I think the social contract is the umbrella that fills in for places that don’t have system. Every rpg out there that I’ve played has ‘holes in system’ (or makes certain assumptions about what is ‘trivially important’ and doesn’t require system resolution.)

I’d like to play some where (as you suggest) the system allows players to cover items on the fly by creative rights.

Well, sorcerers do use the bathroom unless either they are undead or they have practical needs for their bio-waste… ;>

In any case, you are still making players escalate to the social contract level whenever either they want someting to happen or they dislike something that happened, which is kinda not where my original point was at.

Nonetheless, your disagreement is kosher and your escalation is valid.

I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.

This was cool. I’m gonna go mention this in John Kim’s site.

Cheers,
J.

I still disagree with your example and the five points you raise from the example. I agree that the scene sounds “pretty cool” and also understand your POV frustration with the ‘undetermined creativity’ of Players in such a mix. I don’t agree with that last bit. I think you’ve turned the telescope around and are looking through the wrong end.

Try this idea:
in play mechanics outside of the rpg system, GM and Players resolve issues based on what they believe to be reasonable.

1. Sorcerers do use the bathroom
2. booby-traps of everyday routines are effective strategy
3. the guesswork involved in Players trying to kill an opponent almost always leads them to overkill methods, so explosion vs sorceror is not a difficult or unusual encounter to resolve
4. what loot is shredded or not might be a percentage chance or it might be trivial, so this one really is hard to judge from the outside
5. the Players and GM decided the genre, including sorceress

What do I mean by outside the system? RPGs vary as to whether the system decides encounters, opposition, experience levels of npcs, etc. Most of the games I play—-the system insists the GM take on these tasks. In some games I’ve played, random chance determines some of these items. In other games, shared creative rights distribute these chores.

I can’t get behind your idea that unless the chores are shared, the Players are merely color. It negates the social contract of putting the game together, and assumes that the GM is fiat powerful across the system, and assumes that nothing the Players add is better than ‘essential color’.

Unlike, for example, the simple notion that a chart and a dice roll determines the next encounter. Is the chart color? Are the dice color?

But your post makes for interesting controversy!

Duly noted and a fair point.

I’m left wondering if you still disagree or now agree with my original posts and why.

Cheers,
J.

I’d buy your “color is essential” notion much more if you hadn’t gone so far in your analogy to paint the crayons as “feeling bad”. Most of what you say below is slanted to make crayons feel lame.

One Player And Five Crayons

Yep, that’s it. If you’ve been playing games without stakes negotiation, aggressive scene framing, shared narration rights, explicit conflict resolution, or some other sort of non-standard, non-mainstream rules (at least a few of these, but not necessarily all of them), all you’ve been doing is adding color. You’re a crayon. Now, that doesn’t feel so hot, does it?

Now if the analogy was:
One box and five crayons

I’d say you were being more fair.

It’s cool, you’re getting closer to my point. You may still not agree with it, but you are at least getting closer to it.

“This creates the illusion of reality (for some), suspense and drama (for a subset of those some).”

Yes. It also creates a game wherein the GM is responsible for deciding everything that happens. Every. Single. Thing. Nothing ever happens that the GM didn’t allow or even will into being. As such, the players are there to do nothing more than provide data points from which the GM can weave the in-game events.

My point is that those data points are closer to being color than to being system, setting, situation or even character. (This presumes that you accept the division of role-playing into its five component elements, namely, system, setting, situation, character and color. If you don’t accept this division, then my usage of the word ‘color’ is meaningless for you and my crayon analogy is nothing less than silly.)

For many people, that’s a cool thing; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Others would prefer to have more input in their games, though, or are frustrated or unhappy with their games in some other way. Those are the people these posts were for.

Now, what some people don’t realize is that color is a key component of role-playing. There can be no role-playing without color. At all. Thus, the crayons are an essential component of the game. The data points they provide are extremely important. So, what happens is that people protest at being “labelled as mere color”, when in reality, they should either agree that they don’t need to have more creative input into the game, or agree to look into other ways of providing input.

Here’s hoping to have made more sense.

Cheers,
J.

If I do as you suggest, substitute ‘consequence’ for ‘meaning,’ then most of what you say is a given in traditional rpg play. The Players allow immersion in their characters by giving the responsibility for consequence to the GM. This creates the illusion of reality, suspense and drama.

It does not create one Player and five crayons of color. As you pointed out, the GM is equally instrument of physics and setting than she is always god-like. (Setting aside the dreaded Railroad GM.)

And I then have nothing to add.

I also agree that the GMs understanding of setting being a higher order than the Players is merely convention and not required.
Thanks!

Me like. You said some things here that made me think about this whole thing in a bit more detail.

Let me begin by saying that picking a genre, or deciding which game to play, or even deciding whether to play, all that stuff is way beyond the scope of this discussion.

That said, I like how you turn things around and place PC actions in the category of consequences to a GM-created purpose. Yes, the players deciding whether to have their characters engage the GM’s content also constitutes permission-based play, to some extent. One thing, though. It’s still the GM who decides what happens when the players don’t go there, and it’s still the GM’s job to generate the next piece of content for the players to engage or not. So, the GM is hardly limited by that. Still, it was an interesting point.

The point that the GM’s understanding of the setting is of a higher order than that of the players is one facet of the problem I’m describing. For some people, that’s a good thing. For others, it isn’t. But mostly, it really doesn’t have to be that way.

Also, I’m not familiar with Nobilis, but it is entirely possible that that particular law falls under one of the categories I list in part IV. If so, then Nobilis play shouldn’t really be considered Mother May I. It is also possible that it is yet another, unlisted way of getting out of Mother May I. It is also possible that it’s not. Just because whatever the PC does works, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the purpose behind what the PC does happens.

Lastly, comparisons with Real Life don’t impress me, I conclude. Real Life is also largely an exercise in Mother May I, except that “Mother” is clearly of a higher order of existence than the “player”. “Mother” is the laws of physics, the inner workings of the human brain, and your deity of choice. When people sit at a role-playing table, one of them is emphatically not of a higher order of existence than all the others.

Your final paragraphs lead me to conclude that you may be misinterpreting my usage of the word “meaning”, and that may well be my fault. I’d ask you to reread my original posts, only ignoring the word “meaning” and substituting the word “consequences” where ever it occurs.

When I say “many a table”, I really do mean “most tables”, and most especially, “virtually all tables” where traditional RPGs are played.

Cheers,
J.

When Players/GM pick a genre, they have purpose in mind, yet the consequence and result is hardly ever what they expect. That doesn’t destroy the “real meaning.”

When GMs describe setting and opportunity, they have half or fully-formed purpose in mind, yet the consequence of PC decisions is often what they do not expect. That doesn’t destroy the “real meaning.”

When the PCs/Players make decisions, they have some formed purpose in mind, yet the consequence is often most of what they expect with various flaws accounted to the Shared Imaginative Space or factors they do not know or the GM’s understanding of the setting (which is traditionally of a higher order than the Players.)

That doesn’t destroy the “real meaning” of the decision.

It has already been pointed out that in the Real World, we make decisions without fully expecting to understand every consequence of our action. We know that sometimes we will fail, or succeed beyond our expectations. Seldom does anyone suggest that the actual event is meaning while the decision that led to it is ‘color’.

Certainly from an immersive stance, this is not tolerable. It’s broken.

Or look at the Monarda Law of Nobilis. If the PC tries something, it works. Every time. The GM is not there to say “no” or subtract the “real meaning”. The GM is the instrument of the Players decisions.

I still think your basic premise–that the GM is the only creative input with meaning–is only an example of the fact that you are tilting the entire rpg relationship to get that effect.

If that happens at “many a table” it is because those particular GMs and Players do not fully understand the responsibilities they share for the game.

I would hope that after 30 years of rpg, we could say that there were a minority of such tables, mostly due to inexperience.