Mage the Awakening & Storytelling RPG in General

Mage the Awakening & Storytelling RPG in General, What do you think of storytelling rpgs

Fragmintz View Member Profile	Mar 16 2007, 01:19 AM Post #1
Target Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 16-February 07 Member No.: 11,018	Hoi Chummers - I am a new SR player inspired to the genre by the upcoming Microsoft Game (if you can believe that). Currently, I am in a play by post game on the SR forums and having a blast. As I sought to expand my RPG world a bit, I stumbled upon Mage the Awakening. The rich storyline and voluminous material intrigued me. Also, I really liked the idea of it being focused on cooperative story telling. As a writer, I have found the PBP to be very stimulating to my creative process and it has helped me to practice writing as different voices. I am hoping that Mage can do the same thing for me. So, have any of you played Mage or any other White Wolf games? What do you think of them? Where is a good place to go for online PBP games? Thanks

nezumi View Member Profile	Mar 16 2007, 03:13 AM Post #2
Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,546 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760	waves to Fragmintz I've played Exalted and (briefly) Vampire/changeling larp. The larp was waaaay to weird for me. Exalted was pretty good, but as a setting, the only "advantage" it has over SR4 is it's more 'heroic'. Both are very simple, both allow for a very simple dice mechanic. SR3, by default, is a good deal more complex, and so reqires a little more mathematics to do 'properly', but if the players are willing, it's always easier to drop rules than to add complexity. In other words, SR3 could work fine as a story teller system with a good GM and willing players. I don't think Exalted could serve as as realistic game as SR3, however.

Wounded Ronin View Member Profile	Mar 16 2007, 03:42 AM Post #3
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,640 Joined: 6-June 04 Member No.: 6,383	Story based gaming is boring to me. I usually don't care about the details of the setting, the scenario, about the NPCs, or even about my own character to want to deal with some situation which is cloyingly adpoted to these very specific elements. I tend to get bored with my own characters after a number of months and always want to make new ones. Plus, I like to read Nisarg's blog, www.xanga.com/rpgpundit, where he claims that story based gaming is responsible for the popularity which RPGs lost between the 1970s with old school D&D and the height of White Wolf product popularity. His basic premise is that "story based" gaming ushered in a lot of pretentious individuals and that this dampened the enthusiasm of the general public for gaming.

Garrowolf View Member Profile	Mar 16 2007, 09:10 AM Post #4
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517	Wow Ronin. That is sad. The story IS the point. Otherwise you are playing a pen and paper video game. DnD was a BAD game. It was just the first so it stayed around. No other game can claim that they inspired so many other games because it was so bad as DnD. Many of the games that came out after that were because that game sucked so much. Story based games opened up gaming for more people. Not the other way around. When white wolf was at it's height we had more gamers then any other time in history. All the gaming groups I've heard from more then tripled in size during that time. The UGA group went from 20+ to 100+ because of story based and specifically storyteller games. the storyteller system reboot was responsible for dropping the numbers down more then anything else. Edit: Sorry, this was a bit more angry then it should have been. It's just that as a GM the story is the prime focus for me. The setting and the NPCs are what make a game. I have been in games that operated the other way and I thought that they were the worst games I've ever encountered. Those that had a GM that cared about the setting, NPCs and story were the best.

nezumi

Mar 16 2007, 04:51 PM

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QUOTE (Garrowolf)

Wow Ronin. That is sad. The story IS the point. Otherwise you are playing a pen and paper video game.

I suspect he'd disagree. Now you can ask, would he prefer an PnP RPG or a group-based video game where they're all in the same room at the time, based on realistic combat situations where you have to make real, tactical decisions. I don't think any computer games quite meet that criteria, especially when you add in the additional caveat 'without requiring a computer' (I don't know if WR has the computing power to run such a program for a group where he is now).

People play games for different reasons. Some enjoy exploring and don't care about the story. Some enjoy character advancement. Some enjoy the tactical challenge. Just because YOU like story doesn't mean that's the only 'right' way. And in fact, in my experience, a proper mix of all the factors is ultimately preferable, and you simply shift the mix for the given group.

Unarmed

Mar 16 2007, 05:32 PM

Post #6

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QUOTE (Wounded Ronin)

Story based gaming is boring to me. I usually don't care about the details of the setting, the scenario, about the NPCs, or even about my own character to want to deal with some situation which is cloyingly adpoted to these very specific elements. I tend to get bored with my own characters after a number of months and always want to make new ones.

Plus, I like to read Nisarg's blog, www.xanga.com/rpgpundit, where he claims that story based gaming is responsible for the popularity which RPGs lost between the 1970s with old school D&D and the height of White Wolf product popularity. His basic premise is that "story based" gaming ushered in a lot of pretentious individuals and that this dampened the enthusiasm of the general public for gaming.

The odd thing about the storyteller system in general (and honestly this is solely based on my reading of the books, because I have not actually played the games) is that from what I can tell, the actual mechanics of the rules don't seem to facilitate story-based role-playing much at all. Sure, in the section how to GM they talk about crafting stories and such, but when you get down to the meat of it it's all up to the GM on how "story" is implemented.

It's true that there are very few games that do actually have story built-in to the rules, but Driftwood Publishing's "The Riddle of Steel" is a good example of this type of a game.

The influx of people that came into the hobby thanks to the white wolf games has been a largely positive thing, I think. It's only a problem when people start looking down on other games because their game facilitates the telling of stories better than other games. In my opinion though, you can have a richer story playing Shadowrun, Earthdawn, or even the game who's name must not be spoken, as long as you have a good GM and players that enjoy that sort of thing. In the end, none of the rulesets I listed are any better for storytelling, despite what WW chose to name their system.

Fact of the matter is, though, that story is not the point for everyone who plays RPGS. There is a large segment of the population for which this is true, but I don't think there's anything wrong with roleplaying and paying more attention to the tactical combat than the storyline that the gamemaster is creating. Nezumi makes a good point, though. Maybe Ronin just likes getting together with his friends around a table and throwing dice to simulate tactical combat better than he likes booting up his computer and playing counterstrike.

Eugene

Mar 16 2007, 08:36 PM

Post #7

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QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Mar 15 2007, 10:42 PM)

Plus, I like to read Nisarg's blog, www.xanga.com/rpgpundit,
....
His basic premise is that "story based" gaming ushered in a lot of pretentious individuals and that this dampened the enthusiasm of the general public for gaming.

Having read some of his stuff, I'll only say that he isn't against "story" in rpgs (quite the opposite, really, if you look at what he posts about his games). He's mostly reacting against people who claim that their games are "better" than D&D in some way or that D&D isn't any good. While he's right that there has been a lot of unfair attitudes toward D&D, including an elitist anti-D&D attitude in some people (which he believes that White Wolf started), I think he's so angry and reactionary that he doesn't speak to or convince anyone who doesn't already feel like him.

ANYWAY, to get this back on topic...

Fragmintz, try looking at rpg.net! I'm not sure if they have any active Mage PbPs (a quick check shows the last updated on on the 10th, so I guess that's active), but there are several Actual Play threads (look for Black Hat Matt or DaveB) that might give you some ideas on how other people see the game.

Garrowolf View Member Profile	Mar 16 2007, 08:41 PM Post #8
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517	Actually the storyteller system does help keep the focus on more social interaction in several ways. Mechanics wise your players will always go towards what is represented as important. WoD has three combat skills and several social skills. One of the main mechanics was influence and you gained power by manipulation. Shadowrun has mostly combat skills and most social interaction is based on getting a better deal on weapons. What is the messege to the players? This game is focused on combat. Characters in WoD are often more deadly then in Shadowrun but it is still more focused on story. There is more focus on the character's disadvantages. These characters have issues to deal with. Shadowrun characters rarely have more then irritating personal habits. There is more system for their personalities. They have a character's inner and outer personalities delineated. Shadowrun has no personality system. My biggest problem is that I don't like the WoD settings. I like Shadowrun, in the broad strokes. However I think that WoD did do some things right.

Eugene

Mar 16 2007, 08:48 PM

Post #9

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QUOTE (Garrowolf)

Shadowrun has mostly combat skills and most social interaction is based on getting a better deal on weapons. What is the messege to the players? This game is focused on combat. Characters in WoD are often more deadly than in Shadowrun but it is still more focused on story.

I've always found Shadowrun games to have a -lot- of social interaction; with contacts, with the Johnson, trying to con your way in or out of something, etc. I would think that the extensive rules for contacts alone would suggest that the game has a strong social element. Don't think that everybody plays in a "Trolls with Panther Cannons" mode!

eidolon

Mar 16 2007, 09:06 PM

Post #10

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QUOTE (Eugene)

I think he's so angry and reactionary that he doesn't speak to or convince anyone who doesn't already feel like him.

Well said. It's also interesting that he's so wrong on so many counts. Industry insider Ryan Dancey (brokered the deal for Wizards to pick up D&D, was brand manager during the switch to 3x) has quite a different take on how WW games affected the overall population of gamers, for example. (Short version: it brought in tons of people from a bunch of demographics that were D&D to be the only option would never have played an RPG in their lives.)

He posts over at the Fear the Boot forums, and was their first interview if you want to know more about his take/information. (I think he has a personal site, well, I'm sure he does, but I don't recall what it is.)

Wounded Ronin

Mar 16 2007, 09:45 PM

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QUOTE (nezumi @ Mar 16 2007, 11:51 AM)

I suspect he'd disagree. Now you can ask, would he prefer an PnP RPG or a group-based video game where they're all in the same room at the time, based on realistic combat situations where you have to make real, tactical decisions. I don't think any computer games quite meet that criteria, especially when you add in the additional caveat 'without requiring a computer' (I don't know if WR has the computing power to run such a program for a group where he is now).

Heh, utterly mediocre computing power out here. When I become a billionaire I'll have to buy a whole building and convert it into a giant supercomputer-powered VR tactical combat simulator where all your friends can run around with headsets and collide with walls we forgot to put into the virtual map.

And the fact of the matter is that as much as I enjoy "realistic" first person shooter games such as Rainbow 6, Soldier of Fortune 2, etc, there are certain things that you can't achieve in them which you would be able to in a pen and paper game.

The pen and paper game has a lot more flexibility. You can take actions which have not been specifically implemented by a coder. It is also much faster and easier to write up and prepare a scenario for pen and paper than it would be to go ahead and make a level map for Deus Ex or Delta Force: Black Hawk Down.

The advantage that computer or console games have, of course, is processing power. Your human GM probably won't be able to process 30 enemies attacking your team at once and keep track of things like each combatant's ammo and combat pool. However, in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, you often see maps with ~90 enemies and it's just more meat.

So, both video games and pen and paper games each have their strengths in different areas and definitely provide different sorts of gaming experiences, whether or not you are concerned with the idea of a "story".

EDIT: Another thing about video games is that great player skill can make the simulation unrealistic in most games. A very skillful single player can achieve things in "realistic" games like America's Army which are very unlikely in the real world, i.e. one guy with a M249 blithely walking through the Bridge Crossing map because he knows that there's only two opposition left, casually entering the tower because he knows that's where people often hide, and then using the M249 as a CQB weapon since it has so much firepower to clear out the last two members of the team. In real life probably nobody would act that way. It only happens in the game because 1.) there's no consequence for dying so everyone is suicidally brave without exception, 2.) everybody has seen the map umpteen times and knows what strategies are the most common, and 3.) there's really not much of a draw cost associated with the M249 and it's as quick to point at the enemy as a M4 so it can actually be a good CQB weapon in the context of the game.

In a pen and paper RPG you wouldn't have a situation like that because 1.) the player will usually make his character act in such a way that is not borderline suicidal, 2.) each map is a new experience and you don't strictly speaking know what to expect, and 3.) we can implement such fine details as a draw cost so that the M249 suddenly becomes a bad thing to try and use as a SMG. Lastly, whereas in FPS games player skill plays a major role, in pen and paper RPGs player skill is greatly less important since all of the in-game actions directly involving skills are based entirely on the character's skills. Even if you had the quickest mouse in the West, your character with Pistols 2 still wouldn't be able to strafe jump the SAW gunner and headshot him to the amazement of everyone around you. Your character's cababilities are more strictly defined by numbers.

Because of these issues, pen and paper games can be much more tactical than FPS games if they're played in that way.

Wounded Ronin

Mar 16 2007, 09:52 PM

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QUOTE (Unarmed)

It's true that there are very few games that do actually have story built-in to the rules, but Driftwood Publishing's "The Riddle of Steel" is a good example of this type of a game.

Man, I've never been able to play that game, but I bought the sourcebook from a friend of mine who runs a gaming store in New York State like 2 or 3 years ago. I was very impressed by the hand to hand combat system. I think it's the best that I've ever seen.

QUOTE

Fact of the matter is, though, that story is not the point for everyone who plays RPGS. There is a large segment of the population for which this is true, but I don't think there's anything wrong with roleplaying and paying more attention to the tactical combat than the storyline that the gamemaster is creating. Nezumi makes a good point, though. Maybe Ronin just likes getting together with his friends around a table and throwing dice to simulate tactical combat better than he likes booting up his computer and playing counterstrike.

Exactly. Doing it with the table, the friends, and the dice provides a very different experience than playing America's Army.

Unarmed

Mar 16 2007, 10:59 PM

Post #13

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QUOTE (Garrowolf)

sActually the storyteller system does help keep the focus on more social interaction in several ways.

Mechanics wise your players will always go towards what is represented as important. WoD has three combat skills and several social skills. One of the main mechanics was influence and you gained power by manipulation. Shadowrun has mostly combat skills and most social interaction is based on getting a better deal on weapons. What is the messege to the players? This game is focused on combat. Characters in WoD are often more deadly then in Shadowrun but it is still more focused on story.

There is more system for their personalities. They have a character's inner and outer personalities delineated. Shadowrun has no personality system.

I'm not certain that having increased social interaction in a game necessarily means that more story happens as a result. I suppose it does, but you could theoretically play a game of any RPG that was just a bunch of people sitting around in a room and making social interaction tests with one another. They'd never leave the room, there would be no real plot, and then there'd be no real story, but plenty of social interaction. I suppose that gaining influence and power would lead to stories, but it doesn't directly do so. One could equally gain power and influence in shadowrun, for example.

If there is a better system for figuring out the personalities of characters, then that might lead to a better narrative, but not necessarily. I think that you've managed to convince me that WOD does perhaps a better job of pushing some story elements than say, shadowrun, but there's still nothing fundamental in the game that requires story to happen. It could be played in a way that doesn't really tell a concrete story and is just an excuse for physical combat, or even social combat.

QUOTE

Man, I've never been able to play that game, but I bought the sourcebook from a friend of mine who runs a gaming store in New York State like 2 or 3 years ago. I was very impressed by the hand to hand combat system. I think it's the best that I've ever seen.

The game is really, really good, and I like everything except for the magic system, which I don't think really flows with the rest of the game. For some reason I have a hard time convincing people to play it, though, and so I've only played about 4-5 sessions worth.

My shadowrun group is thinking of integrating the spiritual attribute system from the game into shadowrun though, it could be quite interesting.

Garrowolf View Member Profile	Mar 17 2007, 08:11 AM Post #14
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517	Yes but the unconscious message is there. For example compare how much social interaction there was in 1st ed DnD to later games. You might have a GM that focused on it ever once in a while but the game didn't reward it. Shadowrun is better at social by having contacts. I'm not saying that it doesn't have a social aspect. The mechanic of the contact ratings and such does encourage it. Without that it wouldn't even bother with that. My point is that the mechanics drive the focus of players in a game. They will do what is on their sheet and what they are rewarded for. For this reason I try to make sure that the social skills and aspects are focused on as much as I can in my games so that story is king.

eidolon

Mar 17 2007, 02:34 PM

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QUOTE (Garrowolf)

They will do what is on their sheet and what they are rewarded for.

That has almost never been my experience. The majority of my players and GMs over the last 5 years have been much more concerned with using the rules to collectively tell cool stories. We enjoy the rules aspect, and we like "moving on up" to be sure, but the social aspects of our games were always prominent through D&D, Shadowrun, Rifts, Deadlands, etc. (disclaimer: this isn't an argument in disguise or anything, just a different observation)

nezumi View Member Profile	Mar 17 2007, 04:25 PM Post #16
Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,546 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760	Perhaps not surprising, but birds of a feather flock together. I've only encountered vastly different GMing styles when I intentionally went outside of my element.

Wounded Ronin

Mar 18 2007, 11:52 PM

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Just to keep this discussion lively, since we've brought up the issue, here's an exerpt from Nisarg's blog that pretty much summarizes his position. Probably most people wouldn't agree with it here but it's if nothing else entertaining to read.

QUOTE

There was a comment on my blog yesterday, in response to my article on social mechanics, where the commenter pointed out that "most gamers are social retards". That social mechanics are necessary in order to spare us from the god-awfulness of having to watch a typical gamer trying to roleplay a romantic scene or something that requires empathy or politeness.

My comment regarding social mechanics will be found in the commentary to that post, but what I wanted to talk about here was the fact that we've gotten to the point now that people will readily and plainly admit to the social retardation of the average gamer, and talk about it as if we must change the games, not the gamers, to deal with this.

First of all, this statement applies to north america. I'm not really sure how much it applies in England and Europe, and I know it doesn't really apply here in South America.
One of the things that blew me away when I first went to a roleplaying club here in Montevideo was that the people who were gaming were normal folks. I mean, there were some that were on the "slight nerd" side of things, guys who wouldn't exactly be playing for the world cup or lifting weights, guys with thick big glasses or a touch of shyness. But besides those guys, there were a lot of guys who were completely average people, that would fit in just as well at the local bar, or at a football game, or working somewhere respectable, or what-have-you. That was the majority really.
And the other thing was the percentage of women who roleplay. The Uruguayans still complain about the "lack" of female gamers, but there are more regular female gamers in the gaming community here than anything I saw anywhere in North America, girls who are wicked hot, too (he said, thinking of a certain Sailor Moon DM...)!

The key to the larger female presence was based on two factors:
1. Much higher percentage of gamers with girlfriends.
2. Much easier for those gamers to convince their girlfriends to play, because gaming has none of the social stigma here that it does in North America.

I have been involved with my share of women in my life, and most of them have been "alternative" kind of girls, not the sort to stick to mainstream things. Several of them were into science fiction, anime, watched buffy, read lord of the rings, etc etc.
However, in all my romantic lifetime in North America I had NEVER managed to convince a girl to regularly get into RPGs. None of them could get past that "ultimate geek barrier", the perception that roleplaying games were not "alternative", they were social marginal. That it was far too geeky a thing to be allowed to enjoy. The best I could manage was a sort of resigned toleration.

Here in Uruguay, the instance I got myself a girlfriend she also joined my gaming group. In fact, she told me that she'd heard of RPGs and thought they'd be lots of fun but just hadn't known where to go to be able to play them before.

So the difference, between here and "up there", is that in North America gaming has been driven to a level so far on the social margins that people who consider themselves "normal" are seriously fearful of getting involved in the hobby, in stark terror of some kind of irreparable social damage to their reputations.
Leaving aside the foolishness of such an attitude, what has led to the conditions where this attitude even arrives? Because it wasn't always like this: Those who roleplayed in the late seventies and early eighties can attest that way back then the gaming crowd was much bigger, and filled far more demographics. In college campuses, back then, gaming was something that anyone would have fun doing, and people of all varieties: jocks, women, nerds, frat boys, any of these would be fine playing without thinking it would damage their social rep any more than playing a game of monopoly or backgammon would.
In the teen set, there was a time when D&D was played by pretty much all types of kids. When I started roleplaying it was still like this. The athletic kids, the cool kids, the metalheads, the band geeks, they'd all be willing to play. Hell, my first gaming group was one where I was easily the "geekiest" of the lot, little nerd that I was, while the rest of the group was composed of guys who were part of the cool set, plus one or two sort of stoners and a serious metalhead. Back then, roleplaying games actually bridged the adolescent cliques.

But by the time I left Canada, I was the exception to the rule in a whole other sense: far from being the "geekiest" of the gaming community, I found myself in an ever increasing minority of "normal" gamers, in an environment where being a gamer in his 20s who didn't live with his mom, had his own place, had a steady and relatively good job, regularly had a girlfriend, and had a social life in general outside of gaming, was becoming ever more the exception to the "gamer norm".

So what went so horribly wrong? Why is it that now, in this foul year of our lord 2005, North American gaming has become the domain of the total freaks and losers? Who is to blame?!

If you guessed the Swine, you got it on the first try.

As I had earlier said, the "swine" are not a phenomenon limited to gamers, most hobbies end up being infected by the same sort of problem: Star Trek fandom in the 70s and early 80s was a relatively normal hobby, for example. Few people back then would dress up as klingons or make any effort to look unusual outside of gimmicky Mr.Spock ears; whole families would appreciate going to the conventions together, and the general public felt that Star Trek was a pretty cool show. But somewhere along the line the fandom fell more and more under the sway of the most extreme elements of the movement, fans who would pride themselves on dressing like idiots or insulting those who hadn't obsessively pored over episode guides and technical manuals; and over time the hobby willingly marginalized itself, excluding the socially normal by making this kind of sick behaviour acceptable and eventually the rule. The result? Today being a fan of Star Trek is code word for being a 27 year old virgin.

Comic Books suffered a similar fate. What was once a "hobby" of sorts for children of all types, and for adults who didn't mind being a bit childish, a small group of adult "collectors" began obsessing over the medium, and the comics industry began to make the mistake of catering to those collectors rather than to the kids. The result? The comics industry as a whole imploded in the 90s, after the kids stopped being interested in (or indeed even able to buy) grossly over-priced comics that had now also gained a reputation of "geekiness".

But perhaps the worst example, and a powerful warning to any other hobby interest, is the furry fandom. Furries, for those who may not know, are (or rather, they were) anthropomorphic animal comics and drawings. In the 80s, this was a normal subset of comic fandom, and comics like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Usagi Ujimbo were high-quality mainstream works with large followings. Conventions were held where people could exchange furry art and small publishing companies could show off their wares.
But over time, the movement became infiltrated by sexual fetishists who defined "furry" in a very different way, dressing up as animals for wierd sexual kicks and demanding pornographic art of the same. Almost overnight the entire hobby went up in smoke as anyone who didn't want to be seen as an apeshit pervert fled for the hills. Today most recognized comic artists wouldn't do furry material if you paid them in gold bricks, more than one was quoted as leaving the genre after the tenth time of being asked at a con if he could draw a picture of pre-teen fox boys being raped by lion-men or what-have-you.

In each of these cases, as with gaming, the problem arose when a small minority of extremists demanded that the hobby recognize their extreme social dysfunctions as acceptable, and the Swine of these respective hobbies permitted and encouraged this, wanting to transform their hobby into an exclusive rather than inclusive fandom so that they could feel like the persecuted elite. The logic used was generally that "everyone was welcome" because "we were all picked on at some point or another", what is called a Geek Social Fallacy in some circles. But the real motive was not one of inclusion of the freaks so much as exclusion of the "mainstream", the majority of people who are socially functional, that most swine despise as the "masses" who could never possibly understand them. Their poisoned logic in each of these instances convinced enough of the hobbyists of the importance of being "tolerant" that the social freaks, obssesives, losers, and/or perverts were allowed in. This ill-thought-out tolerance led to two effects: the exodus of those who were uncomfortable with those of extreme behaviours, and the introduction of ever-more people who were socially marginalized to the hobby based not on an actual love of the hobby but on the recognition that the hobby was a place where their marginalization would be tolerated.

Its like this: if a guy in your neighbourhood regularly shits on his front lawn, and the community chooses to do nothing to stop this inappropriate behaviour, eventually some of the normal folks in your neighbourhood will move away, choosing not to live near the lawn-crapper. After that, other lawn-crappers or worse will start moving into your neighbhourhood, upon hearing that yours is a community that accepts those who follow a lawn-dumping lifestyle. Pretty soon, it becomes a "community of lawn-crappers", where those who don't shit on their front yards are the exception rather than the rule, and the lawn-crappers control the city hall. By that time, no one wants to come live in your town, and everything reeks of shit.

In gaming, there was a twofold phenomenon. One was the gaming hobby's tolerance of the socially marginalized in north america; allowing those who don't bathe, don't change their clothes, can't talk without screaming, pick their nose or rub their crotches in public, etc etc. to be in gaming groups and attend conventions without changing their ways.

The second was the Swine: in the nineties, the industry under swine-influence completely gave up the effort to make gaming a mainstream passtime, instead willingly making every effort to make gaming some kind of twisted underdog-elitist practice. Something that would intentionally exclude the normal, wanting only the self-styled geek elites, the goths, and the freaks. While emphasizing the "acceptance" of those who are outsiders regardless of how obnoxious their personal habits were, gaming's products and people throughout the nineties made a point of being as intolerant as possible of anyone who wasn't part of these "anti-elites". They didn't want simple games with mass appeal that any teenager could get into or that college friends could make an evening's entertainment out of, they wanted obtuse byzantine games with artistic pretensions or insider jobs that only hardcore collectors could appreciate. And the more the normal people left, the more the freaks could take over.

It is true, of course, that market conditions shifted for rpgs after D&D stopped being a "fad", but this in and of itself is not enough to explain the social shift. In South America, for example, gaming is a relatively unknown hobby, yet in it you do not have the guys who reek of catpiss or the ones who look and smell like they haven't ever been exposed to the concept of soap, or the idea that you have to change your clothes more than once a month. Nor do you have the guys who randomly scream at certain intervals for no good reason, or the ones who wear diapers to the gaming group so they don't have to get up to go to the bathroom, or even the guys who just generally can't interact with other human beings.

The reason for this, I think, is a natural choice on the part of the gaming community in Uruguay to not tolerate that kind of "lawn-crapping" behaviour. They spend more time interacting and mingling with each other in the real world, gaming groups aren't static as they often are in north america, instead you have people going back and forth, playing with lots of different people in different locales. This greater social aspect inherently keeps out some of the social retards, and are thwarted by the general preference of the Uruguayan gamers to tell those who exhibit abnormal behaviour that they can either change or go away. The "geek social fallacy" that because you are sometimes seen as a nerd you must accept and tolerate all your "fellow nerds" regardless of how obnoxious, sick, or inappropriate their behaviour might be does not rule here, and Uruguayan gaming is all the better for it.

http://www.xanga.com/RPGpundit/577724462/item.html

Garrowolf View Member Profile	Mar 19 2007, 03:44 AM Post #18
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517	ookkkkaaayyyyy. Interesting article. I had no idea about gaming in other countries. I guess that I am missing how this was relevant to the topic (except for the fact that this guy was referenced earlier). I think what you are referring to is the need for a social mechanic to compensate for a lack of social ability in the players. I kind of disagree about that. The social mechanic is not to compensate for a lack in the players but to show that the character is not the player. A player may be playing a very manipulative character but they may be loyal to a fault. It just allows the player to play out of their type. What I usually do is let them role play and then roll to see how the delivery was. The NPC may agree with their argument but think that they are being manipulated. The other side of that is that they could ask something that you wouldn't think anyone in their right mind would agree to but they roll well and do it anyway. I saw this in action one time when my ex-girlfriend conned nearly the entire gaming club at UGA into working as an assembly line to make her a dress. I refused to help out because I knew she was just being manipulative and she didn't need the dress, but I was astonished how much she was able to control them. She didn't give a good reason for doing it to anyone but she got them to do it anyway. Personally I want my players to play characters different from themselves. This allows for this more. I still take their argument and weigh it against the NPC's goals in addition to the rolls made. Now I may be making a straw man falicy here. It may not be what you were referring to at all. As for the fetish side of things, people are weird. I think that this has less to do with gaming and ALOT more to do with the Internet. Before, all the freaks were isolated in their dungeons. Now we, I mean they, can talk to each other and organize. The extreme geeks have always been there. People have been memorizing Tolikein's languages since the books came out. The 60's saw signs that said, "Frodo Lives!" I think it all comes down to what I call my 1% law. 1% of the population is Nucking Futs! They are messed up in the head in some way. As our population increases then this number increases. We should be glad that most of them are fairly safe as long as we get to commune with our people. I think we will be safe as long as we keep our door locked.

hyzmarca View Member Profile	Mar 20 2007, 09:09 AM Post #19
Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456	White Wolf continues to suffer from the crazy goth larpers who drink real human blood sterotype. Whenever I think of White Wolf games, I always think of crazy blood-drinking vampire larpers.

Wounded Ronin View Member Profile	Mar 22 2007, 04:10 AM Post #20
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,640 Joined: 6-June 04 Member No.: 6,383	Yeah, pretty much.

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