Its Week 26 of A Game A Day! Halfway there! So, I guess that being as I am at the midway point, its a good time to bring up the two sides of the most basic gaming argument ever: the right way to play, and the wrong way. 7/6/14: * Borderlands (2K) * Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Paizo) 7/7/14: * Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment) 7/8/14: * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) 7/9/14: * Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment) 7/10/14: * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) 7/11/14: * Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment) * ZMR (En Masse Entertainment) 7/12/14: * Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment) SpellTower (STFJ) They say you can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cant please all of the people all of the time. I should put that in a plaque over my monitor; it is pretty much how I feel about gaming with strangers. It took me a long time to get over the notion that theres a right way and a wrong way to play role playing games (and by extension, other games), and I still dont think Im entirely over it. The fact is, different approaches work for different people; there is no one size fits all option in gaming. What I consider smart, tactical thinking might be an insufferable lapse of gaming etiquette for someone else. The best way to avoid such disparities in outlook is to find a group who have similar perspectives on how to play, and stick with them for as long as you can. Of course, that plan looks great on paper, but it rarely works out in actual practice. Its hard enough to find gamers in your area, let alone to find a group that shares your outlook. You often find yourself with a mixed bag of personality types, all of whom sat down at the gaming table for very different reasons. And because theyre usually the only gamers whose proximity and schedules work for you, they might be your only option. So you either give up on gaming, or you work things out with the rest of the group so that everybody--or as close as you can get to everybody--still has a good time. If youre hosting the game, though, theres another option: kicking a difficult player out of the group. Ive been gaming for as long as I can remember, and in that time Ive had to ask four people to leave games I was hosting and not come back. One was cheating at dice rolls. Two more were just behaving anti-socially. The last one had simply invited himself to my weekly game without ever having spoken to me. (Turns out he had told each of us that someone else had told him he could come. He lasted one session.) To be fair, Ive had people stop showing up because of personal issues with me or someone else at the game. Ive had people choose to stop playing because they just werent getting enough out of the game to justify their costs, in terms of personal time and travel. You learn to expect those things to happen, and try to minimize their impact--but usually there are no lasting hard feelings. When you play with pick-up groups (or PUGs, as the kids say), the mixed bag factor is much higher. It is entirely in their nature to be easier to start (or join), and as a result you get players from all over the social spectrum--and all too often, their only real overlap on the Ven diagram is gaming. When theyre not at the table, they have nothing to talk about. They dont hang out. They might look forward to the next game, but its not because of the company. Roleplaying game PUGs almost always include players who come from a disparate array of gaming backgrounds and traditions. As one example, every time Ive played Dungeons & Dragons with a new group, weve had to have a discussion about how we would divide any treasure that we found. Do you hand things out based on who is best suited to use any given magic item? Do you enact a bidding system, wherein the adventurers offer up some of their share of the gold in order to get the magic items they want? Maybe you total up the sale value of everything, then divide the entire haul, gold and magic alike, along strict monetary lines. Or maybe its as simple as keeping a list, with the person at the top of the list getting first pick. Imagine having those conversations every time you sit down at the gaming table. Its no wonder that so many MMORPGs use a need or greed system for allocating loot. Even in games where there is no loot to distribute, there are questions of etiquette and protocol. In many PVP games, for example, there are tactics that are generally frowned upon, even if they arent strictly against the terms of use. While botting (using third-party software to exploit the games program) can get you permanently banned from playing, spawn-camping is more just a case of bad form--something that might make other players yell at you, or even block you, but that the games administrators mostly turn a blind eye to. Why dont they care enough to ban players for camping? Well, for one, camping is usually in the eye of the beholder. What seems like camping to one player might seem like a totally legitimate fighting tactic to everyone else. And proving that it actually happened is hard to do, unless youre recording your game. But the other major factor is a question of definitions. Quick: Explain camping. Do I mean positioning yourself to kill enemy players as they arrive in the game (spawn-camping)? Or do I mean positioning yourself in a defensible location and staying there as long as possible (camping)? Both are very different, and enjoy different levels of acceptance in PVP games. If you have to deal with a player employing either tactic, it might be frustrating enough that you feel like some kind of retribution is called for. And if the administrators wont do something about it, you can always avoid gaming with that player via whatever other options are available to you. More confusing and frustrating is the idea that one players unforgivable conduct is another players legitimate tactic. You might see absolutely nothing wrong with staking a claim on a prime sniping position, for example, and using it to target enemy players. Or maybe its a tactic you only utilize when the conditions are right: only a handful of players on your team (meaning you have no support if you move out in the open), or your loadout is just better suited to long-range support. Just dont expect the players on the other team to see it from your perspective--let alone congratulate you on your sound tactical choices. There really is a lack of consensus on what the spirit of the game really is, even In the same game system, among the same group of players ... maybe even from session to session. And woe betide the new player, who might come into the game with expectations based on previous experiences, only to find that whats fair in Game A, with Community B, might be pretty much universally condemned in Game C by Community D. And if that happens, you either have to change your habits PDQ, or just accept that youll never be accepted.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:18:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015