Posts Tagged by social contract
| January 24, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
“Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.” In a lot of ways, pop culture has this one right. What you can change about someone else, even with love and persistence, is limited. What does that have to do with roleplaying? Not much, even though we often make the mistake of thinking that we can change anything with persistence, friendly pressure, and a well placed XP penalty. We recently…
| January 10, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Social contracts. It’s hard to pick a topic more fundamental to a good roleplaying experience–or more dry to discuss. This time you can blame Roleplay DNA, particularly their podcast episode 15, Contact Negotiations. I had some “right on,” head nodding moments during the podcast and agreed with almost everything that was brought up. The truest–and most intimidating line–comes from Vern near the end of the podcast, where she mentions that all of the problems addressed in the previous podcasts were social contract problems. When she…
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by John Arcadian |
I sat there at the gaming table, waiting to actually game. We’d started an hour ago, and after all of the usual bullshitting around, looking up youtube videos, and sharing jokes, we’d finally gotten into it. A brief encounter that set us on our path and the Game Master had to look up some info. While we waited, one of the other players started asking advice about leveling up his character. This went on for a few minutes, and then it kept going on, and…
| August 9, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
A while back my group got to the end of a campaign I was running and I was 4 steps beyond GM burnout. Deciding that no one wanted to pick up a new campaign of a couple of months, and deciding that we didn’t want to do a string of one shots, we bandied about many ideas for what we wanted to do. Finally, someone suggested we take turns. I suggested we make use of published adventures or the like until higher levels. Everyone agreed…
| June 9, 2010 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with establishing the ground rules of the game, and of the group itself. This is commonly referred to as the Social Contract, but I prefer the term Game Charter. What? More Rules? Over the years, a gaming group will develop their own internal rules, conventions, and standards of behavior, many of which will be unspoken. Some of…
| June 9, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
We’ve all been there: The game is going gangbusters, but it’s getting late. People have work or school in the morning, and you have to stop soon — even though the adventure isn’t over. Before my baby daughter Lark was in the picture, I was up for gaming until two or three in the morning on Saturday nights. I could sleep in the next day without any worries, so quitting time didn’t really matter. These days? I need my sleep. So what do you do…
| July 13, 2008 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
I forget… are we playing Saving Private Ryan, Doc Savage, or Dragonball Z today? “I want to shoot him with my trusty .45, blowing him back through the door and into the room. In the chaos, I’m going to dive in the room after him, tumble behind the couch, and come up in a ready position.” “I’m going to run up the bamboo, jump off at thirty feet, bounce off the building, and execute a charge on him from that height. His shield bonus shouldn’t…
