Communication, Bad Practice & Bad Behavior

I don't post rants cause it feels too self-indulgent, but if you think this would be good for the DISCOURSE, go ahead and post it on servers and whatnot for me, I'll appreciate the delicious views.

I hate online discourse I hate online discourse I hate online discourse I hate online discourse
...
Ok, this is not an attack on any particular individuals, if you feel like it is, I swear I have no idea who you are and am not thinking of you, this is just a bunch of frustrations I'm venting from reading various things I found at best irritating, at worse ridiculous, in my recent ventures into tRPG theory/debates. Which reminded me of why I normally don't do this part of the hobby, for all the good stuff it can also bring at times (allegedly).

You can't design against bad practice. You can't design against bad behavior.

Bad practice is fixed by learning good practice, which can be specific once you have a strong understanding of what kind of experience you're aiming for. 

I run adventure games, FKR/OSR, so there definitely are objectively good practices (ICI Doctrines) and bad practices (Pixel Bitching). Maybe on an Internet forum people can argue about how some practices may not be always good/always bad, but if you have a shared understanding of a given playstyle, then the answer is just "no, it's not really debatable, and focusing on nitpicking these things is an excuse not to learn good practices and unlearn bad practices."

I say you can't design against that as a response to generations of tRPG design that seems to me like, while it didn't necessarily tried to do that, has been interpreted by players and GMs as being meant to do that. Looking at PbtA games for some, PF 2 for others (usually these interpretations are mutually exclusive, ie: someone who sees PbtA as designed against X and Y bad practices probably does not realize another would see PF 2 as designed against Z bad practices and it works both ways).

Certain games facilitate bad practices for certain styles. Games that take away GM authority when it comes to interpreting the world in favour of hard set rules that end up de facto telling you something different about the world than what would make sense make it harder to run adventure games in the FKR/OSR styles. The peasant railgun in 3.5 being something that makes sense within the rules, and would represent bad practice on the GM were it to be ignored/waived technically makes 3.5 a bad fit, if used as intended-as understood by 3.5 and later editions' lens of "rules as something the GM abides to", within a FKR/OSR framework.

In addition, rules I consider to be poorly designed are those that foster bad practices within the intended playstyle. Ie: if I'm writing a PbtA game, and I put in a rule that does not start and end with the fictional environment being looked at and interpreted (say: "you can use X power Y times per Rest"), that's a bad rule within this framework. For games ran in an FKR style, I generally would say, although others may disagree, that any metanarrative currency (ie: spend X fate points to change a die roll or affect an outcome) goes against the agenda of play. 


Bad behavior is stuff that I will happily all put under the umbrella of being a bit of a baby, or a bit of an asshole. So I'm not including honest mistakes or misunderstandings, and I'll get to these. I'm including antagonistic behavior between the people sitting at the table, especially when, in certain cultures of play, it ends up being justified in more or less bad faith via "the rules" or "the agenda of play". Ie: "I stabbed your guy in the back because my character is chaotic". "We're playing vampires, of course I'm gonna do this fucked up thing that clearly crosses the boundaries of other players at the tables", etc. These are fixed by having an adult conversation about the game, out of character, like you would if you were playing poker and someone kept clicking his tongue to distract you. GMs obsfucating information, self-describing as "sadistic" as a way to bypass lines & veils or just fuck with the players or their characters in ways that haven't been established prior as part of the game. Which is to say, it's not the content itself that's the issue, it's the lack of agreeing to a social contract. If I say death is on the table, and your lil' guys can get maimed, and your lil' guys get maimed, that's not bad behavior or practice, just in case there was a misunderstanding here.

You can have dead dove tRPGs and talk about content warnings and safety tools in session 0 and play the most horrifying stuff and take care of each other and it's still good practice/good behavior if everyone is being caring and having fun. Horror games between friends who know each other generally are full of difficult stuff AND are very fun and cathartic. The reason I wouldn't risk playing in some random guy's Call of Cthulhu game is not the mechanics he uses. And shifting the conversation to the mechanics he uses as the source of the problem is generally going to involve ignoring social issues that go beyond the table and underline tRPG play culture. 

Ya know like racism, queerphobia, psychophobia, yadda yadda. Which obviously also falls within "bad behavior" of its own when it's 1) between the people at the table (solution: kick the bigots out, or leave if you're at a table of bigots and find better friends to play with) ; 2) between PCs or PCs and NPCs and crosses the boundaries discussed at the table (ie: we say no slurs and someone uses slurs in character, boo, no good). If the stuff has been established as within the boundaries of everyone at the table, like say we're playing US Civil War soldiers and decided the game will involve depictions of torture, and someone gets tortured, and it's really heavy but it adds to the experience, and everyone is mature enough to know that torture is a war crime but that doing a war crime in play pretend while everyone agreed it was ok to depict for X or Y reason (immersion, horror, catharsis, critical analysis, verisimilitude, there's no Good Way or Bad Way), then it's A-OK in my book. I'd say in practice it falls within two main categories: we do the bad stuff because it's in a safe environment, same way that we enjoy horror movies cause we can experience bad stuff without the consequences; or you're the kind of people who actually find fetishistic pleasure in the bad stuff and probably have unexamined baggage that is neither my problem, nor should it be the game designers' because again, that just takes away accountability and responsibility from the people actually participating in the game.

Oh, and it's OK to play capitalist murderhobos even if you're anarcho-communist, you're not being a bad revolutionary for it. You don't even need to lampshade that the capitalist murderhobos are greedy fucks, because it's obvious to everyone involved at the table, and if it's not, maybe the issue is not the content of the game but the framework of the players at the table, babes.

Games set in utopian societies can be great to explore "what ifs" but if you're clawing at your ideals without critical self reflection and make an actually perfect society, 1) there's no adventuring to be had, and 2) you're wrong, it's not perfect, you have blinders here and there that may or may not lead to my earlier point about exclusionary content.

I got a bit side-tracked there. Honest mistakes and misunderstandings. These are fine, and not a big deal. Tabletop RPGs need to be de-sacralized, especially the apparently olympian task of being a trad GM. It's not a sacred duty, noone will get hurt if you mess up. If people are feeling seriously hurt by a mistake or misunderstanding (not talking about safety stuff covered above here, I'm talking about things like you died from a d12 attack and later we realize the bandit should have rolled a d8 attack), you need to take a step back and acknowledge that this is both a game (no real stakes for you here) and a social gathering, where the same etiquette applies as any other social gathering - not everyone needs to feel bummed out because you lost Bumbly the 3rd level Fighter to an Owlbear crit, even if you do. 

What do we do instead? We script edit. We redo, rewind, discuss what we want to do instead. "I really hated how this fight went, I feel like we were pretty confused about the environment or NPCs intentions and weren't really into it which led to some very mediocre gaming, what if we just re did this now that we've learned from our mistakes?" Good practice includes giving clear informations for PCs to make informed decisions on, remember? So if someone acts on unclear information (ie: it was unclear to them at the moment of taking the decision), it's perfectly fine to just undo that or not go through with it before making sure a clear understanding of what's going on is established. No loss of life, no cause of hurt feelings there.

Now, back to bad behavior: antagonism at the table, ie: lack of trust, acting under the acknowledge or unacknowledged notion that this is a competition against the GM or other players, will only be fixed outside of play. Which means the follow-up question I've been getting to a lot of these situations, being: "redo? but won't the players abuse this to always succeed?" "won't people just say they didn't understand the outcome after committing and failing?" etc. all imply mistrust, misdirection and competition as the norm. If it is, the problem is one of trust, not one of what game is being played, but of who it is played with. Fix it by talking, genuinely, openly, with the other participants. If you feel like this is not feasible or try to and your concerns are not taken seriously, then you're probably not playing with safe/fun people. Play with other people. Play with friends. These should generally not be a problem. If someone is being an ass, you can call them out on that in whatever mode of communication you use outside of the table, as friends, to make the issue understood. If you don't know how to do that, what you need is communication skills coaching which go beyond the premise of this here rant.

 

--- Actually you know what, fuck it, I'm doing a Communication 101, whatcha gonna do about it?

Disclaimer: I'm on the spectrum and have a bundle of personality disorders, so all of this I had to learn from scratch, it may seem even more obvious to a lot of neurotypical folks reading this, and it may seem absurdly complicated to some, take out of it what you will.

When you talk to someone, you should generally be attempting to understand where they're coming from, what their possible acknowledged and unacknowledged biaises are, what they want at the moment and what mode of communication will function depending on their perceived state of mind (you can also just ask people that usually, either checking for tone in text on the Internet, or just asking someone how they're doing if you can't read the cues they display). It's also your job to communicate the same stuff, generally aiming for what is necessary + whatever is welcome to share. That's how you let people know you're open for communication, and also avoid oversharing.

When you're sitting down for a game, you check on people, see how they're doing, what level of energy and focus they have available for the game, and you adjust expectations based on that. "I'm pretty tired tonight so I'd be up for running a one, maybe two hours game but probably won't be the Best Night Ever, that cool?" etc. 

When someone is speaking to you (in a group situation, whoever is holding the metaphorical talking stick should be treated as if they were speaking to you, except you make sure to leave other people space to bounce back and take the talking stick cause they quite likely also have interesting stuff to say), your job is to listen actively. Pay attention to what they're saying, how they're saying it, choice of words, if you can see their face and body, observe those (discreetly so they don't feel like you're just staring at them) and figure out social cues from that. I doubt any guides to these cues is that accurate so it's probably best just to learn as you go over decades of interacting with other humans. In charged situations, you may want to rephrase what someone's said and ask them if you understood what they meant. In tRPGs, they're not really charged situations but for in-fiction critical moments it's also good to use this technique, although I'll remind you again the stakes are pretty low, it'll just make you a run/play better cause you're paying attention.

When you are speaking, being understood in what you mean and how you want to come across is essential, which means you should again be paying attention to dropping the proper cues, choice of words, inflection, tone, rythm, etc. What works with a given audience will shift around, but generally speaking you wanna be clearly heard but not overbearing, leave space for reaction and digestion of information (silence is great for that, hey that doubles as description tip for GMing) and looking at whoever you're speaking to. In a big room you wanna get your voice across to all the way behind whoever is farthest. A a table or in a call, you just need to be loud enough to be heard and articulate, any louder might be detrimental outside of "for effect" stuff. 

Clear communication means using appropriate language and and sentence complexity depending on who you're adressing (you don't quote shakespeare to a six year old, or you do it in a way that won't make them feel like an idiot just because they're younger; especially since they're likely to be smarter than you, six years old are super smart). When running or playing a game, there's various approaches, though I would wager clear keywords are essential, whether you're being terse or verbose, flavor comes long after being understandable. Note that the more people understand each other or are used to communicating with each other, the more non verbal cues or weirder choices in language can start to make sense. Pretty sure I can put a lil' bit of french in some of my english descriptions and not lose Cosmic Orrery, but I would avoid doing that at a table where nobody speaks french or is used to my accent.

Alright, I think I already covered whatever else in a few older articles. I did write about horror and catharsis before, as well as good Player Practice for FKR stuff and what's actually important for them to describe. Cheers.