The Party Hydra, Bearing Witness, and Let Me Tell You About My Character

[benlehman]

Oh my god, Becky, look at his RPG Theory post!



So this was the essay I promised in the notes of the last one.

The party hydra is, briefly, the phenomenon that most RPG parties act like a single unit, rather than like a group of individuals. All argument and decision making is down within the party, which then makes a single unified decision about what they are going to do.

I'm speaking here, for what it is worth, in terms of both Gamism and Narrativism (for Forgites), or in terms of tactical interest and plot interest (for those who you who aren't.) In a tactical situation, like say a D&D combat, the party is working together in an uncanny way, like it is a hydra (hence the name.) Likewise, we only see one decision at any important decision point, rather than a bunch of different reactions.

It isn't that the party can't act like a protagonist, or like a gutsy game player. Party hydra phenomenon can be present in a lot of successful play. It is just that it acts like one character when it does so.

(Personally, I think that the decision making gets a little watered down in the process, too...)

In this post and this lumpley article, I talk about bearing witness, and why that is important. I would like to note that I think it is important for both Gamist and Narrativist play (don't know about Sim. Frankly, don't care.) Non-forgies can just ignore the previous sentence, except for the point that everyone needs a witness. Go read the damn things, if you care!

For the reasons I outline in that post, I don't think that the GM can be a witness in that way that is necessary. Two reasons -- first, because the GM is an equal contributor to the protagonism of the player/character, and so just like the player cannot bear witness, because what is cool is not the protagonist but the protagonism. Secondly, I think the standard position of the GM as neutral arbiter of the world requires the GM to "break character" if he wants to observe and understand the protagonism in the necessary way. The witness needs to be able to say what was cool. The neutral GM cannot.

(Not saying that they can't be the same person. Just that they can't be the same person at the same time.)

So, if we take these two things together, we can understand why gamers want to tell you about their character all the time, and why it is usually dead boring.

See, in a party hydra game, there is really only one character, which all the players are playing, plus a GM for conflict. Let's say that it is a good game, and that the players all do really well and there's cool stuff going on. Because the players are all caught up in the same character, they can't really witness each other's triumphs in a serious way. Likewise, the GM is unlikely to be able to provide the necessary validation and sympathetic understanding that a witness provides.

And, god-damn-it, something cool happened! They want to tell someone about it.

So they do. At length. And it doesn't work, of course, because you didn't witness it. Gamers who are doing this are essentially groping in the dark for someone to provide them witness. Sadly, they are doomed, because there was no witness except for them, and that comes off as braggery, not triumph.

Thoughts?

P.S. to Forgites: I think that protagonism and protagonists apply to both Gamism and Narrativism. Seperate post, m'kay?

Comments

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Assuming for the moment that we are speaking only about tabletop games, does that mean that in the tabletop game in question, the same person is always the focus? Or that individual people take turns being the focus?

Nope. Sorcerer play, for example, is N-1 different stories about N-1 different protagonists, where N is the number of players (there is one GM, hence the N-1), all totally the focus of their own stories. In terms of the players, out of game, you're going to watch different players being the focus of different scenes, with other player's characters often not even present at all. They are all going to be interested in each other's scene, hopefully, because:
1) Watching protagonists in action is interesting.
2) The stories are all overlapping and occupying the same space and relating the same people, like maybe a group of short stories in the same setting.


It's hard for me to imagine a game where this sort of protagonisting is happening more than a certain percentage of the time, at least without it losing impact, and without the game losing a lot of the other things that make RPGs and the stories they create interesting and fun, namely, interaction between PCs.

I find it pretty fun.


How do you determine when a game has something to do with this discussion -- how do you judge when protagonisting is the 'point of play'?

This is a sticky wicket, especially in terms of play. I say "When having everyone contribute to a good story arc comes before anything else." If that comes before that vibe you get about "being" a character, or winning the game, or making people laugh, or making other people like you by helping out their characters, then I would say it counts. In Forge terms, this is a very rough description of Narrativist play. (I also think that this applies to Gamism, but I haven't proved that yet, and it isn't what we seem to be talking about).

In terms of game texts, it is often much easier. Sorcerer cannot be about character immersion -- you, as a player, must design conflict for your own character. You, as a player, know everything about other PC's storylines, even if you have never met. PrimeTime Adventures cannot be about character immersion -- the game is like writing a TV show. As examples.

Is this a little clearer now?

yrs--
--Ben

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

Ok, the Sorcerer example makes it much clearer. I have played Chill games that were very similar to this for much of their time, though they always would end up in having the characters meet and do some things as a group as well, though not necessarily remain a group (let alone a hydra) from that point forward.

I suppose it may just be a point of personal preference that I would be unhappy not to see the various storylines finally intersect. I am typically annoyed by books that spend too long going back and forth between different characters' stories that are truly separate. Using different characters perspectives/stories to tell non-overlapping but complementary parts of a greater story (Song of Ice and Fire, mostly) is fine; but that might be harder to do in a game than in a novel, and does that reduce protagonistry?

My reading and gaming experience has led me to expect, when I am introduced to characters and arcs that start out separate, that they will eventually come together within the course of the greater storyline. I suppose that in a 'shared world' book of short stories, that doesn't happen; but I can't think of an example where in that case the individual story arcs do not complete before switching to another.

The answer may just be 'RPGs are different, so none of that matters.' I consider it here to try to identify why this model of continually-distinct protagonist storylines seems odd and vaguely dissatisfying to me -- it all feels like lead-in to something requiring human interaction between characters that all matter.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Well, the stories usually do come together. One of the great things that Nar RPGs talk about is ways for the story to tie the stories together in satisfying ways that don't take away from any one character's protagonism. It is easier than one might think, really.

But yeah. Tying things together into a satisfying arc is key to the whole deal.

Also, I wanted to clarify that not all parties turn into hydras. To take some examples from shared games we've seen -- Flicker had a party, but it wasn't a hydra. Earthdawn is a party which is a hydra.

yrs--
--Ben

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking a bit about Flicker while mentioning Chill, since Flicker also had people often going out and doing things in small groups or individually, even after the PCs met. One of the things I actually wished had been done a little differently were some of the times someone was having individual GM interaction but it wasn't public for other people to view. In Chill one of the neat things was that, like Sorcerer I suppose, all stories were public even if your character wouldn't know about them, so you could always enjoy them as audience rather than being bored when there wasn't anything going on for you.