Sturgeon, applied to Gaming

[athelind]

Sturgeon's Revelation: 90% of everything is crud.

This applies to role-playing games, as well -- not merely the systems, but the actual campaigns, the gaming experience.

Unfortunately, since RPGs are a particiapatory art form, it's harder to simply avoid The Crud.

This whole bitchfest was triggered when normanrafferty brought up "co-op" games, such as Arkham Horror or Shadows over Camelot. Those games sound like fun, and if I had a stable gaming group, they'd be a great way to take a break from a long campaign.

If I'm playing them instead of playing a full-fledged RPG, though, it's like a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee when you really want the multi-course banquet at Maggiano's.

But how often do I actually get Maggiano's?

Other than my early years in high school and at Texas A&M*, this hobby has always been a series of long, long dry spells, punctuated by the occasional bout of frustrating mediocrity. Every few years -- maybe twice a decade, at most -- I'll stumble into a Really Brilliant, Excellent Game that lasts for a good while -- and then pfft.

I hear about people who've had stable gaming groups for years and years. They run different games, they have multiple campaigns, they can rotate game Hosts within a campaign; some of them have long, sustained campaigns set in the same game world that have been running for years.

The longest I was ever in a sustained campaign was a year and a half.

My game groups tend to be erratic and unreliable, and single-campaign-specific: when that game ends, it's time to go hunt down a whole new group.

My own GM Mojo was never that exceptional, and, frankly, I'm tappin' a dry well these days. I'd volunteer to run a game, but I'm the worst offender when it comes to "frustrating mediocrity that can't sustain itself". I have a long string of campaigns that collapse after three sessions. There's only one genre that I feel confident in running consistently, and I've yet to find a system for that genre that isn't fatally flawed.

Gaaaaah. I just Wanna Game.

---

*Note that I flunked out of A&M because I spent far more time gaming than on classwork. Maybe my dilemma lies in my resultant hesitation to blow so much time and energy on game prep; it's certainly had an impact on my GMing.

Comments

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

Well, don't leave us in suspense man - what genre?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Superheroes!

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

Do Flanker and Redflame count?

(heeheeheeheehee)

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Well, what systems have you tried for superheroes?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

ALL OF THEM.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of them are perfect, but depending on preference, two I've done well with (although it has been a few years).

Champions (I'd recommend not later then 3rd edition), and

Villains and Vigilantes (2nd edition).


If you opt for the former, insist on building the player's characters IF you have any min-maxer types.

I've run fairly long campaigns with both. Of course, I've also been told I do quite well creating a Napoleonic battle sort of setting. *wry grin*

I'm not fond of most of what I've seen of the more recent stuff, myself.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

See the footnote above? It should read "...far more time working on CHAMPIONS characters..."

Champs has a lot of little irritants for me. Theoretically, you CAN build almost anything, but practically, if you want to do something more exotic than the most conventional power sets, it doesn't handle it any better than D&D handles exotic races. There are some powers that are simply too complicated to make efficiently; they cost more than conventional powers but don't give you anything like the bang for the buck.

When I said that "in a point-based game, it costs more to be INTERESTING than EFFECTIVE," it was CHAMPIONS that I was thinking about.

That's an irritant, though; not a FATAL flaw.

The FATAL flaw in Champions is that it takes so much blippin' time to DO anything. If you want to do more than toss pregenerated villains at characters, you're talking a serious time investment.

The last time I dug out Champs was back around 2001-2002. I ran a few sessions for my buds at Cal State. It may have lasted FOUR sessions, a remarkable record for me.

That semester, I didn't have any classes on Friday, so I used it as game prep time. I found myself spending the whole day making one or two NPCs -- and usually not two. And that was WITH the specialized Hero Creator software.

V&V, on the other claw, has always just seemed slapdash and arbitrary to me.

Sure, a good GM can make ANY game system work, and work smoothly, and keep up a campaign going while just glossing over any flaws in the rules.

But we're talking about ME.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Champions was the game that gelled for me that you shouldn't have a game that has rules that let you do anything ... when the game-master and the players won't let you do anything. Rules endorse behavior. Rules are roleplaying.

[breimh.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't be about the system. All systems have their strengths and weaknesses. It's about what you want to do, and the time investment you have to put into it. Most importantly, though, it's about everyone having FUN! If you're sifting through pages and pages of rules, that's not fun for anyone. If you've got the group on the edge of their seat because their tank is in a slugfest with a juggernaut, then you're doing your job as a GM.

And if you want more than the slugfests, then make sure you've got players who want more than that, too! Learn your group's playing style and enjoyment level. Some players will come, and other will go, but the core group who shares similar interests in RP will remain constant, and those are the ones who make for good 'campaigning buddies' in the RPGs you play.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Hello? See the last two lines in my comment to Sil.

I Am Not A Good GM. I Need A Good, Flexible, Transparent Rules System As A Crutch.

[breimh.livejournal.com]

I read that, yes. See what I replied to you, directly, below.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's another Fatal Flaw: Champions triggers more loud and vocal rules debates than any other game, and most of them end in, "Because I'm the GM, and I said so."


Yet ANOTHER Fatal Flaw: Around the middle of Third Edition, they started to realize that the game bogs down horribly unless you slap narrow ranges on all the various abilities -- not just Active Point Caps on powers, but defining a maximum and a MINIMUM for attributes like SPEED. They formalized this in 4th Edition, but it's a kludge, and plays like a kludge.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm very much on the same 'can't sustain myself' spin, as well. I tend to love DMing and have a great story arc planned...but then the motivation to keep going either dies, or I run out of filler ideas to help the group along, and everything either becomes rushed and jilted, or we just disappate and do something else. More of a letdown for myself than anything else...

[breimh.livejournal.com]

For years, I was involved in some of the best RP that could take place. We met each weekend, taking turns of running one genre or another. Typically, though, I was the one who ran whatever game it was because I was the only one who could handle remembering the rules and making them seem to flow under the table... so we had great RP/story sessions. Even when I first moved here, and was running promo-games and finally a long running campaign of V:tM for a group, it was going very smoothly. But, something's changed over the last several years.

Part of the problem is 'short attention span theatre'. Another is 'combat oriented gamers'. But the big question is how do you deal with them? Combat oriented gamers... that's easy... direct them toward anything with a challenge, not just combat, but point out a race against the clock (as they're playing a theif type, especially) and you've offered them something else to make things intense and exciting for them. They're wanting to be entertained, and that's easy enough to do, even if you're mediocre as a GM. The short attention spans are what kill a game, and don't think about running these types in a campaign senario, it'll fall flat 99.9% of the time.

But, players in general want games that will do a select few things: As we've already pointed out, they want to be entertained. They want to be the heroes. They want at least a minor challenge to gain that hero status. And they want it now!

So, here's my advice for a hero style game...
Run TSR's Marvel Superheroes, it's easy and creating characters is as simple as slicing bread from a loaf and slathering it with butter and honey.

It allows them familiarity with a setting that many who play would already know, and those who don't will catch on real fast when you say 'It's our world, with superheroes and villains'.

KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! Don't run them through a large campaign where they have to face off against the likes of Galactus, or even Magneto, instead pit them against minor challenges like Arcade and one of his robo-fun houses. Make it a one, two or three game session adventure, so they get the feel for the game and determine whether they like it or not. If they don't, they walk away from the hero-biz; if they do, they press on, maybe meeting up (and possibly joining) with a group that has the likes of Spiderman, Wolverine or Nick Fury.

Most of all, don't stop and think about the fun you could be having 'if such-and-such were to happen' or 'if only they'd make things go right', instead. Look at the fun they're having at the moment, and that will increase your own enjoyment in the game. Listen to their comments, even the innocent blurting out of 'Oh man, I thought we were going to end up with some badass like Apocalypse come up with some death knights to tromp the city, instead of Arcade's robot army... I never would have guessed it was all just a danger room senario! Damn, Wolverine can be sneaky, I still don't get how he got us from our beds to the danger room without waking any of us, though.'

Maybe they're not ready to face Apocalypse yet, but you might pit them against Caliban doing some task for his master, in the next few sessions, which could lead to them standing up to the master rather than the servant.

But, if you don't want to use Marvel, go for something else instead. There's a new City of Heroes (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=139&products_id=2979) tabletop demo, if you're wanting to try it out. Or use the Tri-Stat (BESM) system, TMNT/Rifts... Gurps... whatever you choose. Just come up with some houserules before you begin it, and let your players know and understand those rules. Most importantly, make it fun for them, but don't give up your own enjoyment in the process... it's not as hard a balance to keep as it might at first seem.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Now, you've just hit on many reasons why the superhero genre is the one that I can run with some degree of confiudence and reliability.

Your whole "rules don't matter" approach is frankly wrong-headed, though.

[breimh.livejournal.com]

I never said "rules don't matter", but I did imply that they shouldn't take center stage to the time you spend RPing... they do matter, but they're more of a 'code of conduct' to work with, or in some (some would stress more important) instances as a way for everyone to compromise on fair and impartial agreement to what's enough and what's too much for a character to be able to do... whether it be through their fighting skill, their powers, or what-have-you.

In the end, like most RPGs state in their introduction, it's like playing "Cops and Robbers" or "Cowboys and Indians" without all the 'Bang bang! You're dead!' 'No I'm not!' arguments, that is what the rules help arbitrate. And house rules or fiat/voting at the gaming table can override those rules, too. They're a guideline, not laws. They do matter, but they shouldn't make or break a game, either.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Oh, geeze, I know this pain, hehe.

Most gaming is mediocre, yeah. The answer is to embrace the mediocrity -- I mean, people who play chess, most of them aren't grand masters. Their chess playing is mediocre. But they enjoy doing it, anyway. I think that many a gamer has been lost to the hobby because they sought out something beyond mediocrity -- they were looking for a "great" game, and passing by many a "good" game. I can't say that's the case with you on account that we ain't gamed together in, y'know, fifteen years, but I have seen a number of gamers leave the hobby because of inflating expectations. They get into a great game and then expect every game afterwards to be great.

And about people who are in these multi-year campaigns with stable groups and all of that . . . dood, how many times have you moved in the past ten years? It's not really possible to expect to be in that kind of group if you're not the kind of guy who hangs around year after year. Heck, my experience is that it takes a couple of years to even find a gaming group that largely shares one's values, and that's with a fair bit of looking. IME, most people who are in those sorts of long-running games, with those sorts of very stable groups, are guys who started gaming and the core of them never quit gaming with each other. That in such groups there's a core of players who have known each other time out of mind. They are familiar with each other, know each other's gaming habits intimately. They have spent years together making a gaming group.

Which is not to say that it is easy to find a good game. It isn't. Like I said, I know this pain. In fact, I'm about to relive it myself, very likely, hehe. And, unfortunately, it is impossible to "just game". Gaming is a complex social relationship. It's about as complex as dating, and I'm not using hyperbole or analogy, here. And going from group to group what I've learned is that what I "want" out of gaming is this incredibly complex interweaving of things that is continually growing and changing, and that it would be irrational to expect anyone to randomly be that way. I mean, just taking one aspect, I want my gaming friend to take gaming seriously, but not too seriously, but they should also be connected to other types of related fandom such as comics, science fiction, and/or fantasy . . . but, not ALL these things, and not too much . . . like that, hehe. It's crazy when I think about it! That when I get together to game with someone I have this long and complex set of desires and expectations from them, some of which I don't even really know about until they're absent, or know to avoid until I see them, but there I am, just the same, projecting all of this onto some innocent gaming partner! And, y'know, they're doing the same thing to me! Is it any wonder that it is difficult to find a gaming group, and that the best gaming groups are groups that have grown together over the years?

Still, here are my tricks for this, such as they are:

1. Be open and honest about what you want from gaming. I have found that most gamers are incapable of expressing what it is that they really want out of a game -- they lack the practice and they lack the very vocabulary to do it. It is worth the time to suss all this out so you can say, fairly explicitly, what you want from gaming.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

2. Insist on honesty from the people you came with. This one is damned hard, heh, because even when you're being honest, like I said, most gamers don't know how to do that. They lack practice and they lack the words. Plus, and this is an added danger, many people without a gaming group are without a gaming group for some pretty good reasons. They suck! They're manipulative twerps who suck all the joy out of gaming. They aren't just lacking in practice and words to explain what they want from gaming; they'll actively lie because what they are looking for isn't a good game but something else that they think they can get from manipulating a gaming crowd. This is reasonably common, and there isn't any good defense from it. But, still, I find that if you patiently ask what people want out of gaming, and compare it with how they actually game, and talk about gaming openly the liars and fools soon reveal themselves.

3. Game with people you like. Gaming is a social activity. Of course, if you're meeting people through gaming, you can't know beforehand if you like them. So, if possible, meet gamers through other, gaming friendly activities (anime clubs, the SCA, local gaming conventions or other "gamer friendly" conventions such as comics or, y'know, furries, hehe). Another good idea, here, is to run short games (lasting, perhaps, three of four sessions). That way, since it is explicit that the game isn't going to last very long, when it's over people won't be expecting the "group" to go on. And if you meet some people you like, contact them outside the game and invite them to a game you run, or ask to be in a game they run. Short games are good at this, allowing a person to get to know other gamers WITHOUT having to commit to a game. Gaming stores are a good place to run these sorts of games, because you're likely to meet even more gamers thereabouts, sorta obviously. But, equally important here, is if you don't like someone, don't game with them. They might be the greatest gamer in the world, but if you want to crush out their miserable life every time you see them . . . well, eventually that'll effect the game.

4. Communication, communication, communication! This is, perhaps, the same point as 1 and 2, but even if it is it bears repeating and explication. Because you haven't had years to grow organically into habits and preferences with a group of close friends, you've gotta talk. It isn't enough to just assume that they know you don't like player-vs.-player blood-opera stuff -- when the party theif starts picking your character's pocket you've got to come out and say that you're not comfortable with that stuff! And if they insist (usually using a lot of language that basically boils down to "it's what my guy would do", as if their character has a personality and will outside of the player's) then you gotta leave the group. And that's for the best. It doesn't matter how well they play in other areas, gamers have a lot of lines and such and it's better, I think, to play in a group that respects the limits and boundaries of the players (or who all share, via whatever mechanism you wish to devise, the same boundaries) than to be with "great players" who do things that you hate. So, express yourself! And make it so they express themselves.

5. Don't be afraid to walk out. No, really. If after being honest, communicating, all that, you're still not having fun . . . don't keep on doing it. No gaming is better than bad gaming, right?

I think I covered most of the points I have, hehe. It isn't all that organized, but you're a smart guy, and will be able to sort out my meaning. We can talk more of this when, y'know, we're not crazy over here from moving it. We have nothing! NOTHING! Hehe. So, we are a trifle crazed.

Still, if you want, you can come down (or, more realistically, we can come up on account we have no furniture, hehe, tho' that'll change Tuesday) and do some gaming. ;)

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I'm real good at #5!

Heh.

Seriously, these are good points to keep in mind, and more genuinely helpful than the reiteration of the same tired old facile platitudes offered by some commentators. Honestly, since many of my LJ-readers are local, this WAS an attempt to reach out and try to get a group going -- though I could have done it with a bit less angst, I s'pose.

Talk atcha next weekend, when things have (hopefully) settled a bit.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got worn out on the platitudes a long time ago. Gamers seem to fit into two broad catagories: people who stay in the same place forever and ever and develop stable gaming groups that last forever because they're part of a small but committed community, and gamers that move reasonably often who have lots of trouble finding games and gamers that they don't want to kill, hehe. In Maine, I got lucky and met a guy who was able to openly and clearly talk about a lot of these things, and he taught me how to talk about them, at least a little. Some of it is also stuff swiped from the Daily Illuminator, hehe. Several years ago they ran a series of articles about gaming as an adult that had a lot of common sense stuff. Some more of it you can find (albeit with a different slant) at The Forge -- tho', in the end, I can't recommend a person go to the site, hehe. So, I've learned some, and grown a lot as a gamer, which sometimes sounds weird to say, hehe. "I've grown as a gamer." BUT I HAVE! :)

And gaming angst is common. Oh, lordy, Ask Adrienne when you meet her, hehe. I'll be running a perfectly good game and angst for days. She has the patience of a saint. ;)