A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, And Other Gamers III

[jimhenley]

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I could slip, I could fall
In that mean and awful hall
With the other jealous bitches
And the bitter grumbling men

I could sneer, I could glare say that
life is so unfair And the one who
made it, made it `Cuz her breasts
were really big'

Jill Sobule, "Bitter"
Your stereotype of actors is just this, right? Conniving, jealous sharks slashing each

Comments

[mcroft]

So, in the tiny bit of street-theater lessons I got (and it's similar enough to improv that the Artistic Director talked about "Yes, And..."), we did warmup exercises. The Everway (or was it Amberway) Q&A between the players is trust building. Forum-based RPGs with "Green rooms" where everyone can play that they're the actor who is portraying their character and praise what they like and talk about "the show" (the game) as if they enjoy it, even if their characters don't, all fill this need.

So, it's possible to build out-of-continuity trust.

It's also possible to build in-continuity trust, in any number of ways, as long as the participants try to do so. This can range from the standard "you're all hired by a mysterious benefactor" to shipwrecks to "you meet in a bar, when suddenly..."

It seems like what it needs is an effort, every session, by the participants to work on it.

I'm not sure if we need a rule or a mechanism for it so much as a bit of advice to find or try something and do it, ala Robin's Laws.

[jimhenley]

This can range from the standard "you're all hired by a mysterious benefactor" to shipwrecks to "you meet in a bar, when suddenly..."

See, these don't seem like automatic trust-builders to me. They seem like ways of throwing strangers together, with open invitations to everything from "chesting" to pretty immediate PvP. How do YOU see these openings as fostering trust-building?

[mcroft]

Because they lead to shared danger and situations where the party has to act in concert to survive/succeed. All the crappy "team-building" exercises at work are based on small-scale modelling of group efforts bringing success.

They can be trust-busters, if one of the characters is an obvious danger to the others.

I think OOC trust building is less risky, but in-game trust, when it works, is stronger.

[eyebeams]

Thanks a lot for really unpacking a response. I'm going to blog my response in some detail when I have time.