… but I don’t understand a word you’re saying.
Now that I’m back at the table as a player I’ve been thinking more about gaming in terms of it being a social experiment. The small group conflict resolution exercises from college are very similar to the tabletop roleplaying experience in that you have a group of individuals playing to one set of motivations, the character’s, but underlying that are the individual’s own motivations and those could be in opposition to the former. It was that individual dynamic coupled with the group that made the exercise and gaming so fascination from a social psychology and communication standpoint because not only was their conflict to be roleplayed often a sort of meta-conflict would emerge with regards to how the exercise should proceed. Where did the character end and the player begin?
Bankuei of Deep in the Game has a great article on incoherence in gameplay, which by the way is no different than incoherence in those college exercises or even in everyday staff meetings. For any social gathering to occur with any degree of coherence there needs to be an alignment of individual goals with the groups. Every group goes through a negotiation stage where individuals work through the group goals and attempt to co opt them as well possibly propagate theirs into the group. Depending on the group this can either occur quickly, “We’re all here for the free bagels,” or with great difficulty, “I’m on an Atkins diet and all you brought was bagels?!”
The catch in all of this is how well the participant are able to identify their own goals and motivations as well as those of the group. Adding to the complexity is each individual’s ability to articulate those goals in a manner where all members are operating from the same semantic baseline. Tall order as in my experience most people have enough difficulty identifying those things that make them tick let alone expressing it in a meaningful manner. However, unlike staff meetings those groups of people that huddle around polyhedral dice already have two major goals aligned with the group: play a game and have fun.
So where an I going with this meandering half-baked essay about small group communication theory and my short lived run as a GM? That my earlier self-flagellation was misplaced. Coherence is as much the responsibility of the group as it is of the individual and that, as distasteful as it might be to some, meta discussion is a necessity to ensure that all the people involved are actually having their goals met or at the very least approximated to their comfort. If not than the result might be as Bankuei describes, “20 minutes of fun from 4 hours,” which in my book is a very close approximation of suck.
Sound advice is offered as the group should not only talk it out but play several highly structured games to determine what works best, “it provides concrete procedures and a solid direction to serve as a ‘compass’ that the group can then use to better find things they -do- like,” provided that those likes and dislikes can be adequately identified and articulated. The challenge for the GM is that they run these group encounters and are essentially charged with ensuring that the goals of the group reflect those of the individual. No small task.
Published by james on April 27, 2006
in Lust.
Democracy Player is the shit. I’m an RSS junkie. I live a good portion of my Internet life glued to Liferea but on occasion I’ve been know to rather watch than read and here’s where Democracy Player comes in. It is a tightly integrated vidcast aggregator and player that provides a streamlined and functional system to satisfy my cravings for multimedia.
It was a fairly simple install for Ubuntu, grab the deb package here, drop to the CLI and run dpkg -i on the package, then fix the install by resolve any dependencies in Synaptic . Granted, I already installed many of the codecs needed to view the videos but that can be handled by the Automatix script if it turns out you are missing some.
Overall, I’m stoked even though management is frowning a little more at me for spending more time at the laptop. Well, maybe it is the headphones and my constant, “What? You say something?”
CNN is reporting “Nintendo drops Revolution, renames next gen console Wii” and I’m asking, WTF? Is this branding by committee? Look, I know I don’t buy a console by its name or its looks. I buy it for the games. But for the love of a joystick Nintendo had battled the asinine kiddie label all through out the life cycle of the Gamecube so why would they pick a name like Wii. Now, I’ll have to wade through even more 13 year old hater crap just to get news on happenings over at Nintendo. Thanks Nintey!
Often I think my sister is too generous in her praise, likely she is stroking my ego and bolstering my confidence as recently she floated the idea that maybe I should seriously pursue my dream of writing and pontificating on a more serious and hopefully paid basis. I, however, have no illusions about my talent as a wordsmith and do not see that as a viable venture beyond thinking about it in that smiling twilight state just before sleep. If I had any illusions about my success the recent write up about profit and loss in the publishing industry, “P&Ls and how books make (or don’t) money: part the first: the mass market original complete failure“, will anchor me to reality, especially when read with “The life expectancies of books” which will remind any aspiring or working author that the memory of your works will fade quicker than O-Town’s last single. [For those of you playing at home it was "I Showed Her" from their sophomore follow-up, 02, and yes it sucked but it's O-Town. What did you expect?]
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly think it is commendable that there are people willing to take the plunge and make their livelihood off writing–those people have a greater drive and are less risk averse than I. For me, it is a nice fantasy to have in that I really do enjoy writing and the sites have given me an outlet and an opportunity to think critically and creatively, something I was sorely lacking after I finished grad school. But writing for a living takes a thick skin and a will to see your product through to the end. I get distracted easily, often running after the next shiny thing that glints in the corner of my eye–never did find a way to reign that monkey in–so the idea of a steady flow of income being dependent on my attention span is a frightening notion.
I would like to branch out into more creative writing and I did try that briefly here but scrapped it before long for a lack of time and focus. The GMing experience sort of dredged up the desire again and got me thinking about how I might do it with an eye on keeping things short, tight, and focused. I’m at a loss though seeing as my workdays are long and my nights even longer, finding time to grind out three reviews at Pop and a handful of posts here is challenge enough let alone pounding out short stories as well. However, if it is something that I want to try I really should at least make an effort to even capture scraps of thought and ideas. Letting them flit away seems like such a waste.
Maybe I’ll return to the more creative aspects to 0.333, as long as my attention can remain focused long enough. It was exhilarating conceptualizing a world filled with characters and intersecting plotlines while I briefly GMed, which if anything showed me that I’d would make a better writer than GM–focus thing again. So I suppose I should thank my sister for the gentle kick in the pants to think a little bigger than I normally do but I won’t be quitting my day job anytime too soon.
Just adding to the pile of hate: Healthcare Bill Seeks to Preempt State Laws (Los Angeles Times). Feministe sums up the key points nicely:
— Eliminate state requirements for insurance coverage for breast, cervical, colorectal, and prostate cancer screenings; well-child care and immunizations; prescription contraception; emergency services; mental health care; diabetes supplies and education; and many other critical health services.
— Deny states the right to regulate the insurance industry to ensure that consumers’ needs are met.
— Put insurance companies, not health professionals, in charge of your health care.
— Raise insurance premiums, making health care unaffordable for those who need it most: women, the sick, and the elderly, whose health care costs are usually higher.
— Fail to address the problem of rising health care costs, which is what really plagues struggling employers.
Yet again I’m left asking myself why the fuck I keep voting. I believe in the notion that it is a privilege and a duty but for fuck’s sake it is NOT a representative system unless of course you are some bloated corporation looking to hoard even more resources for yourself.
Shitty Monday morning.
If you thought the US was having some difficulty keeping up with the rapidly changing world it has just gotten worse. Congress is getting ready to pass the latest revisions to the DMCA which will make each and everyone of you reading this a terrorist in the eyes of the Justice Department. You read that right.
During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is “encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft,” Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, “quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities.” (c|net)
Everything is about terrorism and and kiddie pr0n except for the terrorism and kiddie pr0n. Seriously. As if the nation was not struggling enough in the global marketplace we are going to pass laws like this and dismiss Internet neutrality measures so that economic power can continue to consolidate further into a select few corporate entities.
The simple fact of the matter is that the re-vamped DMCA will at once chill innovation–as the nation continues to slide backwards–and criminalize what used to be considered Fair Use. The new civil and criminal measures will be used by existing participants in the marketplace to bar any newcomers. In addition, it will be used to enforce commercial measure to ensure that consumers pay multiple times for the same content, because remember it is about the medium and not the content, as well as rest on the assurance that any attempt to shift content or share under the tenets of Fair Use will allow them to pursue both criminal and civil cases against individuals. As Gonzales states, you are a terrorist if you even believe in Fair Use.
To flip their meme back on them, why does Congress hate America so much?
