Here There Be Dragons

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Thomas Markov

3:07 PM

@Slate o/

Slate

@ThomasMarkov o/

How's it going?

Thomas Markov

3:27 PM

@Slate It's okay. I have a cold.

Went to a wedding over the weekend and came home stuffy.

Slate

Unfortunate. Hopefully it's not hitting ya too hard.

Covid negative, at least?

Thomas Markov

Yeah, no covid.

I was reading your question here:

Q: How can I ease a player into a table when they expect a hierarchical GM-player structure, and find none?

I am running a game with long-term established players. Our group numbers five, including myself. We have a very clear non-adversarial, non-hierarchical GM-player dynamic: we tell a story together, and the GM should be having as much fun as the players. The GM should also not be worrying more tha...

Reminded of the first time I played Scum and Villainy

My intro to RPGs was D&D 5e, and it was all I had ever played until I played Scum and Villainy for the first time

The way the players relate to the GM, to each other, to the narrative, and to the dice was just so wildly diffferent

It took me about 20 minutes to get my bearings

A new player expects me to personally act as the world in general, or as a specific hostile force that they are supposed to overcome, conquer, plunder, etc.
A new player expects me to take the reins on telling the story personally, and finds the level of narrative control the table hands them uncomfortable or unexpected.
A new player expects me to be at least in charge of describing scenes or characters in detail.

These three points in particular were exactly how I felt when I first played.

Slate

Ooooh.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, I suspect a lot of the struggles I have with this in some way come back to precedent that D&D is partially implicated in making a cultural standard.

Thomas Markov

The interesting thing was that unlike in your situation, I wasn't new to the group, it was the same group I had been playing D&D with for a while.

It was game-level expectations that I was having trouble grasping.

Slate

Huh, that's cool. Do you think Scum and Villainy didn't do enough to guide you into the way it 'wanted' to be played, or was just it the transition from 5e -> S&V that caused the jump?

(I haven't played S&V, for clarity)

Thomas Markov

3:42 PM

@Slate No, it was definitely just that we picked up the game because our group was one short, and I was learning as we played.

We had some objective at a moonbase, and I was piloting our ship. As we approach the base, the GM is like "Okay, what do you do?" Naturally, I asked what the base looked like so I could decide what to do, cuz that's what you do in D&D

And he was like, "No, that's pretty much up to you."

And it was just weird for a little while, it felt awkward at first.

But I quickly settled in and it was a lot of fun.

Slate

That makes sense, yeah.

I really think a lot of tables could use a bit more advance conversation about who gets to describe which things in the story. It's something I focus on in session 0 often a lot more than the story itself.

Once we have a story seed, I usually go: "Ok, I can run with that to give us a few scenes to start with. Let's talk about the social dynamics now." In slightly less blunt terms.

It's one thing I've found to help. But it's still sometimes mixed - a lot of the time, unfamiliar decisions are out of folks' comfort zones (which is completely OK).

5 hours later…

Phoenices

9:07 PM

For the record, I'm mildly offended because I doubt Angry's racism slightly, for the rough reasons & quote Groody put out.
I'm mostly not saying anything because I really don't want to read a few hundred pages of what he writes to find the truth, since that would be painful. Besides, I don't particularly want to support the Return of Angry to rpg.se, since I just don't like him, for the same reasons as Korvin and GcL. I care about the principle, but I dislike the guy in question.

Someone_Evil

When you say return, the only site thing (I'm aware of) is taking them off the chat feeds

Phoenices

9:25 PM

This is the case, though a few pages up it looks like there was some discussion of changing links to his stuff, very non-required.
I'm not annoyed that it was taken off the chat feeds as such (this makes me happy because I don't have to consider whether to read his articles now!), I'm annoyed that it looks like he's being accused of racism, which I find doubtful-but-not-impossible, but am not willing to check.