Violation and Collaboration

Violation.

In her work "A Director Prepares" Anne Bogart (2003) has this to say about what it means to direct theater:

 

... I  recognized that night the necessary cruelty of decision. 

The decisive act of setting an object at a precise angle on the stage, or an actor’s hand gesture, seemed to me almost an act of violation. And I found this upsetting. And yet, deep down, I knew that this violent act is a necessary condition for all artists.

Art is violent. To be decisive is violent. (pp. 44-45)

 

Whether or not one agrees that table top roleplaying games are art (or that games of any kind are art) it is clearly an act of creation. It requires decisions on the part of its designers and typically its participants. For Bogart, the primary violation here is of volition and the will. Actors go from having the full space of creativity in their performance to being restricted as they are told to "keep it", turning what was a free experience into a much tighter repetition and performance. If we agree with Anne Bogart there will often be such be violations stemming from our decisions in play.

Some examples from different cultures of play:

1. During a group's exploration of Caverns of Thracia they reach a room with a rope bridge. One of their number shines their light at a group of bats. The others are constrained by the adjudication of the Referee, the description in the module and the choice of their fellow player. Their will and ability to act suddenly shrinks as a consequence of the challenge presented to them.
2. A half-dozen friends are playing investigators in Masks of Nyarlathotep. During play one of their characters is pushed to the brink and loses their sanity under that systems ideals. The player's set of choices are constrained in service of the goal of producing the deferred experience of horror.
3. While playing the larp Eclipse a player is given the decision about whether or not to share the work they have completed. They choose not to, following their characters instincts. This means that humanity survives. For players who might have chosen otherwise the aggregate decision restricts their individual choice, making them feel the same sense of fatalism their characters might.
4.  While playing a game of Brindlewood Bay a player makes a move and is asked which of three options they want to occur. However they decide the other players must adhere to that fiction as the emergent plot advances move by move towards its inevitable conclusion where the mystery will be revealed.
5.  During a dungeon crawl through The Hole In The Oak the players is presented with a sleeping ogre positioned between them and the door. When they describe their action the referee responds with their judgement of how the world reacts to their diegetic choices. Once the decision is made, consequences must follow.
6.  A player in a session partway through Waterdeep: Dragon Heist takes the spotlight. He's playing a rogue and the DM gives him a cool moment of pick-pocketing the guard of a jail, playing into his character fantasy. The expectation at the table and the weight of the rules all heavily favor the success of the characters in these attempts and this too constrains the DM.

One one is aligned with these desires they do not experience them as violations. They become harmonious constraints. Indeed much of different play cultures are defined in my mind by what decisions are acceptable and which are not. Threatening a player's character with death without prior conversation is experienced as a greater violation in Neo-trad or Trad games than in OSR games but it is fundamentally the same fictional constraint. 

The fundamental ideas here are two-fold. First, playing games requires a willingness to be constrained. In a social setting sometimes those constraints will come from other people as well as the game and the fictional world. We need to be prepared for that. Second, constraints are useful. Making those violations harmonious or productive is part of the work that makes play possible. As Bogart puts it "it is the restrictions...that allows for the possibility of freedom." (pp. 55) but also that she works "in a group...who have learned to disagree with one another with generosity" (pp. 59). 

Here we turn towards our second act. 

Collaboration.

 I have in the past few months worked on several projects. I want to contrast the experience and outcomes of working on three of them. 

First, I worked on a decently sized dungeon where each individual took one to three rooms and, working to a theme, wrote a room description. The map and encounter table were provided to us and we worked (in theory) within that spectrum. This was a soft restriction as there was no following edit pass. It was a smooth and harmonious experience. There was however, no alignment across the group in expectations. There was the gentlest of creative visions. Altogether, a good collaboration to be a part of.

But the product was no better than the sum of its parts. It lacked the interconnections and signposting and consistent internal logic that I at least look for in a dungeon. It was excellent practice but as a product to play those gaps could be felt.


Second, I worked on a very large dungeon with a decent number of people. Each of us was given an overall concept to work within and asked to complete a full floor. Then the overall director on the project began the hard work of knitting it together in their personal style. This was a far less harmonious process. It was by no means easy and without friction. Compared to the first project the sense of violation and constraint was much higher. We were aiming for more cohesion which meant compromise. At the end of the day there was one voice, one director, who guided our hands. 

I cannot yet say how well this worked. I am going to run the dungeon quite soon but without experience I cannot really compare it. But it does feel like it has more of that internal complexity and beauty I like in a scenario. 


Lastly, I worked alone on EV. Even here I was in collaboration of a sort. I was constrained by the ruleset I was working in and I got input from several sources. But even more than All the Way Down, there was a dominant creative vision. Mine. At the same time, it was in conflict. The version of me that developed the idea, the version of me that playtested it, or edited it. These momentary iterations of myself ended up being in conflict. It is inevitably true that the last instance's creative vision can override all others. 

I have run EV three times. It is a success for me. I know it has been run two other times and worked for those others. My lesson here is not that collaboration in games is bad. It is that decisiveness is required in art. This will be a violation of someone's vision. Whatever your position you need to be ready for it and indeed, to embrace it.

As always, a bit of game with your theory:

The Counter-Cyclics

Everyone in life has a understanding, somewhere within them, that we are being pulled down towards decay and finally, death. Whether you perceive it as The Adversary, the black dog of entropy, or the hole, it seems to be a condition all living things struggle under. Even the Elves, beautiful and eternal, must someday pass to the west.

How terrible then to meet those for whom all is ascent towards perfection. 

A Counter-Cyclic Explorer in a Realm Fantastic

It descended into our world to see how those afflicted with entropy lived. We perceive it as a luminous being, a version of ourselves alight with beauty and grace (they say those without sight still perceive it but surrounded by music or shifting patterns of heat or pressure, whatever their senses are). It cannot be dragged into death, its flesh utterly inviolate to decay and harm. It has little interest in us but its presence is anathema to the world, whose decay only intensifies in its presence.

# Appearing: 1

AC: 9 (but see Towards Perfection)

Move Rate: 9

HD: 7+1 (but see Towards Perfection)

Attacks: 1 x touch (heal 2d6, then take 4d8)

Anathematic Aura: The world revolts at its presence, amplifying the effects of entropy in the area. Each round exposed to the aura within 30' of a Counter-Cyclic all mortal beings must save versus spell or age 1d10 years. Likewise all objects subject to decay will begin to rust or rot unless they pass an appropriate magic item save.

Towards Perfection: A Counter-Cyclic is not harmed by any weapons. Instead they arrive with half their hit points and must be healed to full health at which point they will transcend the realm of base existence and disappear.

 

or alternatively

A Counter-Cyclic Intruder in a Realm of Violence

It leaked into our world where the Black Ocean was sealed away or inverted by unnatural methods. Called to small pockets of the world without decay it grew curious and its spindly luminous arms, like the wavering fronds of an anemone crept outward, drawing it to see the world of rot it found itself in.

Untrained in Violence. Unskilled in mortal affairs. 
Evasion: -4, as it never attempts to dodge.
Shooting: N/A
Melee: 2d8, counts as four combatants. Always replaces an injury with a scar of luminous painful skin, undergoing rejection by the body. 

Harm: 
1-: It ascends to the next stage of its being, returning to the place from whence it came.
2-7: -2 Injuries and soothed, melee attacks with 1d10 instead of 2d8 on its next attempt.
8-24: -1 Injury as its body takes entropy and energy in and spins it towards perfection.
25+: No effect. 

All such Intruders arrive in our realm with 8 Injuries.