Outsmarting the Fun – part 1
by Stan Polson
Why Gaming is Less Enjoyable Than You Remember
I want you to think back to the Summer of 1999. Remember sitting in the parking lot of your local movie theater with all those friends you rarely see anymore? You’d all just completed your eighth viewing of The Mummy. You were only half-joking about the plan to use the Hospital as your base if that Y2K thing resulted in zombies or Mad Max (and arguing over which was preferable). You piled into a couple of cars. You went through a drive-thru and hit up the Walgreen’s for mountains of dollar candy. Then you RPed with way more than the recommended number of players for whatever game you were playing at the time (and likely aren’t playing anymore), and it was game on for eight hours at a time, several times every week.
Remember that? Yeah, that was awesome. So what changed? For starters, you probably skipped The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Without exception, your parking lot conversations these days are about how much later it is than you realized, and how you should probably head on home, but we should definitely do this again soon! There’s even a good chance you’ve bought a GPS in the last year or so without so much as a thought to whether it will still function after the zombies get into the Service Provider’s building and eat all the engineers.
This is called growing older. And growing older, if not kept in check, will absolutely have an adverse effect on your game. Consider the following, and be truthful with yourself as to whether these statements align with the way you’ve felt while gaming recently:
“Man, I love this low-magic setting. It was so much fun role playing my rogue’s reluctance to give up Accomplice (his trusty +1 dagger) when we discovered that it was the key to that ancient crypt. I didn’t even know myself whether his loyalty to the others was strong enough to overcome that survivor mentality of his.”
“Those old character sheets are just embarrassing. How many drow rangers did I roll up anyway? I guess we all go through that phase. Oh man, check out this spell list! Fire 3? That’s hilarious.”
“At first I was disappointed by how average our stats were, but it’s awesome playing with a group where there are four fighters and each of them is completely unique. Besides, the opportunity to play the special classes is so much less magical if you can fudge the requirements.”
“We’ve been playing this combat for almost an hour and I’ve missed EVERY TIME! I’m glad the GM doesn’t fudge the dice, of course, but I have to admit it’s kind of a bummer.”
“Failed another tumble check. Oh well, I guess swinging from a chandelier really is pretty unrealistic if you stop to think about it.”
And if you’re a GM, you’ve probably had these thoughts and more. So what have they all got in common? First, they probably never came to mind back when you were huddled over a pool table in your friend’s garage – these are recent hauntings, and I suspect they are somehow related to the fun slump we all eventually encounter. So what has birthed them? What is the zygote? It must be stopped!
I humbly suggest that the commonality between these thoughts is that they are rife with self-delusion. As much as we may kid ourselves (and yes, I include myself in this – which should be obvious if you’ll notice how specific the examples have been), we don’t really, in our heart of hearts, feel more satisfied with more mature games. Our yearning for realism, balance and consistency have left us with vast, imaginary worlds in which nothing all that incredible happens. Sure, there are galaxy-spanning wars… but a group of six people can’t just show up and win a war, right? There are ancient Elven kings in emerald castles… but what King would realistically meet with a bunch of mercenaries in person? There are magical fountains with waters so pure that they can cure all ailments, including death… but such things always come with a price!
My friends, I think we are outsmarting the fun. But it’s not as easy as just reducing the realism, is it? No, knowledge cannot be unlearned. You will never again cast “Fire 3″ without groaning with agitated discontent. And so, in this series of articles, I intend to discover how we can once again satisfy our maturing tastes with that most impossibly juvenile pastime: Make-Believe.
While I agree with the article I have to say there are times when you stop and go “all this maturity kinda sucks some times”. Sometimes its good to indulge your inner child reprobate – and most emphatically – dont step on other people doing the same thing, sometimes its good to forget about the impossibility or unrealistic nature of something and just have fun with it.
I’m still only nineteen, and I honestly don’t consider my game to be ‘mature’ yet. But, the game we play today is drastically different to what we played five years ago. I do miss the level of fun we had, but I’m not sure if I want to go back there.
Though recently the game has become more enjoyable for myself, and using as new system might be the reason why. Yes, Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons isn’t dramatically different from Revised Third Edition, but it’s different enough that I’m not entirely sure as to what I am doing. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, so I’ll cut it off here.
I liked the article and look forward to the next in the series.
I think this is where the Exalted game I was in fell down. The other players seem to have wanted “realism, balance and consistency”, a gritty game where new Exalted struggle to survive being hunted by the DragonBlooded. I wanted to be one guy who changed the world!
And I once saw two people storm out of an Earthdawn game because one had been turned into a zombie (with full intelligence) and we were supposed to find an artifact that could restore him to life. Both players felt that, yeah sure there are powerful artifacts in the world, but what are the odds of our group finding that particular one.
Since that was meant to be the campaign I’d say the odds were pretty high, and those guys rushed ahead of the rest of us into the trap you described.
Great article!
I’m looking forward to more of this series. It’s time we got back to the basics of what’s fun.
In a world of blogs there common themes are product reviews, edition vs edition, and the exact meaning of “The Rule of Cool”, this was a refreshing and insightful post. And very true. Thanks Stan!
Sorry Stan, this rang exactly zero bells with me. I don’t know where you are coming from so I can’t offer any comment. I can assure you that it is completely possible to “satisfy maturing tastes with that most impossibly juvenile pastime: Make-Believe”. Best wishes for a swift and pleasant discovery.
Bravo, sir! Although my “Summer of 1999″ was more the “Summer of 1989″, you have struck a chord. I look forward to your future posts!
Thanks for all your feedback. I really appreciate it.
I want to specifically respond to Christopher by saying that my intention with these articles will be to prove that maturity and gaming are not at odds, despite the fact that most gamers experience the trend I explained in part one.
I’m glad to hear that you are already ahead of the curve in this regard, and will be interested to hear whether it’s because you’re already doing what I suggest in later articles or if you’ve got something else up your sleeve.
Again, thanks for reading guys.
Nostalgia can play tricks on you.
Several of your comments allude to the idea of the GM fudging the activities to “enhance” the fun. Specifically, I refer to the examples of tumble check, missing in combat, more balanced stats, and the chandelier.
In my experience, fudging these things does not improve the game experience, or if it does – it’s a short term gain with a net long term loss. The reason, fundamentally, is if it is the GM’s choice to handwave these things at his whim it results in the removing the choice and consequence from the player’s side of the table. In the long run, it ends up manoeuvring the players into a more passive role at the gaming table, and I assume they intended more than to just add colour to the GMs description of what happens next.
Now, when I played in the 80’s, the less refined mechanics back then *required* the GM to take a more active role in determining outcomes, which made actions and consequences somewhat arbitrary and less predictable. It wasn’t that they were more or less realistic, it’s that there was less *game* in those editions.
You do have something with the “low magic setting”, though I don’t necessarily think this is a problem with mature gamers. Specifically, I’ve seen a number of somewhat experienced gamemasters try to tinker with settings to offer their own variant on worldbuilding. Surprisingly often, they do indeed try to make the setting “more realistic” –usually by arbitrarily neutering a fantastical element of the original setting. “Low magic” is one. I also played in a Cyberpunk game where the GM decided he wanted cybernetics to be uncool – expensive and relatively primitive (not unlike today’s mechanical arms). Why take away what makes a game unique?
I prefer a “high magic”, but restricted, setting. Without magic in the game, there isn’t much to go for it besides sword swinging. The more magic, the better, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there need to be magic items lying in every highway ditch, and every corner of a dungeon. I’m still trying to figure out what the perfect balance of restricted magic makes for the most fun game. Movies seem to pull it off nicely.