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The Party Hydra, Bearing Witness, and Let Me Tell You About My Character
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?
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?
no subject
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
no subject