Continuing my thoughts on system affordance, I was drawn to Reflections on our D&D Game Day by MJ Harnish. At first I just wanted to post a short comment, but then I decided to write some more.
Reflections on our D&D Game Day
He writes:
Perhaps my biggest personal problem is that I feel like I want to teach the kids how to really roleplay, rather than just chew scenery and kill stuff. Those games don’t really feel all that fulfilling. The system does seem to interact with this tendency (e.g., I’ve gotten the kids to take an active narrative role when running a one-shot of InSpectres before), but it’s not a purely causal relationship. Instead it appears to be an interaction of the RPG system, the group’s dominant playstyle (i.e., most players regress towards the mean so to speak), and the style of the story. As we wrap up this school year I’m already planning for next year’s activities: One thing I definitely want to try is dividing the group by their playstyle and then trying to help them match a system with that style. – MJ Harnish ¹
Here’s my suggestion to understand the group dynamics: Assuming a mixed group of player types, there might be a tendency for the player type that is rewarded the most to dominate the group play style. If there are kick-ass players and storytellers, the kick-ass players will be rewarded by loot and XP when they win fights, and if there are a lot of fights, the storytellers will loose influence over the group play style.
If you want to revert this trend, it’s not enough to have less fights, because then everybody will feel bored. Instead, you need to actually reward storytellers. Reward how, you ask? I don’t know. It would have to be something that is immediately recognized as a reward by both player types. Two things that I try to do in my games (specially in my Alder King Sunday game):
1. half XP for combat encounters and provide the other half for exploration and discovery
2. make allies an important part of the game, thus rewarding roleplay with non-player characters
I think it’s important for your rewards to *afford* (invite, encourage, suggest) the kind of play style you’d like to see.
A word of warning, however.
Check out the Breakdown Of RPG Players article, and pay attention to this part:
We also have data that suggests that most groups are made up of people who segment differently (that is, monolithic segmentation within a gaming group is rare), and in fact, having different kinds of players tends to make the RPG experience work better over the long haul. ²
I conclude that we should not segregate groups by play style.
#RPG #thoughts #affordance