Sometimes it’s my character, dammit!

In his latest blog entry, on the aptly titled This is My Blog, Ben Lehman points to this Forge post from Clinton R. Nixon. To be nice and shorten the process a bit, here’s the highlights:

From Clinton:

Anyway, I feel this is a healthy way to look at this stuff. For the people who don’t realize that these duties can be shared, I mention it, because I think it’s good to see options. But I’m not going to say, “the player should always set the stakes and narrate when he wins” because I think that’s too constrictive.

As a general rule of thumb, all input in TSOY should be done as a group, and the Guide’s job is to synthesize that group input, and definitely, to shape it. If agreement can’t be found, the Guide’s job is to help find it.

And then from Ben:

What he’s saying here is deeply relevant to the condition of a game designer as a creative person. What he’s saying is important.

Well, is it?

My first instinct is: No. Not really.

My second instinct is: Yes, it is. But for some other reasons.

There’s a very strong undercurrent in the Diaspora movement that seeks to create a new group paradigm: much ink is spilled in the destruction of the GM, the chopping up of authority and the mix-n-matching of control and role. A large chunk of this is what is commonly referred to as Dirty Hippie gaming, where we all sit around and try and find the best consensus for the entire group.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the positive-game movement of the early-to-mid 70′s is one big pile of shit. Perhaps I was more diplomatic about, but that’s the upshot: so-called cooperative games (you can see some examples at this site). If you’ve ever been subjected to these things, you probably already understand where I’m coming from. Not only are these games not fun in the least, but they’re also not really games. They’re object lessons in sharing wrapped around a turn-taking system.

A large part of the dynamic of games is the tension of conflict – not just between characters, but between players as well. People bring all kinds of baggage to the table, and in my experience the very best games unpack that baggage and start poking at it. Usually when you try to bring some sort of complete synthesis to the game, it winds up being a Mary Sue funfest where the characters enjoy a great deal of immunity. Darlings have to die, and that doesn’t just refer to characters. It also refers to the plotlines that players set up for their characters, their preferred modus operandi, be it androgynous billionaire playboy cellists or orphaned dual-katana death machines.

Games, like any art, are about challenge. Not just the ‘will my character survive the gelatinous cube’ challenge, but finding ways to completely shake up the way the group operates. Certainly not in every session, but it should be on the table. And so to Clinton’s post I’d say this: Everything in moderation, including consensus. Sometimes breaking consensus is exactly what a game needs to push people out of their comfort zones. If you’re always comfortable with what you’re doing in the game, you’re not on the frontier. You’re back and headquarters, minding the store for the real explorers.