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Play Advice: Kill a Cow: Collaboration

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  1.  
  1.  # 1
    So over here Willow sparked a discussion about sacred cows, and there's some interesting stuff on that list. Of course it's pretty easy to point these out, right? Some of them are deeply ingrained, at least in my way of thinking. So this is the thread where we suggest effective, positive alternatives to the way it is always done.

    The one that prompted this thread was Paul's "player collaboration makes a game better". I know I assume that! Recognizing the trap of "better", and recognizing a diversity of play styles, show me a system (real or imaginary) where that's distinctly not the case, for starters.

    Also! Don't be a tool. Go grab a sacred cow and show how it could be neatly slain - that's all I'm interested in.
    • CommentAuthorPaul T.
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 2
    (Jason, are you talking about voluntary collaboration, or collaboration as a competitive strategy--somehow enforced by the game? Because those are different things, and will lead to two different kinds of bovine slaughter.)
  3.  # 3
    I'm having trouble, too, Jason. I mean, I can't figure out how one game does collaboration that another doesn't. So, to me it's saying that some game has less collaboration, somehow, and that therefore it's more fun.

    For example, we're playing an "old" game -- say, old D&D. But, when I the player say what my character does, as per the rules, I'm collaborating, right? And, when the GM explains the room, same. Right? So, when this doesn't happen, I'm lost to see how that could possibly be "better," which I read as "more fun."

    Now, the other way to see it is that "collaboration" means "players doing stuff outside their character." And, I wonder if that's what the sacred-cow-killer means. I think it is.

    If so, I s'pose I can point to bunches of games that limit player input of this kind that are schloads of fun for many people. Let's say, uh, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which I played and enjoyed a whole lot in my younger days. Or, more currently, something like, I dunno, Arrowflight or one of my indie fav's, a/state!
  4.  # 4
    With words like "collaboration" and "better," this is all touchy-feely...but then I guess so is most of our little world of RPG, so I'll move on.

    Perhaps Beast Hunters is an indie example? The system feels more like a series of mandates and one-ups-manships than collaborations, trying to tap into that Gamist action. And it makes for a fun game, the way that wargames are fun because two people are engaging one another, and at best all they collaborate on are things like what system to use and how "big" the army will be -- and that's more setting ground rules than anything else.

    Unless you take "collaborating" so far that it's collaborating to say "I accept that you are using the rules right now, so do what you're going to do." You know, an insane extreme.

    Or maybe "collaboration" in this case means "cooperative campaign creation?" In that case, there are loads of people who love nothing more than playing a stock Forgotten Realms game run by a GM who has set up the adventures on his own.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007 edited
     # 5
    Since it was my cow, here are my thoughts:

    "Collaboration" as a word is sufficiently broad that it's sort of meaningless. I think the very notion of "collaboration" is itself freighted with all kinds of assumptions in the indie scene: it means players flagging things so the GM knows to play to those flags, or adding in setting bits so everyone has a sense of investment, or spend resources to buy bad guys for your own character to deal with.

    I think there are some things that are hard to collaborate around:

    * Discovery, the big storygame bugaboo and a repeated deal-breaker among my old-skool play group here

    * Strongly tactical play, wherein playing well requires withholding information

    * Surprise plot twists/big reveals. A subset of discovery.

    * Passive/reactive play styles that are, nevertheless, rewarding for that player.

    * System-invisible play: Your character is comprised of things you care about and things you're good at, and the GM is entrusted to handle everything else. (NB this is my most absolutely personally despised model of play and I fucking hate it, but it's certainly out there and a lot of players luuuuuve it).

    * Quite possibly, that weird and slipppery fish called "Immersion" may actually be better served in a non-collaborative, high-trust environment.

    (Huh...just as I wrote that I had a weird thought pop into my head. Is collaboration the enemy of trust? Does having one make the other unnecessary?)

    p.
  6.  # 6
    Thanks, guys. I think you're right about what Paul intended, Matt (Paul, want to clarify?). There's a continuum of meaning, but it struck me that I implicitly assume more is better. Maybe that's not necessarily true, right? And maybe the cow died unborn if people are rocking out to more restrictive systems all around me. Ryan, I tend to think of Beast Hunters as a very collaborative game, on the participant level.

    How about a game that embraces the WFRP dynamic as a feature that explicitly enhances gameplay, rather than the accidental byproduct of its heritage? Does that even make sense? I'm looking to expand the horizon of tools and techniques here.

    Edit: Cross posted, grr.
  7.  # 7
    Posted By: Paul BIscollaborationthe enemy oftrust?

    I don't think that's on the mark at all. Maybe each is an independent axis, though - I think I'm in a high-trust, high-collaboration group.
  8.  # 8
    Posted By: Jason MorningstarRyan, I tend to think of Beast Hunters as a very collaborative game, on the participant level.

    Hmm. Yeah, I can see that. It brings to mind what different levels we have going on simultaneously during a game.

    How about a game that embraces the WFRP dynamic as a feature that explicitly enhances gameplay, rather than the accidental byproduct of its heritage?

    Could you unpack that a little, Jason? I feel like I almost get it, but I've been drinking from the hippie-indie kool aid long enough to where I don't fully grok the idea.
  9.  # 9
    Is collaboration the enemy of trust? Does having one make the other unnecessary?


    Nah. Maybe Jason's right about those being independent. But, off the cuff, I'd have said "Nah, collaboration is a SIGN of trust." I mean, I didn't collaborate with my players very much prior to 2002, basically because I didn't trust them to come up with "cool enough" stuff.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 10
    Posted By: Jason Morningstar
    Posted By: Paul BIscollaborationthe enemy oftrust?

    I don't think that's on the mark at all. Maybe each is an independent axis, though - I think I'm in a high-trust, high-collaboration group.


    Oh, this is definitely just me riffing. I'm not gonna stick my flag in that idea but it might be worth exploring a bit (maybe not in this thread).

    p.
  11.  # 11
    OK ... thinking out loud ... there's a whole raft of games* that were influenced and evolved from a particular "collaborative aesthetic" (for want of a better phrase). I think it centers on the distribution of authority that goes back to the roots of roleplaying games. And there's something very obviously excellent about that, because a lot of people - most gamers - play games that limit collaboration in specific ways that seem pretty consistent from rule-set to rule-set. But I seriously doubt any of the designers are really taking a hard look at the assumptions that make it work. You've got a GM, you've got players, GMs do this, players do this, this bit they do all together. So I'm challenging us to think about it more, that's all, because even if you're a hippie mutant like Ryan that set-up is like mother's milk, most likely.

    How could you harness that and turn it up to 11 in the service of your design goals rather than just accept it as the status quo?

    *all roleplaying games, actually.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 12
    Random thoughts because, unfortunately, I really must get some work done at some point:

    Going back to my list of bullets, you'd be building a game that strives for immersion, discovery, surprises and smart, tactical player-versus-GM play.

    Anything scripted, like Matthijs' "We All Had Names", is a zero-collaboration roleplaying exercise. I hesitate to call it a "game" in any meaningful sense. It only works because the participant is thrust into a situation not of his design, and agrees to work his way through it.

    I think you'd have to stake out in the beginning an unambiguous "this is what this game is about." The player has to accept that at face value and still go into it with the belief that it'll still be a good ride. Maybe that comes from the GM. Maybe the GM is given a list he has to fill out, which then restricts where his game will go from that point forward. Maybe there are predone setups that aren't quite scripts. It's like setting up a game board.

    Wherever you explicitly tell the player, "You have no say in this element" -- setting, situation, NPC, relationship, maybe even elements of the characters themselves! -- I think the player must take that as the stated challenge of the game. A chess player only has 16 predetermined pieces, for example, and has to work those pieces toward a particular goal. At no point does the player say, "Hey...wouldn't it be cool if you let me set up an Alekhine Defense? And then you could take my Queen, because that'd cause me a lot of strife!" It only works because you have two players with limited choices following unambiguous rules. It's the inherent ambiguity of the RPG narrative that makes it hard to play this way.

    You could build a game around manipulating the players' trust in the GM. I think that could be fantastically disastrous, actually, without setting that assumption up-front. This is sort of in the realm of the GM being an unreliable witness, in lit-speak.

    Gotta get back to work but I'm following this thread avidly.

    p.
  13.  # 13
    So, is collaboration something inherent to the idea of "a group of folks gathering together to have fun?" And those games are tapping into that naturally-occurring collaboration without hitting it over the head by saying "you guys need to collaborate together on this one element now?"

    Man, Jason, you know how to pick a doozy. I like this topic, because it feels so natural that it's hard for me to say "oh, yeah, that's totally a breakable assumption." Yet, at the same time, I don't want to take anything like that for granted in design.

    There's a game I'm toying with right now where one of my early thoughts was "Oh, I know how to do adventure creation!" where each player brought to the table some element of the adventure that will be encountered -- a foe, a challenge, a quest of some time, etc. Then last night as I was penning stuff down, I decided that that was too much for this game. It felt like it'd take away some of my fun as a GM, and some of the fun in playing if you like being surprised by things. Anyway, I mention this because I'm wondering if this is me putting aside "heavy-handed collaboration" for the sake of "better."
  14.  # 14
    Paul, what you're describing seems very close to what I experienced playing a Danish scenario, in Denmark, with Danes (and Swedes). So I give that a big thumbs up, because it was really fun.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAndy
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 15
    Also, just to note: There are tons of other sacred cows in that thread that might be worth talking about, other than the collaboration one that Jason starting things off with.

    However, thinking about it now, and seeing the content that one idea started, I'm thinking maybe each needs its own thread; "Kill a Cow": (sacred cow name here) ...

    -Andy
    •  
      CommentAuthorBen Lehman
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 16
    Man, I hate collaborating. Any time that I can't just say some shit and have it happen I get tetchy.

    Here's another one: "If you don't state all possible outcomes of a conflict before the conflict, that's 'task resolution' and bad."

    Here's another one: "Narration" is something that has to be split up or clearly demarcated.

    Here's another one: You need a conflict resolution system.

    yrs--
    --Ben
    •  
      CommentAuthorSimon C
    • CommentTimeNov 28th 2007
     # 17
    The Mountain Witch would be a palpably worse game if everyone collaborated in revealing Dark Fates. The fact that your dark fate is yours alone, to reveal how you choose, is the game. If we all knew all the Dark Fates, and decided as a group how to bring them into the game, it would suck so bad.
  18.  # 18
    I had a conversation with someone about how their SotC game didn't go well because the players were lazy dorkwads, and SotC made that worse. I got an email from someone about how the demand for indie-dogmatic collaboration from players led to him basically losing those people, getting new ones and running a better game with them.

    When collaboration becomes a dogma or integral to the system it often does so without all the organic safety mechanisms that come into play when a group works their way to informal collaboration -- to sum up, nobody in those groups is an intolerable jackass by the group's standards any more, because those people aren't involved in the game any more.
    • CommentAuthorcydmab
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 19
    Suppose you have a group of people (like two) and one is full of creative energy, and the other is sleepy/uncreative/unmotivated. It might be best if the creative one does most of the contributions with minimal "collaboration" from the sleepy one.
  20.  # 20
    One thing I noticed from recent threads on rpg.net is there seems to be a subset of players out there who seem perfectly happy with heavily railroaded games where the GM mostly tells the players the story and they interact with it occasionally. I wonder if some people just love to listen to stories, where they can make the pictures in their own minds, but modern life provides almost no opportunities for this activity outside of roleplaying games? It's not that these people want to make up their own stories, but they don't want them visualized for them, either, so TV, movies, video games, etc., don't cut it (and books -- even books on tape -- are a somewhat different experience because of the differing conventions of the different media).
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 21
    Jason, what about mystery games? Sometimes it's good to play games where you don't know what's round the corner, but the player in front of you does. Collaboration kills that.

    Graham
  22.  # 22
    Fair point, Graham. I suppose there's an element of that in any shared narration game, though, as well as "players have secrets" games like The Mountain Witch, which Simon mentioned. I'm not 100% convinced that an "open" game of tMW would suffer too much, though.
  23.  # 23
    Posted By: Jason Morningstarcollaborationthe enemy oftrust?


    No. Collaboration is where we all put in our own ideas to make something together, right?

    Collaboration and Participation are distinct. If I'm always helping you make everything up, I'm not fully engaging with everything that you are saying.

    Where collaboration can go south is when it becomes "shallow" and starts to override participation. When I stop really listening to your cool stuff, and start just waiting for my turn to speak, and add my own ideas, then I (and likely others) aren't actually exploring the ideas already on the table. We're just making up shit and piling it up. If nobody actually uses those ideas and takes them further, enjoys them, and participates in their exploration, then they are devalued.
    • CommentAuthorDannyK
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 24
    Posted By: Peter AronsonOne thing I noticed from recent threads on rpg.net is there seems to be a subset of players out there who seem perfectly happy with heavily railroaded games where the GM mostly tells the players the story and they interact with it occasionally.


    This kind of describes my play experience with the Buffy RPG. Sometimes it's just really fun to make up a character (who is usually a stock Buffy character with a little individual spark, stick them together with a bunch of similar characters, act out their interactions in a fairly predictable way, and follow the GM's plot thread to find the vampires and destroy the bad guys. This sounds tedious when you describe it generically, but I find it very enjoyable; it's nice to alternate a game like that with something like Nobilis or Polaris, where you have to really think about what your character does.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 25
    I had some time to straighten out my thinking on my whole weird "collaboration is the enemy of trust" riff. It wouldn't leave my head, which usually means there's something more there to explore. Levi's post helped that along as well.

    So when I said that, I think I was thinking about mandatory collaboration, the kind that's mechanized and shows up so frequently in new-skool games. That process seems, to me, to state pretty clearly, "I believe this process delivers a better product than the solitary GM doing what he's always done, and/or the publishing company doing what it has always done."

    You'd have to unpack what "better" means in this context. I think the assumption is that there's more player buy-in if they have their hand in the setting. Pride of ownership and all that. It's clearly not better from the players' POV in terms of time invested (assuming players prefer to spend their time playing and not collaborating) and, in some cases, unity of editorial vision (again, assuming players can sense where one vision stops and another starts, and find that transition undesireable).

    So, still not a conclusive relationship between trust and collaboration. Just wanted to put that out there.

    Since trust and collaboration are probably on independent axes, I also got to thinking what a low-trust, low-collaboration game would look like: the players rely on a neutral authority (i.e. the Rules As Written, or other explicit instructions) even while a GM-figure continues to be present, but must do his job in a way that doesn't rely on his players' trust.

    Could a GM be the sole creator in a low-trust situation? I think that's probably the Rune model: every element of play is costed out and the GM must work within an established budget, and there's definitely no collaboration with the players, who are agreeing to face whatever the GM throws at them.

    Since that sort of crunchy tactical play has already been done (although certainly not exhausted), I'm wondering if it's possible to do something similar on the story/narrative side of things. I think I'm coming back to the design idea of a GM who is an unreliable witness on behalf of his players. Trad GMs are often powerful editorial influences on the players, but the sacred cow is that only works in a high-trust environment (i.e. the GM is looking out for the players' best interests).

    Horror's probably a good genre for this. GM tells the players there's definitely something scary and fucked-up lurking in the dark. Players go explore and, via the rules, find nothing, thereby overriding the GM's threat of danger. The GM describes a scene to great detail, but the players are able to reveal the scene is only a hallucination, despite the GM's wishes. And vice-versa: player describes what he's doing but the GM is able to modify that, revealing that his actions are not as they seem ("I perform emergency surgery to extract the bullet" becomes "I implant a flesh-eating worm in the bullet hole").

    p.
  26.  # 26
    Posted By: Peter AronsonI wonder if some people just love tolistento stories, where they can make the pictures in their own minds, but modern life provides almost no opportunities for this activity outside of roleplaying games?

    If they're interacting with the stories at all, they're not just listening. They're participating in the creation of story, and that's a powerful thing. They might have a lower threshold of participation than others, but there's still a huge difference between what they're doing and just being in the audience. It's like being the tambourine player in a band; sure, you're just the tambourine player, but by God, you're in the band!
    •  
      CommentAuthorMax Higley
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007 edited
     # 27
    Don't let the word "just" fool you -- the hypothesis that there are some people who love (primarily) listening to stories isn't negated by minimal participation. We just have to allow that some people enjoy listening more than participating, without preferring one to the exclusion of the other. A continuum of sorts, if you will, with these people far toward one end without being at the end.
  28.  # 28
    One word:
    Shared imaginary space.

    I think roleplaying is collaborative per se - I see it as "making stuff up together", or negotiating fiction as Vincent perhaps would put it. How that couldn't or shouldn't be collaborative I just don't get.

    Per
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 29
    Posted By: Per FischerOne word:
    Shared imaginary space.

    I think roleplaying is collaborative per se - I see it as "making stuff up together", or negotiating fiction as Vincent perhaps would put it. How that couldn't or shouldn't be collaborative I just don't get.

    Per


    A GM tells the players, "You're in a 20' x 20' room carved from stone. There is a large oaken door set into each of the four walls. In the middle of the room there's an altar." Where's the collaboration? What did the players add to the equation?

    p.
  30.  # 30

    A GM tells the players, "You're in a 20' x 20' room carved from stone. There is a large oaken door set into each of the four walls. In the middle of the room there's an altar." Where's the collaboration? What did the players add to the equation?

    p.


    Nothing. So if the whole game would go on like that, I don't really see any roleplaying here - could have been a guy reading from a book. Is the whole game supposed to go on like that? I doubt it.

    Per
  31.  # 31
    Posted By: Paul B
    Posted By: Per FischerOne word:
    Shared imaginary space.

    I think roleplaying is collaborative per se - I see it as "making stuff up together", or negotiating fiction as Vincent perhaps would put it. How that couldn't or shouldn't be collaborative I just don't get.

    Per


    A GM tells the players, "You're in a 20' x 20' room carved from stone. There is a large oaken door set into each of the four walls. In the middle of the room there's an altar." Where's the collaboration? What did the players add to the equation?

    p.

    Um. Nothing yet, but unless the game ends immediately after "...there's an altar", I don't really see your point. The collaboration begins when one of the players says "OK, my guy goes and looks at the altar" or whatever.
  32.  # 32
    Okay, but what about a "game" (not necessarily a story-game or an rpg) where there's a flourishy description like that, and then it stops, and players pull out a questionairre and get quizzed on what was said, and what its implications are? And then the quiz-master (QM) takes that information and feeds it into a new cycle of material? It's arguably shared imagination, but not "live", and not between players.

    I can't imagine it would be much fun, but that's because I'm not a designer.
  33.  # 33
    Posted By: James_NostackOkay, but what about a "game" (not necessarily a story-game or an rpg) where there's a flourishy description like that, and then it stops, and players pull out a questionairre and get quizzed on what was said, and what its implications are? And then the quiz-master (QM) takes that information and feeds it into a new cycle of material? It's arguably shared imagination, but not "live", and not between players.


    Are you asking "is that still collaboration"? Sure it is: if the QM is feeding the quiz-ees' input back into a new cycle of information, that new cycle is going to turn out differently from something that the QM made up completely in a vacuum. I don't think there's any reason to assume that collaboration needs to be "live" or involve each collaborator communicating ideas with each and every other collaborator. I don't think I'd enjoy that kind of quiz-master collaboration, but that doesn't mean it's not collaboration at all.
    •  
      CommentAuthorNathan H.
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 34
    roll for everything BUT conflict.
    i'm not sure that this would result in something "good".
  35.  # 35
    Ron, is a teacher collaborating with his or her students, adjusting tomorrow's lesson plan based on today's feedback? Is a playwright, sitting among the audience and observing his reactions of his current play so he can write the next one, collaborating with the audience? I'm not asking the question rhetorically; I genuinely don't know. Surely not all feedback is collaborative, right?
  36.  # 36
    Posted By: James_NostackRon, is a teacher collaborating with his or her students, adjusting tomorrow's lesson plan based on today's feedback? Is a playwright, sitting among the audience and observing his reactions of his current play so he can write the next one, collaborating with the audience? I'm not asking the question rhetorically; I genuinely don't know. Surely not all feedback is collaborative, right?

    No. What makes the "quiz-master" game collaboration is that everyone is there for the same reason: to create the material. The QM and the players have markedly different roles in the creation of the material, but they all have a hand in creating it.

    In the things you just mentioned, the teacher/playwright are their to transmit information to the students/audience. Gathering feedback from the information recipients is a great way for the teacher/playwright to hone their craft, but that's not what the students/audience are there for.

    For it to be collaboration there needs to be a commonality of purpose.
  37.  # 37
    Posted By: Ron HammackUm. Nothingyet, but unless the game ends immediately after "...there's an altar", I don't really see your point. The collaboration begins when one of the players says "OK, my guy goes and looks at the altar" or whatever.


    You are aware that this is an argument based on the semantics of what "collaboration" means, right?

    You are aware that there's usually no real value to be gained from such arguments, right?

    Do you think there's some here?

    What is it?
    •  
      CommentAuthorSimon C
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007 edited
     # 38
    Yeah, what Levi said. As far as I'm concerned, the most useful way this discussion can go is in discussing the validity of this model:

    Less Collaboration<--------------------------------->More Collaboration

    Less Good<------------------------------------------------>More Good

    That is, assuming that some degree of collaboration is inevitable, but that some games are more collaborative than others, does it follow that more collaboration = more good?
  39.  # 39
    Posted By: Levi KornelsenYou are aware that this is an argument based on the semantics of what "collaboration" means, right?

    I wasn't trying to start a semantic argument at all. I was just responding to the notion that since one guy saying two sentences to some players isn't collaboration that somehow proves that roleplaying isn't collaborative.

    I think the conversation since then has been fruitful, particularly the part about what distinguishes "collaboration" from "feedback".
  40.  # 40
    Posted By: Simon CThat is, assuming that some degree of collaboration is inevitable, but that some games are more collaborative than others, does it follow that more collaboration = more good?

    No. I know I've played with people for whom there was definitely such a thing as "too much collaboration". Here's an example:

    This was in a D&D game from a couple years back, when I was first starting to experiment with trying to encourage more creative input from the players outside of the traditional "I get to say what my character does and the DM handles everything else" mode. One I'm thinking of in particular really grooved on setting. A big part of the gaming experience for her was "feeling like she was there". When that was working for her, when an evocative description of a location got her imagination fired up, she was more than happy to start adding details to the scene, bringing in minor NPCs, etc. The way she described it to me was, "a good description makes me feel like I'm really there; I start noticing other things that are in the scene and that makes me want to show them to the other players so they can feel like that too."

    That fit right in with what I was trying to do, so I encouraged it every chance I got. But when I tried to take it a little further, by suggesting that just because I was the DM that didn't necessarily mean I should be the only one who got to decide what the next scene was going to be, she was very strongly resistant to the idea. As were most of the other players. One of them summed it up best when he said, "I don't want to decide what happens next, I want to find out what happens next and then figure out what I'm going to do about it."

    That was a situation where more collaboration would have meant just the opposite of more good.
    •  
      CommentAuthorBen Lehman
    • CommentTimeNov 29th 2007
     # 41
    Simon: The problem is that that model is so trivially false I don't know what there is to discuss.

    Look, you know how people talk about things designed by committees? That's the sort of thing that happens when you've got too much collaboration. Better to let people have their own strange brilliant ideas.

    yrs--
    --Ben
    •  
      CommentAuthorSimon C
    • CommentTimeNov 30th 2007
     # 42
    I agree that the model is pretty obviously false.

    Is the reverse of the model true? Probably not. It's something about that sweet spot between collaboration and individual contribution, and I think that's always going to be a matter of personal taste.

    Can we call TOD on this cow?
  43.  # 43
    Posted By: Ron HammackI wasn't trying to start a semantic argument at all.


    Cool, then. I withdraw the objection; it just really looked like such a thing to me.
  44.  # 44
    Posted By: Per FischerOne word:
    Shared imaginary space.

    I think roleplaying is collaborative per se - I see it as "making stuff up together", or negotiating fiction as Vincent perhaps would put it. How that couldn't or shouldn't be collaborative I just don't get.

    Per


    Shared Imaginary Space is the art of getting people to ignore or denigrate 90% of their experience of any given game.
  45.  # 45
    Posted By: Jason MorningstarAlso! Don't be a tool. Go grab a sacred cow and show how it could be neatly slain - that's all I'm interested in.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 30th 2007
     # 46
    Posted By: Ron Hammack
    Posted By: Levi KornelsenYou are aware that this is an argument based on the semantics of what "collaboration" means, right?

    I wasn't trying to start a semantic argument at all. I was just responding to the notion that since one guy saying two sentences to some players isn't collaboration that somehow proves that roleplayingisn'tcollaborative.

    I think the conversation since thenhasbeen fruitful, particularly the part about what distinguishes "collaboration" from "feedback".


    Please read my post a bit more charitably. In no way am I "proving" anything. It's a genuine question: The GM describes something and the players respond. Where's the collaboration, if there is any?

    Yes, this is a predominantly semantic argument and not fruitful. I had hoped "collaboration" could be used as shorthand for "the sort of enforced or mechanized collaboration one finds in many successful indie-style games." Which is also why I listed it as an "indie sacred cow."

    Another example of a low-/non-collaborative game: just about every Con demo that's ever been formalized. I'm looking at The Sword for Burning Wheel as an example: You're given the characters, their math, and their motivations; the GM is given the situation. Is that still "a roleplaying game"? (I ask this sincerely and not confrontationally.)

    p.
  47.  # 47
    Posted By: Malcolm Sheppard

    Shared Imaginary Space is the art of getting people to ignore or denigrate 90% of their experience of any given game.


    I'm sure you have an actual play example, please share it. Only 90%?

    Jokes aside, Malcolm, what the heck? You're killing the SIS cow in the middle of a killing the collaborative cow discussion? I'm curious. You roleplay, right? With other people? And you are not sharing or collaborating on what you "do"? How?

    Per
    • CommentAuthorRon Hammack
    • CommentTimeNov 30th 2007 edited
     # 48
    Posted By: Paul BPlease read my post a bit more charitably. In no way am I "proving" anything.

    Yeah, my bad. Because most of the gaming I do involves me GMing "traditional" games as collaboratively as possible, I tend to get overly defensive toward the suggestion that those kinds of games aren't collaborative. Even when that suggestion isn't there at all.

    It's a genuine question: The GM describes something and the players respond. Where's the collaboration, if there is any?


    OK. We're sitting at the gaming table; you're the GM and I'm the player. You're imagining my character in a 20' stone room with an altar in it. I'm imagining opening the bag of Cheetos. At this point, there's imagination going on, but it's not shared. Nothing is collaborative yet, either.

    Now you describe the room you're imagining that my character is in. I imagine it too, so now we've got the whole shared imagination thingy going on. It's still not collaborative, though, because while we're both imagining the same thing, that thing we're both imagining came solely from one of us.

    So then I say, "OK, my guy goes in and looks at the altar" and you're like, "OK, it's got all these spooky looking runes on it and stuff." And that's when it becomes collaboration. Not only are we both imagining the same thing, but the thing we're imagining is the way it is because we both had a hand in making it that way.

    Now I suppose that's not very collaborative. I mean, come on, you get to make up a whole room and an altar and stuff and all I get to contribute is "uh, I look at it". But that certainly doesn't mean it's not collaborative.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeNov 30th 2007
     # 49
    Ron:

    Right, totally agreed on all points (and I've been a traditional-style GM/player for 27 years, so I know where you're coming from). If the players describe anything at all about what they're doing, that's ostensibly collaboration in the "we're sharing an activity together" sense. But the players' contribution is (only?) reactive to the creative material coming out of a single source (the GM or a published adventure).

    The storygame version of collaboration goes quite a ways beyond the more traditional, and perhaps even widely understood, meaning of "collaboration." The stuff that's explicitly beyond the bounds of player authority in a traditional game is often put back into the players' hands in story-focused RPGs, for all kinds of reasons. The effect is so powerful that "collaboration putting story authority into the players' hands makes everything better all the time" has sort of snuck in as an unquestioned truth, i.e. moo.

    And sometimes it's just not so. I've been extremely pleased in my recent couple years' of gaming at what comes out of collaboration. Several of my regular players have been extremely displeased at the new regime.

    I really like Jason's focus on taking the cow, carving it up, and seeing what better dish you can make out if it. This very thread has me thinking pretty furiously about cool ways to leverage one-sided authority in all kinds of interesting ways.

    p.
  50.  # 50
    There are other conversations and arguments brewing here - go start a new thread. They're free. I really like Walton's model over here, taking the cow, and showing different discrete numbered ways to slay it. Shall we refocus and try that? Paul, want to take the lead?
  51.  # 51
    Posted By: Per Fischer
    Posted By: Malcolm Sheppard

    Shared Imaginary Space is the art of getting people to ignore or denigrate 90% of their experience of any given game.


    I'm sure you have an actual play example, please share it. Only 90%?

    Jokes aside, Malcolm, what the heck? You're killing the SIS cow in the middle of a killing the collaborative cow discussion? I'm curious. You roleplay, right? With other people? And you are not sharing or collaborating on what you "do"? How?

    Per


    Your party is in a 10x10 room with an orc in it.

    Where are you standing? Where are your allies standing? The orc? What are the walls like? How is the orc armed?

    An image produces a response in the imagination. The process of coming to a consensus shuffles your personal vision into the background to make it compatible with those of other participants. But your vision is *still there* and you are not in fact negotiating consensus by creating a shared space. There is no shared space. You are submitting your personal vision to assessment by the group in a process intimately connected to your group's power relations.
  52.  # 52
    Posted By: Malcolm SheppardAn image produces a response in the imagination. The process of coming to a consensus shuffles your personal vision into the background to make it compatible with those of other participants. But your vision is *still there* and you are not in fact negotiating consensus by creating a shared space. There is no shared space. You are submitting your personal vision to assessment by the group in a process intimately connected to your group's power relations.


    I'm pretty sure that Malcolm's right.

    The idea of "Shared Imagined Space" is a bigger sacred cow here than many of the others thus far discussed.
  53.  # 53
    Go kill SIS over here. Anybody want to talk about collaboration?

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