Actual Play with Newbs and Simmers

And now for something completely different: an actual play report that is short enough to fit in one post, doesn't leave you hanging for months on end, and is about typical play by typical players – except that two of them were newbs.

I was a guest at the Canadian National Gaming Expo at the end of August, given all-access guest passes (which, I found out the hard way, does not let you just walk into the concession stand and take whatever you want) and guest privileges. It was mostly a dreary showing, as the Expo is mostly geared towards Anime and Sci-Fi fans, and most of them would look at my books with great interest, proclaim "THIS IS NOT A GRAPHIC NOVEL" look at me like I had betrayed them, then flee when I tried to explain about RPGs. In order to end the pain I signed up for a game of CyberGeneration – an old favorite of mine – and ran the hell away from my booth to go get some game action.

I ended up at a table with two of the guys who now own the game and two 16 year olds who had never played an RPG before that morning, when they'd played in the demo adventure for Cybergeneration. The old school gamers and I knew each other, though neither of us had realized the other was "in the biz." The two kids, however, were the ones that caught my attention. (Yes, I will call them kids. I am 31, and anyone half my age is a child.)

One of them was a wild-haired anime fan (WHAF) who was hyper into the game. He was imaginative, impulsive, and energetic. At times a bit too energetic, and we often had to keep him from bouncing off the walls, but he managed to bring himself to the game in a way that's rare for someone who plays with jaded gamers to see. The other was WHAF's friend, a very cool guy (VCG) who was involved with the socialization at the table, but obviously didn't give a fig about the game. I first met them while WHAF was pouring over the book, looking at all the options and pictures and saying, "DUDE! I could be an alchemis… no a Wiz… no a TINMAN! What are you again…" while VCG was looking at the ceiling, the other games, his feet, and everything but the book. This interaction would prove the model of all future interactions between the two of them and the game.

I shake hands round, make a character in 60 seconds flat, and we get rolling. It was good "fast in" action, and it got WHAF hyped to the point at which his head almost burst, but made not a dent on the wall of reserve that was VCG. We're framed into our pad in the Combat Zone when the V-Term rings… and rings… and rings… until WHAF, unable to stand the tension, leaps to answer it. Its our boss, we have a job to do, we go to the mall get more info and… I'm sure you all know the drill.

We go outside, and finding that we have no transportation discover (shock) that the first part of the adventure will be us trying to get to the place where we have to be in order to get the information that will lead us to the dingus that is the goal. WHAF forces VCG to help him try to steal a car. They roll, they fail. They roll to see if the avoid getting noticed, they fail. A booster gang that thinks they are super heroes (Batman and Superman, to be specific) comes to teach us a lesson in doing good. Just before we get our asses kicked, I jump in and do a ham-acting job of wailing and moaning and spill out a sob story about being an orphan who was raised by circus acrobats and forced into a life of crime.

Two things happened at this point that I found interesting. The first was that VCG started laughing at my histrionics, I gave the kid tears in his eyes from the amount of the funnay that I was generating. For about 5 minutes he got into what was happening at the table – but only watching, he still wouldn't participate directly.

The second was that while the table roared with laughter WHAF said, "Dude, what does he have to roll for that?" The GM then taught him an important lesson, one that I realized we all learn at some point in the road of Sim-Illusionism-Participationism that so much of game walks down at one point or another: "If you do something the GM thinks is cool, you succeed – dice don't come into it." At least this GM was honest about it. He didn't have me roll only to ignore the results, he straight up bypassed the rolls to let the super-dorks fall for my line.

After that we hare about the city for a time, getting kidnapped from the bus stop, fighting bratty rich girls with massive Solo bodyguards, trying to catch the bus, fleeing from police, and being shot several times. Through it all WHAF jumps on anything and everything that looks interesting. At first he is all over the map, but as the game goes on and there start being consequences for his actions he starts to get over the "new interface control" issues, and starts to focus on the mission. While he's going through that, VCG almost gets engaged with the game at one point – while we're fighting the Solo – only to have his character KOed before he could do anything. From that moment on VCG only watched the game and joked with us around the table – any interest he had in the game as a game died instantly. I guess he felt his failure to step on up, and as that wasn't the part of the game that was interesting to him (the funnay seemed to be the part that was, along with the potential to be cool and heroic, I think) he withdrew.

After many marry misadventures, and the total withdrawal of VCG as a presence in the game, we get to where we're going and meet the new PC, played by a good friend of mine who joined the game just as we were getting into dingus territory, and he gives us the information. Something is hunting our friends through the access corridors of the archeology, and we have to stop it. Then comes the next hour and a half of game with us trying to buy guns.

I, at several points, have my character spazz out and lose his cool and nearly get us arrested. VCG laughs at this, but does not do anything in game even when the cops come. WHAF spontaneously develops a relationship between my character and his that basically says, "You get picked on a lot, but I stand up for you. That's why you follow me as team leader and don't cause trouble if you think it would make me mad." I fully embrace this, he brings me into line, and we go about gun buying. Fresh off his success with making stuff up, WHAF comes up with an idea to overcome our problem with the guns, and promptly learns another "important" lesson.

The plan that WHAF comes up with, mostly as he goes, is thus – he calls home to talk to his mom. He sets up a story, talking really fast and obviously pulling it out of the air, about how his mom used to be an assassin and has a trunk of guns under her bed. The reason he left home is that his mother had a fight with him when she found him looking at the guns and he ran away. So now he calls home to try and get his mom to help out. The GM rolls odds or evens, the kid calls odd, the GM rolls even. He gets the answering machine. This, to me as an experienced player was a pretty obvious "this is not how you are supposed to get your guns, get back on the proper track" sign. WHAF, however, is undeterred and goes into a monologue with the answering machine and the players as his audience. He yells at his mom that he knows she's there, that he knows she's just drunk again ("like always, always when I needed you!"), and begs her to pick up, to help him, to come through for him for once in his life. The kid was nearly in tears by the end, and I was just sitting there struck by the pure story potential of this quest for mother-redemption in the midst of funny spazs and black market guns that you buy at Pizza Hut. (I actually started to wonder what the kid's home life was like, as he was emoting really powerfully and in a way he hadn't previously – the material was coming from somewhere personal. If not his own family, then someone he knows.)

Of course there was no answer from the mom, the GM steered us back to Pizza Hut, and we bought our guns the game approved way. And so WHAF learned his second lesson: when you are a player it is your job to play in the frame the GM gives you, not to make up plot and story on your own. It was a lesson he took to heart. Even though no one said anything negative to him (and my friend and I actually gave him props for his attempt), for the rest of the game he was concerned with doing everything by the book. I think that, as with VCG getting caught trying to be a hero by a gamist failure, WHAF got caught with his hands in the Nar jar and felt the sting when the lid slammed down. Unlike VCG it didn't make him lose interest in the game, but it did make him lose interest in going out on a wire like that.

We then went into the dungeon of the arcology's access vents, fought monsters and dealt with goths, and finally ended the game.

Just to be sure that it doesn't sound like I'm slamming our GM too much – he was a fun GM, and a good guy. He did very well in the traditional simmy model of GMing, and much as I couldn't help but react to some of his decision we certainly did have a lot of fun. In fact, we had a laugh riot so loud that the guys at the table next to us kept looking at us – half of them like they wanted us to shut up, half like they wanted to ditch their game and come join ours. That second part makes it a real tribute to the fun we had, and to our GM – as the people at that table were playing D&D with Gary Gygax. Man, did he look bored. I think he wanted to join our game too.

In conclusion, I found it very interesting to watch the ways in which we train each other on how to play – even without realizing that we are doing it. By the end of the game WHAF was getting pretty good at figuring out what the GM wanted and doing it, because that was the path to success. And while there is nothing wrong with that, I think that he is a new player set firmly on the path towards Illusionist/Participationist play because that is how, in his experience, gaming is supposed to work.

As he left the game he said "I hope I can get my friends to play these games, that was awesome!" At that point VCG rolled his eyes and dragged his buddy away from the table. Unfortunately I don't see WHAF getting a lot of support from his friends – at least not judging by VCG's response. And as I knew of no clubs, open games in stores, or other good venues for play to suggest, I watched WHAF being dragged away from the table with the feeling that he was being dragged away from gaming period.

If we want to get the WHAFs of the world into play, we need to do a better job both of realizing how we are training them to play and of getting them support and venues where they can play. Without clubs and public venues for play, his particular demographic isn't going to get into game to stay. Perhaps, come college age, he'll come back – but it's a shaky bet. And if we want the VCGs of the world to play, we really need to look at our priorities in game. For a minute there he was interested, and then the gamism of the game drove him right back out again. That, luckily, is an easier issue than the social support one, as it can be fixed with good design and conscious GMing.