@Shalvenay where'd we leave off?

@nitsua60 expanded thoughts on your 5 points -- you never started expanding on point (b)

@nitsua60 (or what I'm replying to with this, IOW)

okay, then. (b) assume the group's got a good two-channel system for IC and OOC communication. Then when the Paladin gets sick you can easily OOC ask questions; only those choosing to participate in the OOC channel engage, and others can avoid having their immersion broken. (If that's the source of reluctance to OOC conversation.)

@nitsua60 there are OOC channels, but some folks basically do not want any OOC within the game context -- they want all the OOC conversation to take place via forums, out-of-game chat rooms, what-not

Or in OOC it can become easier to say "hey guys, this isn't making much sense to me, I need to take a minute to ask some questions." Or for the others to say "hey Shalvey, I'm really digging the adrenaline of this chase to find McBaddy before Pally dies... let's not do the full forensic workup right now, please."

@Shalvenay So I've got to ask it straight: is it all OOC that's unwanted, or just your OOC questions that mess with others' narrative-driven play?

@nitsua60 I can't tell for sure

okay, so we'll put a pin in that one....

oftentimes, they're more apt to expect people to divine OOC meaning from IC social cues than to raise issues OOCly, as well

I can't remember if it's Shalv or Zach who had a group a few years ago which believed that not only was their RP style objectively best, but that anyone who didn't start RPing in that style spontaneously on their own would never be able to learn it.

(c) group decision protocol: it sounds like you don't have one. And that's a recipe for light, agile, responsive organization. But it's also a recipe for if someone has a problem then it's really hard to deal with.

I work in an organization that is run almost completely this way, and I can speak to the painful frustrations it's prone to generate. Because I'm middle-management, so I get a lot of people coming to me with frustrations.

@nitsua60 that's because of the size/diversity of the group -- I doubt the communities in question could even agree on a single decision protocol

When it's going well, it can feel great and easy and freeing... when it's not it's just a disordered mess.

Okay, hypothetical time: one character dies due to the admittedly-negligent, borderline-harmful actions of another player. Character's player is (rightly?) miffed. What's their venue?

@nitsua60 direct discussion -- or simply writing that off as "it didn't really happen in-character"

(non-consensual permanent character death is not a thing.)

how did that ^^ get established?

@nitsua60 the "it didn't really happen in-character"?

yeah

or the norm that non-consensual death is not on the table, moreso.

the former is an extension of "ignore the troll"

Is that an emergent feature of the system, like you can just re-spawn the character by rule? Or is it a socially agreed-upon norm?

the latter is actually an implementation limitation -- if you want to implement permanent death, you have to do it yourself by throwing the character into the bit bucket -- nobody can do it for you.

@nitsua60 at this level, it is a feature of the system, yes.

gotcha.

we're starting to edge up to (d) system. There's at least one feature of the system that perhaps downplays some of the relevance of simulationism and amps up the relevance of narrativism. I read that from the idea that "hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." is a good-enough motivator when character death is effectively off the table.

In other words, if you have real concern for the Paladin you're probably going to use the lessons of modern law-enforcement: lock down the place, start interviewing people, bring in the medics. If screwing up that investigation isn't inherently risky, why not just run after Baddy McBaddington?

@nitsua60 as something with mandatory, long-term consequences, yes -- the Grim Reaper doesn't carry so much weight under such a context, although I'd say it's a Gamist concession more than a Narrativist one (as the Narrativist-oriented players don't like it when it's treated lightly, either)

(and I'm split, myself -- I have trouble taking such things more heavily than their mechanics weight, too)

I don't know enough about your system to gauge how else it may be shaping the emergent styles in play, but I do know that causes and effects like these can be (a) very widely separated, and (b) very hard to draw lines between.

@Shalvenay (Could be--I don't have any experience with these labels further than my own understanding of the English language generally, so I'm probably throwing them about without much precision.)

[hi @SSD]

@nitsua60 yes -- it does not help that the mechanical system present is a vastly unbalanced mishmash, with very little attention paid to the types of stories it's built to generate vs what types of stories the community desires

(or if it's even able to generate stories to begin with)

so, many aspects of it are widely ignored in favor of freeform-based approaches to RP

And then (e) changing the group. It may be that some of them don't want to play with you for some reason. They may know realize it consciously, they may be passive-aggressively trying to keep you at bay, they may dislike something specific but be falling prey to a fallacy that it'd be unacceptable to actually speak that dislike.

And all this can flow the other way, too: do you like them?

I like some of them in some ways and don't like them in others -- it's a real mixed bag

as to me finding a different group -- I have a real nasty suspicion that I'd run into similar frictions with most groups I'd seek out in that general type of environs

(there are also TZ factors that play into it etal)

how did this group form?

so far, I have not seen groups in these environs who are equipped/prepared for these types of metagame discussions going in

it formed within and around the game that serves as the group's platform

@Shalvenay And it may not be as drastic as "find another group;" it could be as small as "on Mondays we do PvP arena fights for fun and wager" which would engage a whole different part of the system than some of the other things you're describing. (And then you might get some self-sorting in terms of who comes when....)

@nitsua60 yeah -- the self-sorting would be almost total, even.

@Shalvenay so is it just something like "whoever's here on Tuesdays at 6, we'll play together"? And you get a moderatly-stable cohort out of that?

@nitsua60 mostly, yeah -- it's largely a function of availability and player+character interest

huh. So at its simplest this might be solved by a method for more accurately matching interests.

i.e. create the group, then create the game?

(The challenge then being self-awareness.)

(and honesty)

If you've got deliberate dishonesty, the centre cannot hold.

some of us have a too-severe aversion to conflict... years of unpleasantness go by rather than ten minutes of confrontation

@nitsua60 That's when it's time for a nice sit-down with the Geek Social Fallacies.

@BESW certainly; I was thinking more of the type of well-intentioned dishonesty (usually by omission or hyperbolic downplaying) that manifests when a conflict-avoider sniffs conflict coming over the horizon

@nitsua60 whereas, I have very few qualms about confrontation -- (I tend towards the YFYP counter-fallacy, myself)

YFYP?

"Your Feelings, Your Problem"

it's a counter-fallacy to the Geek Social Fallacies

"Counter Fallacy" would be a good name for a band.

hmm... I didn't know my default-mode had a name....

...or a SuperPAC specialising in attack ads.

@BESW "Had a Name" might not be a bad one, either =)

@nitsua60 That's right up there with "You Think of a Title."

@nitsua60 whereas, I tend to take those ten minutes of confrontation and loop them over and over, oftentimes approaching from slightly different angles -- basically, its "I know this is a problem, and I will not quit bashing on it until it's solved"

unfortunately, other people sometimes see themselves as the ones being bashed on instead, and clam up as a result

or just give up because they run out of things to say

@Shalvenay so that is a thing to nip in the bud.

@nitsua60 yeah, "this isn't working, so I should stop here and go find a better resource to tackle this with"

There are several layers at work here.

First is identifying what a problem really is.

Then deciding if it's something that needs to be solved at all.

@BESW And for whom it is a problem.

Aye.

Only then is it time to figure out strategies and actions, identifying challenges and hurdles, etc.

And returning occasionally to "does this need to be solved" and "who is this a problem for" to make sure the situation isn't changing underfoot in ways that need to responded to--or backed away from.

Often the "does this need to be solved" equation will shift drastically as the situation progresses.

because I think a lot of the aversion comes from people thinking that the conversation's just going in circles

It's certainly why I only participate in these conversations erratically; I can see big-picture progress over months, but each individual conversation often feels like just a re-hash of the same stuff over and over.

In this case I've seen testimony to two problems: playstyle mismatch and lack of collective friction-solving technique. And the second may be driven by the first not being seen the same way by all involved. I.e. if others find it's an annoyance to beborne, rhater than a problem to be solved, then they see no need for the problem-solving technique.

For people who haven't yet discovered that your learning/interalisation process hinges on examining the same subjects from multiple fractally-different angles, it looks exactly like going nowhere.

I've got to go, but if you'll indulge me a brief anecdote before I go... I don't know if it'll hold forth hope or despair, but I keep thinking back to it:

There are certain friction points that have existed between me and my wife for over a decade. Nothing I'd do helped anything; patient silence, dealing with it single-handedly, getting angry, &c. &c. &c.

A few months back I tried something different. I wasn't sure if she'd leave me for it, I could barely look myself in the mirror afterward, I had no thought that it was a reasonable way to tackle the problem, and I had no hope that it would help. But it just clicked for her.

We're happier together today than we've ever been.

All because the various modes of communications I'd normally been using weren't working, and I finally tried something different.

I don't know if there's any way to apply that to your case. I may just be rambling because I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in four days =)

But I hope bouncing ideas around in a slightly different way has helped.

Night, all.