Thanks for the Kudos also.

With that out of the way…

I’m enjoying reading a lot of your stuff. Thanks for posting it. I think my group’s social contract is similar to that of your group’s. We need to do a better job of enforcing the 5 minute rule… But being the same group for 10+ years (off and on), we at least know each personality pretty well.

Do this, please!

Ronin: that’s some seriously annoying passive/aggressive playing there. It sounds like you’re doing the right thing, at least in character. Out of character…I’m curious to see where it goes.

On the post:

This is getting more interesting the further we move into it; I’m seeing all kinds of familiar behaviors here, present and past.

The ‘ignoring the social contract’ bit is just dead on, and puts into 4 words concepts I’ve been struggling with for years.

Thankfully, most of my players and GMs don’t do that; it happens now and again, and it’s always glaring when it does, but we manage to work it out.

I’ve come to realize that I was more right than I thought, a few posts ago on this. My usual GM (Sean) and I talk almost every day; he’s my best friend. We’re well into Performing, I’d think, but when working with everyone else we’re Norming, and we toss around a lot of ideas just between ourselves to try to make the Norming work better. What would this player want, where do you think the campaign should go next?

greywulf, yan, that ‘balance of selfishness’ is an excellent point - everybody wants something, but as it’s a co-operative endeavor, there has to be give and take on that.

One of the things that’s helped my group ‘Norm’ is putting trust in the GM. Sean has a good, often great feel for what each player likes out of the game, as expressed in the characters. There’s a tendency on the parts of some players (and that some changes - I’ve been as guilty of this as others) to be vary concerned that the plot/game/scene won’t advance properly if we don’t make absolutely sure it works right. And that ends up being in the form of nagging the DM about stuff. As he says, ‘Guys, we’ve been gaming together for 10 years or more - trust me, you know it’s going to be a good story!’

Now, sometimes he can’t really accomodate everything, but if it’s within a reasonable penumbra of our social contract, he’ll do his best to work it in.

On that note…I’ve just realized that the contract is somewhat different for each campaign we’ve played…

The thing is the more interaction you have in your group the more multiple person can have their selfish moment at the same time…

This part cannot be provided by the DM the player need to invest themselves in the game in shaping their in-group interaction to create these kind of moment.

One of the previous game where one of the other player and I where playing these two chaotic cousins comes to mind. Each times one was in troubles the other would be include in some way. It gave both of us the impression of having more then our share of the spotlight will providing good story material for the DM. Great character concept.

Incidentally this campaign was one of the longest we’ve played. Their was all kind of strong interaction in this group.

I skipped part of the Norming definition because I didn’t see how it applied to RPGs and you just proved me wrong:

“Teams in this phase may lose their creativity if the norming behaviors become too strong and begin to stifle healthy dissent and the team begins to exhibit groupthink.”

There ya go! I might edit this back in someday if I make a PDF out of the series.

I agree with all your points, especially the All players/DMs are selfish. It’s the willingness delay instant gratification and share the spotlight that differentiate workable selfishness with ‘get out of my game’ selfishness.

Just a few comments:

1. I think it’s possible to over-Norm. I’ve known groups to spend more time working out their “Social Contract” than actually play the darned game; that’s when gaming stops being fun and turns into a committee meeting. These things shouldn’t get in the way of good times. Spend time to reach an agreement, yes, but don’t over analyze and agonize over it.

2. On the flipside, thinking about the game is fun too. It’s good to be receptive to new rules ideas, and to be willing to playtest them. We try not to use our main campaign as a testing ground though; The Burning Plague (or Sunless Citadel) is our stock “tester” dungeon which we use to try out new character classes, spells, rules changes, etc.

3. One of our unwritten rules is that “A Bad DM Decision Must Always Have A Reason”. For example, if (as happened a few weeks ago), one player cries “There’s no way he could hit me from there!”, the correct response from the DM is “But he did. Want to work out how?”. In reality, I made a bad call, but rather than reverse the decision, we play it as is, and work out //how// it happened after the event. Bad calls can sometimes make for good plot twists!

4. I think all players are selfish. Am I wrong to think that? They want fun, they want cool toys for their characters, and they want a satisfying four hours of game time with munchies thrown in. It’s my job as DM to feel their needs, throw them a few surprises and have a great time myself while I’m doing it - because I’m selfish too What’s not good is when one player puts his selfish needs above the other gamer’s selfish needs. If that happens, I’ve been known to have their character fall into a pit trap, get captured or whatever, so they //need// the other players to help them out. That works. Heh.