One of the building blocks of conflict resolution is the ability of individuals to articulate their position but the challenge in that is the group as a whole might not be communication within the semantic context. Word choices and meanings will differ among peoples and groups so there is a distinct need for the group to define a common language with which to hold meta-level conversations without adding to the existing conflict. This is not to say that group cohesion is achieved through dry discourses on individual purpose and motivation followed by a tedious negotiations, instead much of the time it occurs as subtext to the overall socializing patterns of the group.

Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory is one interpretation of this process that grabbed my attention as an undergrad and has held it since. Essentially, Bormann postulates that cohesion emerges through the process of shared narratives which he terms fantasies. These fantasies are actually just stories and anecdotes that reveal and transmit emotion and while they are not directly related to the overarching goal of the group they serve to create a foundation of understanding. The sharing of these fantasies serve to weave a larger tapestry of connectivity between the individuals and the group which provides the cohesiveness allowing the group to address its long term goals (Bulher).

So what to do when fantasy chaining is not enough to provide cohesion? Well, the process ought to result in a common language from which to begin the process of addressing conflict however there are many different sources of conflict and several might be in play ranging from communication difficulties, issues of force, and agreement on fact-finding. Colorado University as a great website that outlines many of these issues as well as some possible tools to resolve them at their Online Training Program on Intractable Conflict (OTPIC) website.

Getting back to the gaming group it would seem that the conflict is a tangle of three issues: communication, scope, and facts. Certainly there is a great deal of variance in the opinions as to what the source of the tension is, ranging from finger pointing to a general malaise, and that ties into the notion of what individuals or situations may or may not be at the nexus. Add to that a general reluctance to communicate and you have a smoldering fire. Greatly complicating matters is the introduction of two new players as the group needs to be flexible enough to absorb them and generate the necessary cohesiveness to keep the group together. Groups more than two get complicated quickly.

Let’s see if my math is any good. Dredging up from my memory I seem to remember that a group of two consists of six distinct relationships based how each individual sees themselves, the other, and their respective positions in the dyad.

1. A sees B
2. B sees A
3. A sees A
4. B sees B
5. A sees B sees A
6. B sees A sees B

This jumps up dramatically when additional individuals are added to the mix. The number climbs to twenty-four distinct relationships for three individuals revolving around the same pattern but expanding to encompass the inclusion of how the group sees individuals and the individual sees that group. Basically, it is three dyads that are bridged to include perceptions of the other dyads. The group I game with consists of seven individuals and it would take me all night and a day to make a map relationship network but you can get a feeling for how complicated groups really are by just looking at a dyad.

None of this is to say that the gaming group has arrived at an impasse and that civility has taken a back seat to unabashed aggression. For the most part the group is one of the more healthy ones I have been a member of. This is more of an academic exercise that is fueled by my experiences and some of the recent reading I have been doing on the subject of gaming theory (big ups to Bankuei for boiling down the work over at The Forge). One of the interesting things about the articles on gaming theory is how work in social psychology, anthropology, and communications has been co-opted and framed in terms of leisure activities. Considering that my prior studies have centered around crisis management and corporate development it is breath of fresh air.

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.

D&D is about combat first and a roleplaying second. It is meant to play like a skirmish simulator whereby one individual controls one character much like multiplayer in Rainbow Six or any other squad orientated game. The roleplaying aspect lends a rounding effect to the stat crunching but is not entirely necessary for the game to be played. The mechanics of the game lead the player to think in terms of stark actions: pick lock, disarm trap, engage in combat, and so on. The goal is to maintain a level of action that is constant and the mechanics are there to help facilitate that and roleplaying detracts from that.

Where I erred is that I threw my energies into trying to create a complex and nuanced world for the players to interact with but the trouble with that is there is little room for that. D&D games tend to run like a classic hack ‘n’ slash title where the player is given an objective–fetch item A–and are given an environment to crawl through clearing rooms and leveling up. It is about stat juggling and as much as people might like to disagree the game is about power gaming, grinding levels to gain new feats to inflict more damage on one’s foes. Nuance has little place here.

Outside of D&D the games I gravitate to the most are often open ended games that place an emphasis on emergent behavior–The Sims and Animal Crossing come to mind–where the game environment is open enough to let the player determine the style of play. Additionally, I gravitate to themes that emphasis ambiguity in terms of ethics and morality. Knights of The Old Republic is a good example where actions carried consequences and at times the choices presented no real right or wrong answer only difficult decisions.

Toss in the fact that my choices in literature and film gravitate to broken people struggling in even worse situations–Charles Bukowski, Eugene O’Neill, Scott Bradfield, and Russell Banks–means that I am going to create a game world populated by damaged goods with a noticeable lack of heroes present to right wrongs and mete out justice. It does not make for a good D&D game, participatory theater yes, but RPG no.

So where does that leave me? For now I think I am throwing in the towel as the game, as it stands, is not enjoyable for anyone really and cannot be salvaged in its current form. Will I DM again? Canned adventures, sure. Writing my own, not likely, at least not until I better understand how ambiguity and interpersonal conflicts work in a hero-centric environment.

On my to-do list for this week is to flesh out the next sets of possible adventures as well as clarify some of the plot for myself. As an extremely fuzzy thinker–you wouldn’t know that by my anal-retentive habits of color coding maps and keeping my game notes in a three-ring binder with labeled tabs– I find it necessary to codify the story arc to some degree, if I don’t my overactive imagination will keep adding and expanding it until it collapses under its own weight.

Encounters are the next thing I want to look at as either my CR selection is off or my rolling is atrocious–likely both– because I was left with the feeling that the party went through my monsters like a chainsaw through butter on a hot August afternoon. I’m going to take the time to get familiar with leveling up the templates and ponder some new combat tactics such as multiple ambushes and intra-combat traps. I would like to make the party sweat.

Now, I just need to keep them entertained for three hours a week and dancing is out because no one wants to see me dance.

As I started thinking about this post it dawned on me that this site is two weeks shy of it’s first anniversary and that my second post was whether or not I am cut out to GM. Here I am full circle, not so much questioning my ability or motivation, as thinking about what has gotten me here and more importantly how I can draw upon real life experiences to better the game. Bit of a head scratcher as I struggle not to be distracted by shiny objects.

Writing a campaign is much like writing a story or, better yet, an improvisational play. There needs to be a distinct and compelling narrative arc, a cast of characters, a setting, and most importantly a motivation or motivations to carry the cast through the arc. Additionally, the space that the players will move through needs to be formulated and realized to some extent. In this regard, I am often at my laziest often falling back the notion a “fog” that obscures the line between the known and unknown. Development only extends so far as the cast is likely to see after that point it the world is populated by half conceived set pieces.

To help in organizing my thoughts I’m going to fall back on some tools from my MBA and days as a project manager:

Flow Charts - This would really be only used to begin sketching out the basics of the campaign and/or the adventures contained within. Essentially the major components would be assigned to a block and those blocks would be arranged to represent the over all trajectory to guide the writing. Think of it as more of a dynamic outline as those blocks could be rearranged as writing progressed. It does, however, form the foundation for the next two tools.

Decision Trees – In reality these are more like consequence flow charts but can help organize the branching and emergent nature of participative gaming. My worry during the first part of the campaign was that I was constraining the players too much in an return was giving them a game on rails. Ideally, I would like the details of the story to emerge from them in that I will provide the set, scenery, extra cast, and motivation and the rest is up to them. Decision trees can organize the game play from my perspective so that I can best approximate what needs to happen next based on their actions.

Gantt Charts – One of my favorite parts of PMing is the organizing the schedule where the trades are your orchestra, you are the conductor, and the schedule your score. These charts are great at helping you determine how long the project should take, what the dependencies are and what order they need to be in, and what resources are necessary for completion. Its use here would be to organize the overall goals and narrative of the story by outlining the major points from beginning to end and providing the necessary details for each milestone to be met (i.e. fetch key, rescue orphans, defeat boss).

Now, you might be thinking, “Damn, James! that is really anal retentive!” and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark. I have spent, and still spend, a good portion of my life swimming in chaos either of my own doing or others. By nature I am a very unorganized person and I struggle to define, categorize, and label things to maintain order. One of the challenges with periodic gaming is the tendency towards forgetfulness. What did we do last week? What happened last month? What are the names of those NPCs we are supposed to meet/greet/kill? For me, if I do not provide myself with a highly structured environment than the players are going to get mired in my own chaos and ultimately that is going to detract from the game. So I have learned that as a player and a GM an extra fifteen minutes spent organizing and cataloging information will save me hours worth of grief and frustration.

Hopefully, this will be my last chin stroking post and I’ll actually begin to write about putting together the next leg of the campaign. We’ll see how that works out.

I used to count myself as being a very creative person, playing music, writing stories, drawing, painting. A good part of my free time was occupied by making something out of nothing and then something changed. Real world pressures built up, choices had to be made, and I ended up putting aside many of the things I used to do with my free time. Some of it had to do with changing friendships and new obligations that pared my free time down to nothing but most of all it had to do with how I was attempting to define myself. I didn’t define myself as a creative person anymore, I was only a spectator, a consumer of creative things. So what does this have to do with gaming?

Gaming, for the past year or so, has been a gateway back to the person I was, though, that is not to say I am regressing. In thinking about what made me start up again it was less about the game and more about the social aspects as well as the creative ones. I wanted a chance to sit with like minded people and let my imagination free if only for a couple of hours one evening a week. Pen and Paper RPG’s gave me that outlet and interestingly enough that outlet lead to me starting this blog and eventually Candied Pop as well. Why? Because I feel less inhibited.

Gaming, particularly Pen and Paper, is a geeky pursuit. Honestly, grown men and women sitting around a table pretending that they are saving the world all the while crunching stats and gliding little painted metal figures about a grid sounds and even looks pretty lame. Fact is that it is pretty intoxicating, much like when you were six and tied a blanket around your neck and declared to the listening world that you were a hero. All the worries of life melt away in those hours huddled about the table and when I climb into my car I have moments of clarity where I realize that life is too short to continually hold yourself back. So if there is something that you feel passionate about you better do it because there is only one chance. Certainly a Hallmark moment but I’m serious. There is more to life than money, car, and career.

Bottom line, my life might be more stressful and my career stalled on the tracks but I’m actually happier at this moment than I have been in a long time. My life isn’t about gaming but gaming help show me what my dreams are. My life is about being creative and expressing myself and maybe writing this campaign will push me to write a book or even re-build my recording studio because, on days like this, I’m sick of sitting in the stands and looking over my shoulder to see if the Joneses approve.

Our GM for the moment is running his second game and I have been really enjoying what he has worked out not just as a player but from the perspective of writing a campaign. He does a great job of setting up a basic plot, along with some devices and alternate endings and solutions, and then letting us run loose with it. It never feels like it runs on rails but he has a skill for keeping us moving towards the ultimate goal all the while making us feel like we have had a challenge that we ultimately overcame after a long struggle. Balance is key: provide challenges but make it enjoyable. For myself, in GMing I find the most enjoyment out of providing intellectual puzzles and I struggle with finding ways to incorporate that into the game itself.

The specific challenges I seem to be facing as a GM are the structure of the plot and the world. I find that I am creating these infinitely complex plots and sub-plots without properly designing structures to navigate the players through the world and more importantly, will it even be enjoyable? I think that the problem is that I am approaching the role of a GM as more of a novelist rather than a puppet master. Not terribly fair to the players as they are there to interact with a world not play out scripted events and rolling dice to add an element of interactivity. The other problem with developing vast plots is that the players, like people in the real world, are often minor players and that large scale happenings are made up of a cast of millions. How, as a GM, do you convey a sense of purposefulness without the plot devolving into triteness, hence, “You are the last of your kind,” “The fate of the world rests on your shoulders,” kind of tripe.

Depth and complexity to the world and the players purpose in it are the two things I really want to get across. To have the players face difficult decisions, gray areas that challenge their characters chosen alignment and background, and to have tangible consequences arise from those decisions. The first part of the campaign that I ran was essentially a modified fetch quest, “Find out why A is happening and make sure that solution B is applied.” Not very dynamic nor terribly epic feeling but my goal was to use that first dungeon as a means to springboard the party into a real conflict, one with many different sides and to hope that the party’s differing motivations would allow for some real struggles in unraveling their purpose.

As I sit back and think about the above I ask myself, “Is that fun for the players?” Sure, there are bound to be people out there that enjoy games with plot twists, ones that abound with puzzles and challenges that go beyond the dice but do the people I game with want that? Added to that is whether or not a game like that can work well in a once a week four hour window. I’m not sure. As a player I try and keep game notes so that in a week or two I know approximately where we have been but it is not unusual for me to forget who we’ve talked to or even where we have been. It is like I suffer from dissociative amnesia and am entering a fugue state once a week. Would a complicated plot do the same to my players and thereby lessen their enjoyment?

Tough questions and it comes back to balance. I suppose that the best course of action is to work out the world, its cast of characters and the overarching plots and then select a small trajectory for the players to travel. To treat their journey as a thread in a tapestry, one where there are many intersections but where the game is clear in terms of motivation and purpose. To simplify their role in whatever convoluted and complex world I am tinkering with. Certainly, something to chew on.

Here’s a link dump of some articles over at Treasure Tables that I’ve been reading over (and over):

Worldbuilding Ideas from Principia Infecta

Prep and Running Games: Oil and Water, or PB and J?

RPTips: 31 Questions To Define A Culture

A Modular Approach to Worldbuilding

On a related note there looks to be several books coming out this spring to join Agile Web Development with Rails; here’s the results over at Barnes & Noble. Safe to say you can skip the fourth one unless brass jingling is your thing. I’m thinking of grabbing a couple this spring to help give me a boost. I learn best while reading and doing; not so much Googling while doing.

This afternoon I sucked in the 3.5 SRD, thanks to the fine folks over at the d20-xml group, and started fleshing out the structure using Ruby on Rails. I’ve been looking for a reason to really put RoR through its paces while learning more about it and this project seemed to be a good way to do it.

So far there is nothing groundbreaking, I’m going concentrate on making the SRD searchable and relational. After that I’ll begin fleshing out the tables and modules necessary to allow it to track characters and campaign data. I have next week off so I might get some coding done then and maybe will have something live in a couple of weeks for people to take for a spin.