in a way that's best for everyone--including them--and they know it, but they just can't stop themself.

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D&D and Cooperation

D&D is very much a game about cooperation.

It is much more so than most triple-A video games or nearly any other popular entertainment you'll be involved with outside of actual sports.

This is an oddly-smothered point.

The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy about cooperation, as is Star Wars. The ideal that people with diverse skillsets and attitudes need to work together to achieve laudable long-term goals is deep deep in the DNA of the media that inspired most RPGs.

The current post-5e, post-Critical Role, post-D&D The Movie temperature of conversation about D&D broadly online emphasizes many things including:

-Character-creation options (related to conversations about peoples' interest in video game character gen options) and the ability to use them to express yourself

and

-Progressive social principles.

Considering this, its very odd that one of D&D's radiant innate progressive virtues--the emphasis on working together--isn't placed front and center all the time.

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Here's Why

Despite any open claims of holding to progressive principles, the people most responsible for the current conversation in RPGs absolutely suck at collective thinking. So many pay more attention to what happens to an imaginary orc than to a real human player at the table with them.

I know. I've seen them play games. I was often in games with them.

Right now the conversation is defined by:

-the post-Storygame narrativist scene which largely grew out of people being unable to communicate with their fellow D&D or Vampire or RIFTS groups, especially in challenge-oriented play and so invented games full of rules to police interhuman communication or simply gatekeep any player out unless that player wanted to play the exact narrowly-defined microsubgenre of game they themselves wanted to play instead of just agreeing they all wanted the fucking ring to go in that fucking volcano

and

-2010s OSR veterans who, when given a choice between politely asking one sacred crackpot friend to stop lying on the internet or letting the entire ship sink, absolutely chose letting the ship sink

I reiterate-I have seen these people play games

They are absolutely blown away by 101-level collective-success tactics. See you're outnumbered? Back up, close the door, pour flaming oil on the floor, drop marbles in the oil, have a resilient PC hold a torch over the oil (remember which PCs are resilient!), ready to drop it, protect the wizards. Works all the time.

They are filled with shock and awe by even just the most basic gestures in this direction, they will make you leader immediately.

Patrick Stuart once killed one of Zach Marx Weber's PC because he thought throwing green slime on him would help.

If the current version of progressivism in the RPG scene seems oddly fascist, I'd posit this is why--these are the people who have absolutely zero practice self-governing, who made their clout by talking about how they were proudly unable to play with anyone else and needed very new very specific new gates built to keep people out rather than just learning how to throw a party.

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14 comments:

  1. Now that I think of it, the one person in our group who turned out to be a passionate supporter of terrorists was the one who had problems with exactly this aspect of D&D.
    Must be indicative of something.

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  2. I think there is room to blame lax reffing and weak GM advice. As a kid I clearly got the message to kill the disorganized and incompetent whenever I pleased. Gygax made this point more than once and my early DMs certainly trained me that the other PCs were the only people I could (usually) trust. We were the fantasy X-men, regularly saving a world that actively hated us. And having a better plan than the enemy was often the only way to prevail.

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  3. Hey Zak. I think you're correct about a lot of this, but could you can spell out who you see as "the people most responsible for the current conversation in RPGs"?

    And a totally separate question: Any updates on the Nebulith project?

    ReplyDelete
  4. @maasenstodt

    Who I see as most responsible?

    Theres lots of people but I'd say good examples include:

    - the group of Story Game scene harassers around Ajit George and Whitney Beltran who first got work at WOTC on their new horror module

    - the Something Awful refugees and their friends like Olivia Hill, Freyja Erlings, etc who set the tone for twitter discussion

    - the OSR folks who banded together and started doing kickstarter stuff like Exalted Funeral, Mothership, etc.

    -the forums moderators who uncritically support these folks

    ReplyDelete
  5. @maasenstodt

    As for the Nebuilth:

    I am supposed to have all the pages done by Nov 1 I think? Then we start looking at printing

    ReplyDelete
  6. @anonymous

    sorry--no anonymous comments allowed.

    And "Scott" doesn't really explain who you are because there's a lot of guys named Scott.

    ReplyDelete
  7. At the operational game level, as a fledgling DM, I find that collective cohesion breaks down in two recurring instances:

    a) The first instance starts with Alignment but may extend to over-arching personal trait(s). I find that players often try to use certain character alignments (depending on system) as a passport to purposely disrupt the cooperative experience….. which in some cases is just wanting to do dirty deeds in the name of fun, but more often than not I have to balance those experiences, against a number of folks whom by their nature, past experience, trauma, culture etc. interact with the entire human collective by simply being a “troll” …..in-game, online, in the workplace or whatever, the medium is irrelevant, the counter-collective behavior is itself the stimulation. ( I throw culture in there apprehensively because anecdotally, I haven’t once experienced this phenomenon with my Japanese players, who generally prioritize collective harmony as a cultural pillar. )


    b) this may be more situational than individual-based, but uncooperative individuals seem to come to light in the division of loot, specifically items. Characters will inevitably squabble over who gets what…. ok fine. (Even if the squabble is primarily for the value of the thing despite the inability of their class to utilize it…. whatever.. still fine) or, in the inverse all the players, in order to avoid conflict, will decidedly try to give items to someone else in the party, or not lay claim to items at all although clearly evident they want them ……eye-roll, but fine, whatever); or engage in some sort of in-game character contest extending up to intra-party combat (less fine, players can do what they want, but if every loot division ends in having to run a contest or combat, it detracts from the actual setting); or in the worst scenario the players themselves argue out of game over some item(s), which has even progressed to such a degree in one instance that I’ve had a player wish to leave the game permanently / not play again with the player that ultimately received the item, which they believed was rightfully theirs! …… not fine!) I haven’t figured out a comprehensive workaround to all these scenarios minus doing something lame like providing enough items for each character, which deteriorates the verisimilitude in my mind. But, I do note that those counter to a “collective cooperantion” effing relish when a division of loot presents itself!

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Boonie Dog

    It sounds like the players who do that are either children (ok) or assholes (not ok).

    Were they as shitty outside the game?

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  9. Hard to say, many of the in-person games here one or two shots and are akin to playing with strangers online. Ive come across some players that are just plain assholes, others that are secrete assholes…. (quite quiet and normal until they roll-up a character and then they are just pure terrors guising behind the security of a character sheet!) and others that were regular players but get caught up in the BS of the assholes.

    -I run for my nieces and their friends (children) stateside and these pre-teens divy up loot more maturely and efficiently than any of the adult groups, Ha! ….maybe because they are closer to the age of sharing toys on the playground? LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hard to say, many of the in-person session here are a one or two shots and akin to playing with strangers online. Ive come across some players that are just plain assholes, others that are secrete assholes…. (quite quiet and normal until they roll up a character and then they are just a pure terror guising behind the security of a character sheet!) and others that are regular players but get caught up in the BS of the assholes.


    I run for my nieces and their friends (actual children) stateside and these pre-teens divy up loot and items more maturely and efficiently than any of the adult groups, Ha! ….maybe because they are closer to the age of sharing toys on the playground.

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Boonie

    I've met to meet someone who is a genuinely disruptive asshole in game who isn't also a problem irl on some level, but your mileage may vary.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Zak,

    I’ve sent an email attempting to purchase PDFs via your store on 23/8 tittled “PDF purchase request”. Just wanted to reach out about it because I haven’t received a response. Looking forward to playing the games.

    Antoine

    ReplyDelete
  13. @Antoine

    Thanks! I didn't get it. It's not in spam or in my inbox

    please doublecheck the address: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm

    and send it again

    ReplyDelete
  14. @Schub

    Erased.

    Misinformation is not allowed in the comments.

    ReplyDelete