Thanks for your thoughtful reply, David R.

Quote from: David RSo, let's just say, that most times in my case at least, folks who are not my friends can easily know where I'm coming from with as little communication as possible by the kind of games I like to run

That's a fair point: system as shorthand.

Quote from: David RI'm not so sure, just because people are not friends, they don't communicate. I think they do...it's certainly been my experience, but I think what is missing in the communication is that with friendship esp when it comes to system/playstyle, there is the mutualy held belief that accomadating your friends needs is part of the whole dynamic.

Of course non-friends communicate, I never said they didn't.

If you've looked over the Cheetoism wiki you'll have seen that I already distinguish between acquaintances - people you only share one thing with - and friends - people you share many things with, the bond goes beyond the specific activity. I would say that it's hard to become friends without some amount of free and open communication, but not everyone you freely and openly communicate with is a friend.

So for example, at work, I can freely and openly communicate with people about work stuff, but most of them will never be my friends. Being able to do well in the work group requires that I talk to them properly, and they to me - about work stuff.

I don't really think anyone has to be friends to game or work well together. But it helps, as you've said, because most people are already up there with the idea that they should compromise with their friends, and sometimes do stuff just for them.

I guess it's misleading that I put "tell tall stories with your friends" in the basic Cheetoism statement. What I really wanted to put was "mates," but since most readers will be Americans, they mightn't get the exact tone of that. "Acquaintances" is too fancy and breaks up the flow and casual tone. "Buddies" is an Americanism, which I'm not fond of in writing. But in any case, many people don't make the friends/acquaintances distinction. I think that distinction is something which comes as a person gets older. When you're about 18 or so, you think everyone who is friendly with you is a friend. So I guess realy that opening motto, it's "friends" in the sense of "friendly" rather than "friendship."

I know that's a lot of yabber just for one word, but it's good to get it right, especially with your opening sentence. I wecome suggestions to make that one better. Like I said, there was also that issue of "tell" vs "create" - since we're not really telling individual stories, but making one together. But "create" sounds wanky to me. What do you reckon?

Quote from: David RThey stayed together but they had lost interest in gaming.

I think that "Stagnation" is not always this horrible thing I described with the ex-GM sabotaging any new game. It's often just... losing interest. Of course this can be a genuine loss of interest, people's tastes change, after all - but it'd be unusual for four or five people together in a group to all lose interest at the same time in their hobby. That'd be quite a coincidence.

Quote from: David RIt wasn't about searching for a right system...and here's where Cheetoism comes into play - it was about a fresh perspective that only fresh blood can bring into a group.

Me and my hippy games, my kinky improv style (which for some reason they have told me to scale down ) and my charming quirk with regards to not knowing the rules very well...all this kind of rejuvanated the group...but the most important thing I introduced to them (not taking away the people aspect) were the new systems, that's for sure.

Are you sure it was really the new systems? Suppose some group had played Vampire for years, and were all angsty, and you wanted to bring in some hack and slash; they mightn't accept the hacking in Vampire, feeling that it was just wrong to "pollute" their game in that way, but they'd accept it if you brought in D&D. Or vice versa, they were hacking, and wouldn't accept angst in D&D, but would acccept it in Vampire. Perhaps the new systems were just the Trojan horse for you to sneak in your own "kinky improv" style, and other new ideas?

It sounds like you're hinting that there was some conflict when you first came into the group  - nothing huge, but some... Storming? In Stagnation I wrote,

   Bringing in a new player often shakes up the old group. Most new players will be cautious at first, so that there's a little island of Forming in the group. But at some point, unless the player is very reserved, they'll step forward and try to suggest changes. Eventually this takes the group to Storming.

After going through another storm, they can move forward through norming and eventually back to performing again (I need to add that to clarify, thanks for helping me look again at it). Does that match the experience you had? So their process was:

Forming -> Storming -> Norming -> Performing -> Stagnation -> David + Stagnation -> Storming -> Norming -> Performing

Yes/no? You brought them back around to start the cycle again?

Quote from: David ROkay I think from what I'm reading here, I think I get where you are going with Cheetoism.

"Getting a game group and keeping it."

About taking an ordinary or good group and making it awesome, I'm not worried about. Then you really start getting into individual tastes, and it gets very complicated, and hard to generalise about. Some rpg theorists have tried to generalise about this, but have obviously failed abysmally, because most people either don't know what they're talking about, or understand it but disagree with it.

From my point of view, where rpg theory, as people have been approaching it so far with a breakdown of play styles, could be useful is to take a game group from "Norming" to "Performing." It's not really addressing anything else. I'm not that interested in talking about that. If I were a surgeon, I'd rather be a trauma surgeon than a cosmetic one. I'm interested in having game groups actually get together and stay together, let them do their own fine-tuning.

I'm interested to hear more of the experiences which contradict what I've laid out.

Wow, the rpg.net "So, cheetoism..." thread keeps going. Now apparently a game isn't "meaningful" unless it has a chance to change the power structures of society. So no-one can or should try to have "meaningful" game sessions. Or so says Plume. I know it's pretty dense text, but plough on through, just for the amusement you'll get in the end.

Quote from: PlumeI'm going to go out on a limb here.

Most allegedly meaningful gaming is crap, as pointless and meaningless as any Steven Seagal movie. The allegedly difficult moral challenges are all terribly conveniently congruent with the morality of the players, and the tough choices are occasions for brawny chest-beating and sneers at stereotypes of those who aren't there. The drama is trite, the tragedy perfunctory, the morality mostly an excuse to end up shooting lots of people anyway. Whatever agonized debate there may be will, time after time, astoundingly end in the conclusion that exactly what wold be most fun for the players is what ought to be done, just as the political philosophy of any tyrannical regime will end up concluding after due and sober deliberation that the boss is right again.

None of this bracing, daring examination is at all likely to conclude that white middle-class men are in fact incompetent to judge the experience of other races, genders, and classes, or that dreaming of stories together reinforces the hegemony of a mercantile class willing to exploit others' dreams, or that the nihilistic termination of all illusions also terminates the illusion that we ever meaningfully communicate and that a shared imaginative space is impossible. Nor is it likely to lead to the insight that one might have a duty to the proletariat to devote that time and those resources to something that addresses present needs better than self-reinforcing storytelling. Nor indeed anything else that would call upon the gamers involved to live really differently than they have in the past. It's unlikely even to lead to you spending more time in gay bars as you reject heteronormative gender constructions and decide to take a chance on others.

And unless it does that, it's not meaningful, it's escapism as pure and unadulterated as the most straightforward dungeon crawl. Maybe more so, in fact, because it feeds a delusion that one is not escaping, whereas the dungeon crawler isn't kidding himself that way. Art that does not change you is entertainment. I see--have seen, in more than twenty years of gaming--precisely zero sign that any gaming ever reliably affects players on that level.

(I asked a trusted friend if this was too much. He said, "Yes, it is, but don't let that stop you." So I haven't.)

So only things that can change you are art, and only things that can change the world are "meaningful" art. I'll have to tell my girlfriend that. "Sorry, honey, our relationship is not meaningful, because it won't change the dominant paradigm." :wtfsign:

I think some people are gaming - hell, living - on a different planet to me.

Also, some of them say, "but what is "fun" anyway?" I like it when they do that, it's a warning I should never game with them. The obvious answer is, "ask the people you game with." But they're looking for a universal answer. That means some dickhead is going to give me a game which bores me stupid. "But it's fun! You should be enjoying it!" Damned uncheetoist of them, that is.

"But what is fun anyway? It's different for everyone." Yes, you silly sods, that's the point. "To have fun, talk to your group." Actually communicating with the human beings you associate with is, apparently, a radical idea to some people.

We need a smilie like this, :rtfm:, except with "ayfg" instead. "Ask your fucking group." I mean, it's a response which comes up quite a bit when peope talk about their games. They come and ask a hundred random strangers on forums, or consult an rpg theory, before they talk to their group. Strange stuff.

My god, it's full of UNDERGRAD SOCIALISM!

EDIT:

New words must be invented to describe the craziness that post has unleashed upon the world.  Societies will fall.  Children will consume their parents whole.  T-Willard and Spike will thrive in this blighted hellscape, bringing a new RPGsite to the shattered remnant of humanity that remains.

Quote from: fonkaygarryHey, more of those different worldviews you were clamoring for earlier!

Absolutely!

I never said I would like or agree with the different ones, just that they'd stimulate thought and our own sane and reasonable ideas.

Get on IRC, dude.

#therpgsite suxxorz. Whose stupid idea was that anyway? Maintaining an irc room is more work than running a game group, even. I stick to the MSN IM these days, that way I don't need a whole window open even when no-one is talking to me.

Add me, motherfuckers.

Re: that Plume quote.

QuoteMost allegedly meaningful gaming is crap, as pointless and meaningless as any Steven Seagal movie. The allegedly difficult moral challenges are all terribly conveniently congruent with the morality of the players, and the tough choices are occasions for brawny chest-beating and sneers at stereotypes of those who aren't there. The drama is trite, the tragedy perfunctory, the morality mostly an excuse to end up shooting lots of people anyway. Whatever agonized debate there may be will, time after time, astoundingly end in the conclusion that exactly what wold be most fun for the players is what ought to be done, just as the political philosophy of any tyrannical regime will end up concluding after due and sober deliberation that the boss is right again.

Say what you will, but this bit is spot on.

That doesn't match my experience.

Firstly, it's not true that anything short of revolutionary in your spirit or the world is meaningless. That would reduce most of life to meaninglessness. Things can be meaningful without being revolutionary.

Secondly, Plume is simply doing what many people do. Each sees in others their own virtues and vices. In the modern developed West, it's common for people, all of us at least some of the time, to feel a jaded cynicism, a sense of futility and helplessness, to feel that in fact most of life is meaningless. "Oh, no-one can ever possibly understand anyone else, everything is crap and meaningless, everything's old and grey, nothing's new and colourful."

No.

Thirdly, when players are presented with dilemmas for their characters, it's remarkable how often they choose the least "fun" option. They choose what they feel their character would do. Quite often, players do not play characters who are slapstick Captain Teflon Psychos, or Lesbianstripperninjas. They players ain't Alec Guiness, the portrayal isn't great, but it's reasonable and decent. Maybe Plume has a group of munchkins, or maybe it's just that her GMing encourages stupidity, but many people do in fact have quite interesting game sessions, with decisions made that are not like some boardgame.

For example, in my recently finished campaign, it was almost impossible to get the players to kill things and take their stuff. They kept seeing their enemies and rivals as human beings, worthy of defeating, but not of killing. Killing them and taking their stuff would have been a lot more "fun" than leaving them around to come back and hassle them again. But they did what they thought their characters would do.

Maybe in Plume's campaigns, "The drama is trite, the tragedy perfunctory, the morality mostly an excuse to end up shooting lots of people anyway." But not in everyone's.

In the end, it is just a game. But the people in the rpg.net thread are doing the usual internet debate thing of discussing only the extremes. Either roleplaying must subvert the dominant paradigm and change the world, or it must be mindless escapism.

Which is like saying that either I must have a series of one-night stands with women not even knowing their names, or I must have no sex before marriage, and only one woman for the rest of my life; or saying that either we must execute serious criminals, or we must let them go; or that either all Japanese should learn English, or all Australians should learn Japanese; or that either we must eat nothing but McDonalds, or nothing but tofu.

No.

There's a reasonable middle ground, and a middle ground with a lot of space to move around in. Plume is wrong. She's also not a Cheetoist - she never mentions asking what her players want. They just want mindless stupidity, she assumes. Why does she assume that? I don't know, but I do know that often each of us sees ourselves in others.

Quote from: Abyssal MawRe: that Plume quote.



Say what you will, but this bit is spot on.

Maybe for Plume (for you?), but not for me. I have no idea what the hell Plume is going on about. Check that, I have no idea, what the whole thread is about. Fun and politics? The politics of fun? Fun is both the personal and the political? Gotta love tBP...

Regards,
David R

It's quite simple, really.

The thread is about misunderstanding Cheetoism by means of reading nothing past its title, ignoring everything I've ever said about gaming. It's much easier to scoff at someone's ideas when you know nothing about them! It takes so much effort to learn all about them, and then scoff at them (as I did with GNS).

Plume is about... Plume. People say, "why must gaming only be about fun? Can't it be so much more?" She says, "no it can't be any more because stupid white middle-classed men will just pretend it's about more, and no-one can really understand anyone else, and really it's just a big wank, so let's just have mindless fun." She's confusing her own cynicism with reality. A common mistake.

But at least Levi gets it. People matter.

I do believe Plume has a point in that quote, only she's dragged it out to an absurd length, making the argument utterly useless in the process.

I think it's easier to say that what people consider "meaningful" gaming (at least from what I've seen) is really not above the level of trite and easy melodrama and angst.  It's easy to do that.  But subtlety is hard.

"Meaningful" doesn't just mean "family tragedy around every corner" or "Gothy shoegazing."  It can also mean forming a close bond with another person.  Or discovering the personal value of their sled from childhood.  Or having a fulfilling philosophical conversation.  Etc.

Not that I go for too much subtlety in the games I run, but I've never seen anyone's "meaningful" game rise above the level of Lifetime TV melodrama.  Of course, this is anecdotal on my part, so IMO, IME, YMMV, etc. where appropriate.

Well, I can certainly agree with the idea of the middle ground being the most important. I definitely don't agree with her full statement: her conclusion is ridiculous. In fact, I had to read it a few times to figure out if she's actually serious.  The bit about 'heteronormative gender constructions' totally cracked me up. I mean, that sounds like something I'd write if I was mocking someone.

But I do agree that most people who think what they are doing is  important deep moralism-- are fooling themselves. I think it's generally a foolish pursuit, and it's not really that edgy or daring.

There used to be a popular statement that people (usually not artists) would say about how great art should "make people uncomfortable"- or even that this discomfort should be the sole defining quality of art. But what they really meant was "it should make other people uncomfortable and say things that I agree with". So the same guy that wrote the article in the NYT applauding 'piss christ' is aghast when he encounters the Mohammed bomb-head cartoons, and decries the insensitivity of it all. Proving altogether nothing execpt that overtly political people of any stripe are worthless as guides.

So I say "fuck all of that." Moralizing in a game- as an end goal, seems to me, to be a complete dead end. Having "choice" situations or scenarios that probe player scruples (at the personal level) is cool, but trying to make everyone take part in some big overwhelming statement so that you can all sit back and chin-stroke about the 'powerful message' or whatever seems ridiculous to me.  Because for one thing, someone's powerful message might just be that they have to go to "gay bars" in order to 'challenge heteronormative gender construction' or something equally retarded.

I mean-- seriously. I don't even go to normal bars.

So I guess personal scruples are fun- "your character finds a wallet stuffed with money, it has the address of an enemy inside. What do you do...?"- See, that's a great game situation. Whatever the character does, is great. Maybe he keeps it, maybe he returns it. Maybe he gives the money to chaity-- whatever happens, we all learn something new about that character.

But trying to make out like "my character has been given the power of life and death over these villagers due to religious authority. I shall now illustrate how even good people can degenerate into brutality when given the authority to enforce the word of God.. MORMON STYLE!"

I mean, what the hell?

So what you're saying, Abyssal Maw, is that the GM should provide the players with a full range of options and choices for their characters?

The thing that depressed me when I played Dogs in the Vineyard or Sorcerer or even just read My Life With Master was that they were all about exploring the human condition, sure - but exploring the dark depths. It was all about how much of a cunt, how miserable and wretched your character could be.

Whereas I'd like at least the option of playing a decent person, of their rising up to the heights.

See, in a regular rpg, you can say, "My character doesn't feel he's in a position to judge these people," or "Actually I'd rather not have more power, not at that price," or "Look, I just walk away from the evil overlord, okay?" The GM gives you those options and choices. If they're a smart GM, they'll make those choices have consequences - consequences which are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes neutral, but always interesting.

I think your character's choices should not be constrained by anything except your idea of the character. For example, in my recently-ended campaign, there was a player who played his character as avoiding combats and being fearful of violence. Now, nothing on his character sheet said that. His character sheet said a lot of things, but didn't talk about how his character felt about violence. But he chose to play the guy that way, felt that general non-violence was consistent with all the other stuff.

The player imposed limitations on his own choices, I didn't impose those limits. And certainly the game system itself didn't impose limits.

And the player loved that. Whereas if I'd said, "dear group, we are going to play a game in which none of the characters will feel able to use violence..." I wouldn't be too popular.

It's about options and choices. A good GM and game system offer a wide range of them.

Quote from: JimBobOzSo what you're saying, Abyssal Maw, is that the GM should provide the players with a full range of options and choices for their characters?

The thing that depressed me when I played Dogs in the Vineyard or Sorcerer or even just read My Life With Master was that they were all about exploring the human condition, sure - but exploring the dark depths. It was all about how much of a cunt, how miserable and wretched your character could be.

Whereas I'd like at least the option of playing a decent person, of their rising up to the heights. .

Absolutely. In fact, those are kinda the moments I live for, when as a GM I get to see some player do something wonderful- or even as a player when we manage to pull something off as a team-and it isn't about teaching us all a Very Thoughtful Lesson or whatever. It's just an unexpected bit of brilliance.

Too often these 'choice' moments are phrased in terms of "ha, now I shall give the players a Hard Choice. Will they pick X or Y?". The real magic is when the player pulls out some other option Z nobody else considered.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe thing that depressed me when I played Dogs in the Vineyard or Sorcerer or even just read My Life With Master was that they were all about exploring the human condition, sure - but exploring the dark depths. It was all about how much of a cunt, how miserable and wretched your character could be.

Whereas I'd like at least the option of playing a decent person, of their rising up to the heights.

See, in a regular rpg, you can say, "My character doesn't feel he's in a position to judge these people," or "Actually I'd rather not have more power, not at that price," or "Look, I just walk away from the evil overlord, okay?" The GM gives you those options and choices. If they're a smart GM, they'll make those choices have consequences - consequences which are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes neutral, but always interesting.

I maintain that this works fine for Dogs - you can say 'My character doesn't feel he is in a position to judge these people'. The game then shifts to convincing everyone else that no one else should judge them either, and on redefining the role the dogs should have.

Cause the GM could say - 'if you just walk away, these people WILL be judged by Brother Seth, and they WILL burn'. Is your character still going to walk away?

And then you can move on to the importance of having a bill of rights, or law based on precidence or the joys of anarco-syndicalism or whatever floats your boat. Issues about who gets to judge are fine. Do we need judges and laws?. If we do, who gets to make them?

Or just gun down the mustachio twirling vilainous faux-mormons who follow on to enforce their evil dogma.