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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?
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Some people say 'if there isn't more than one person involved, it isn't roleplaying!' To me, this is silly, and wrong. I and many other people I know have experienced scenes that were entirely internal, IC mental processes or lone rants or things a character did when there was no one around to see at the time -- usually in LARPS, of course -- which were a major part of the gaming experience and critical to a character's arc.
But would these things be meaningful if we didn't have the overlooking presence of the player noticing, or able to say later from experience on the spot, "ah, here is where character X is facing issue Y and coming to a resolution that sends them in a new direction"?
I don't think this is necessarily the same thing as an external witness. But it does cover some of the same area. And for a witness to actually 'witness', don't they need to have some idea of what they are witnessing, or why it matters, or that there's even a story going on? In some cases, isn't, therefore, the player, despite their excessive involvement, a better 'witness' than an ignorant outside audience might be?
Does this get into the area of whether the witness idea applies to simulationism? I've never been able to get quite whether 'character development simulationism' is or is not something that falls under Simulationism as considered in GNS.
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(Anonymous) - 2005-02-04 20:38 (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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I did read the rest (I think) of the protagonist discussion through your links, and from what I read I thought that FGS-style sim play could coexist with protagonism, though it certainly does not always.
It may just be that I think that someone can be a 'protagonist' on a smaller scale which does not have to require being the obvious main character, good guy, and mover-and-shaker overall of an entire game, especially when that game is one (like many larps) which is not made of a single defining overall storyline.
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At first I wasn't following with what you were saying about witnesses- but yeah, I get you now. I'm with you on the idea that both Gamist and Narrativist folks want/need an audience. The point is to get approval from the group, either in the classic Step on Up "Guts or Brains" dept., or the "Damn that was real" approval of addressing premise. When everyone is deep in the moment of performing, they have a hard time seeing the performances of others and being able to approve/disapprove of it. Sim people are about the sake of performing for performing and don't care if there's an audience or not(at least to my view).
I think its also much more rewarding for the GM when you don't have party-hydra because other players can also appreciate the cool stuff you're doing as a GM, instead of having to concentrate on responding to it.
PS- This also makes me think about my old "Ball Theory", because if you have party Hydra, everyone's trying to hit the ball at once, and no one can really appreciate the skills or techniques applied.
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CU
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