18th Class: Orientation

Having established in the lab what orientation serves in promoting better game play, let's take some time today to discuss issues associated with orientation and why it remains an obscure idea in role-playing.  It is true that some have moved forward and advanced the idea of "session zero."  I recommend that you do some reading on the subject, though as far as I know there is no "official" version.  Most view it as negotiation between the players and the DM, or as a sort of "job interview" to learn of the players and DM are compatible.  There's no real indication that the idea is being treated as an opportunity for orientation as described in the lab.

So why has orientation not become a common part of role-playing.  There are a number of reasons, most of which brings us back to the subject of preparedness.  If we research into the original writings and descriptions of game play going back the last four decades, we can see quite clearly that explaining to people "how to play the game" has lacked a distinct methodology.  It was seen early on that most were learning the game through mentorship, in that participants would come to the game as players, watch the DM for a time, then feel confident enough to try their hand at DMing.  All the early books of D&D, prior to the advanced set, gave less than 500 words to any sort of orientation, and usually much less.  Gary Gygax's DMs Guide gave just two and a quarter pages, most of which is flavor text and distinctly lacking in concrete ideals that DMs might share with their players.  No singular book of significant importance attempting to explain how to play any role-playing game appears until the 2000s, with no book of that type offering any fundamental principles on exactly how to introduce new players to the game in a manner that brings them significantly up to speed with regards to their knowledge and ability to play.  Most texts effect a reassurance or promote confidence, without stipulating specific step-by-step instructions.  This remains true to this day.

The matter is left entirely up to individual DMs, who remain mixed on just what should be covered, or ought to be discussed, before actual game play begins.  Many DMs feel it is a waste of time, that everything can be learned in progress, with a fixed belief that good players pick it up quickly whereas bad players are not especially wanted and that it is better if they find some other thing to do.  As with any comparable activity, the result is that many join the game but depart soon after, or cease playing once their experience with role-playing peaks, so that they willingly abandon the activity for something else, usually after the convenience of the activity (with school or a joined community) falls off.  Most participants usually play, at most, two or three years, never fully comprehending role-playing's potential and viewing the activity as a casual something they did in their youth.  There's no fault in this, as people always find something to do, but we should wonder how temporary participants might have continued to play if they'd had a better understanding of the game's potential.

With a lack of clear guidelines on how to provide a useful orientation, it is very difficult to estimate how much orientation is necessary.  Given the immense amount of detail available, plus inconsistent and hard to define playing styles, the idea of a structured orientation seems beyond the ordinary DM, who must effectively design their own orientation scheme entirely from scratch.  This further promotes the "in progress" ideal, as it seems the only alternative is to spend several sessions doing nothing but talking about how the game would work in theory before actually playing.  Most, therefore, compensate by treating early runnings as a primer, subsidizing play by ensuring no one dies, that mistakes don't count or that do overs are fair, all recognizing that holding players to strict account to a game they don't ~ and can't ~ fully understand as yet isn't actually fair.

Planning an orientation, then, without premises or foundations, is an insurmountable obstacle.  The number of details quickly addressed in the lab gives just a taste of what's actually involved ~ or could be involved ~ if we were to make a plan in any definitive or conclusive way.  In many ways, our own full understanding of what a DM does, or ought to do, along with a full comprehension of rules and game play, simply isn't there.  We feel distinctly at a loss, and overwhelmed, at the idea of trying to address a complete orientation on a subject when we ourselves never received such an orientation.  And we worry that things we would say in such an orientation would be later held against us, because we're not fully sure of these things from the start.

What we need is a set of resources telling us how to go about the process point-by-point, and a strong educational format that we can follow, so that we feel assured that the orientation we give is something that works in our favor as DMs and not something we'll regret later.  Institutionally, however, this would require that these resources had our best interests in mind and that they were designed specifically to increase our understanding of the role-playing game we had chosen.  Unfortunately, no such institutional framework exists.  The need for an orientation is barely, at this time, even acknowledged (with clumsy steps being made by the "session zero" concept).  Much of the role-playing community and "official" structure is compromised by a spectacular fragmentation of RPGs in general, with most major genres and forms all experiencing several iterations that further serve to muddy what standards might have been imposed forty years ago.  As a result, we have no material resources for readying players for our campaigns, nor any expectation of a systemic educational formula to come from any reputable source.  On this count we are in the dark and we expect to remain in the dark.

Therefore, DMs do what they can.  To some extent we practice at introducing the players to the game by considering for ourselves what we want to say with the start of each game session.  We usually have a few things we want to specifically identify, such as adjustments in the rules or our expressed desire that the players follow a certain decorum when playing (less jokes, paying more attention, maintaining their character sheets more readably, etcetera).  Without the motivation for the creation of a more involved orientation, we specifically practice how to get along without one ~ thereby establishing a mental framework that one isn't needed, because it has never been applied.  This tautology, however reasonable it sounds, conveniently dispenses with any notion of improving on an awkward scattering of asked for behaviours and expectations without ever making it clear to the players which ones really matter or which need addressing more than once.  As a result, many games are endlessly bogged down with disagreement, discontent, players who don't show up, DMs who display frustration and apparently unreasonable demands or campaigns that cannot sustain themselves for more than a session or two.  Without communication, the motivation to dig in and commit cannot be expected from people who don't know what's expected or what they're doing.

This means that the opportunity to rehearse the process of game play never materializes.  Examples of smooth coordination between the players don't occur in the short time they have together before the campaign fizzles out, or they occur spontaneously but cannot be recreated at will.  This in turn has created a belief in many RPG participants that campaigns "don't work," usually ascribing lack of time or personalities as the culprits, pushing for game adventures that can be played in a single night, obfuscating any need for commitment or, indeed, for meaningful orientation.  And because this works in practice, it sustains itself as an ideal among many participants, who then never see the potential of RPGs in their full flower.

So what can we do?  To begin with, acknowledge the importance of orientations in every human activity, including RPGs.  We train people to do jobs, to learn how to ski or kayak, to save themselves or victims in times of a medical crisis, to ready themselves for vacations, weddings or funerals, including how to write a will, how to renovate your house, how to life hack your day-to-day, etcetera, because education bestows knowledge and knowledge is power over the complex things of life that we want to do or overcome.  We might ultimately learn to ski on our own, but a morning of orientation saves us a great deal of time and unpleasantness by pointing out the few simple things that everyone learns early on when they first encounter skiing.  That is all that orientation is: an outline of the things of any activity that are easiest to learn and can be explained in just a few sentences, to get us on our way to more complex experiences.

We can research orientations in other activities and transcribe some of the points to our own endeavors.  We can use our experience at an orientation for a job or some other activity as a guideline to estimate how much effort we want to put towards that process.  We can write a list of specific things we wish every player understood clearly about our game worlds.

Having that, we can then search for consistencies across thousands of game worlds to build a guidebook that would enable other DMs to create working orientations that would suit their games specifically.  Perhaps the focus of the "session zero" concept can be oriented away from character building and towards character play and participation ... but I'm not seeing that focus changing at this time.

Finally, we can practice in our minds a better ideal of what it means to introduce players to our game, as discussed in the lab.  And we can rehearse the process of giving orientations over and over, until they become easy to implement and even enjoyable for the player, as they learn precisely what to expect from the campaign and their place in it.

I've played in this game

RPG 201, Lab #1 ~ Orientation

Welcome to the first lab of the course.  Here we'll be talking about the orientation process directly as it relates to game play, both for the players and for the DM.  Note that much of what we'll cover does not just refer to players who are new to role-playing games.  We are also talking about players who have not played this particular system or genre.  We are also talking about players who are starting in a new campaign under a new DM, even if they have played the same game with other DMs.  Every new table and every new system is an orientation process, though it is true many players act differently.

Let's start with the players.  Imagine if you will, that you're all new players sitting down to a game table for the first time.  As you settle in, you look around at the others: you listen, you make a note of things that are familiar or unfamiliar ... and you watch for things that will both reassure you and give you cause for reservation.  This is easier if these are friends, or you have one or two friends present; but you may notice your one friend is acting differently with these strangers.  Whatever your confidence level, you recognize that you don't fit in, not yet; and to compensate, you will either act extrovertly or introvertly.  You will either speak a lot to try to control or influence the others to let you into their circle; or you will act guarded and reserved, protecting yourself until you are made to feel welcome.

There are things influencing your actions.  If you are very familiar with the game, or with role-playing in general; if you have played for a long time; if you've DMed; you'll feel more confident that anything you have to say will be treated with respect and you're liable to say more.  If the others seem friendly or more nervous about you than you are of them, or you're older, say, or otherwise there are reasons to think you're their match materially or intellectually, you're liable to feel a greater degree of control.  If your passion for the activity is very great, if you're emotionally invested or very excited, you may not even notice your level of confidence and comfort, even with total strangers.  These are all things that have been noticed as psychologists have studied, for example gamblers, who are often in situations with strangers or participating in uncertain games of chance.

Your sense of confidence or control depends much on your ability to self-talk yourself in and out of situations, your ability to process large amounts of information and how comfortable you are made to feel by persons in the environment.  Many have had bad experiences with other players who were unfriendly, even abusive, who used their positions as "the old guard" to lord it over the noobs and such; and many have had good experiences, where you were made to feel a part of what was going on as soon as the dice were rolled.  Obviously, we want to create the latter situation as a DM ~ but as players, much of your experience in orienting yourself to a new game depends on your personality, your social skills and your sheer intention to play as you insist.

This doesn't always work out.  Sometimes, players are so insistent that they step into a new environment and immediately set out to control the game's agenda from top to bottom.  They dictate what they want, they ask questions that push the boundaries of the written rules, they speak of their vision for the game being played and they challenge the DM and the other players with their in-your-face attitude.  They want to skip the orientation process, move straight to the place where they are redesigning the campaign to make it suit their needs and they are often oblivious that this is what they're doing.  Most likely, due to their confidence, they've been allowed to control other game spaces; they don't know how to insert themselves into a game any other way.

It may be comprehensible but it is bad behaviour.  An existing game or one that the DM has conceived from scratch deserves to have an orientation period.  The player needs to recognize that before they can change what's on the table, they need to observe it and see how it works.  Orientation means that the player is bound to orient themselves to the situation ~ not the reverse.

The DM runs a game with a vision.  It is not necessarily the right vision; it may not be a defensible vision; but for the new player, it is the vision being played.  Until the player is able to see the vision as the DM sees it, and thus speak to the DM about that vision on the DM's level, orientation isn't the time for adjusting that vision.  But we can talk about this more, later.

Very well, how do we, as DMs, enable new players to see that vision?  We're asking here that players assimilate a lot of information and that they familiarize themselves with all the aspects of the game environment: how characters are created, what characters can do, how combat is resolves, how the DM will tend to present NPCs, what sort of stories will be told, how the setting is structured and how it functions as a world ... and ultimately how our behaviour as players affects that world.  This is only the beginning.  When explaining all of this to the player, remember that there's a real limit to how much a player will learn before resisting.  Only a small part of that resistance is the players' brainpower; the rest describes the players' decision to balk at some point because the process is confusing, apparently purposeless or is coming too fast.  We are responsible for more than merely orienting the player; we need to do so in bite-sized chunks that make the player want to continue learning more.

Dedication is encouraged by making the player feel welcome and comfortable in the group once they're introduced.  Once they've joined, resist the urge to rush into the game ~ give time for the new player to interact with your group BEFORE you start playing.  There's no need to rush!  The interaction between the group will be more positive in the long run if everyone is comfortable talking to one another as people.  A half hour of pleasant chatter can save hours of conflict and bad feelings later on.  But don't have new players introduce themselves and don't put them on the spot with questions.  Let the conversation develop organically; if the new player feels control and confidence, they'll say a lot and your old players will listen.  If the new player lacks confidence, the player will listen to the conversation and glean from that.  Exhaustive communication full of content isn't the goal ~ comfort is the goal.

While you as DM may feel a compulsion to get the game started "on time," you should realize that evaluation between humans is a necessity ~ and will go on while you're trying to start your game, spoiling focus and undermining this opportunity.  New players are a disruption; that can't be glossed over by keeping everyone busy.  There's a lot for the new player to get through, so take your foot off the gas and make time.

Ensure that you and your players are generous with the new player; have dice you can lend them if need be, writing implements, snacks, drinks, whatever would be usual for the group.  No one should be sitting watching others eat and drink because they forgot to bring food themselves.  Feel free to encourage them to bring their own the next running and say clearly, "We all share," so they know that whatever they bring they may need to share themselves.  If they are consistently lacking in the future, this will help pressure them to change their ways; or definitely expose them as the sort you don't want at your campaign games.  Finally, if you have players that are very personal about their dice, and don't like to share, have a set of communal dice that everyone can use if game equipment is forgotten.

It's your responsibility as DM to give them a complete understanding of what you'll expect from the new player regarding their responses during game play and their responsibilities.  If you want them to have their actions ready before they're called on, make sure they know it, they understand it and that you'll berate them for failing to live up to that expectation.  Say it gently and kindly ~ because later, in the heat of the game, you'll say it with great frustration and that will be worse.

Explain house rules and any rules that would normally be viewed as sketchy or fuzzy, particularly rules that are widely known for being played in hundreds of ways, such as alignment, spell use, infravision, perception, trap searching and so on ~ effectively, anything that there exists a flame war online about.  This clarity will help reduce conflict at your game table, as your particular version of "the way" your game is played at this table is made clear.  Once again, the matter can be addressed when the player is experienced; for now, they need to learn how things here are done.

If players have full knowledge about how your game works, they'll know exactly what contributions they're making ~ and that will give them a feeling of significance, of being "in the know" and therefore less of an outsider.  The new player, like the old players, need to feel that they're valued, that their actions have value, that they have a role and a place in the game.  Giving them the power to make informed decisions enables them to put their personal strengths and character powers to good use, creating a sense of appreciation from the other players early on.  Once the new player becomes more relaxed, assured and familiar with your game, they will make fewer mistakes and gain an increasing level of commitment and immersion to your game.

Outline the game's policies and procedures outside of play: when breaks are taken, when eating and drinking is allowed, how much silliness or horseplay is appreciated, specifically explaining where the lines are.  This is an uncomfortable subject and many DMs will not want to address these things ~ but with new players it should be seen as necessary, as this will reduce much drama later on.  The same goes for player absences from sessions: how do you handle them, what is too many, how absences should be communicated ahead of time out of respect, how much notice that you and the players deserve if someone isn't going to show up.  What is your policy on repeated absences?  Do you have one?  For all these things, you need to consider that not every new player will be a good fit for your campaign.  You need to establish your position ahead of time so that you can prepare for the conversation later on where you have to boot them.

As unpleasant as this is, have a checklist for ALL the orientation you think you need to give for new players joining your game.  Some have transformed this procedure into a "session zero" concept, but really it's just a reflection of practices in business or in education, where your first day of work or your first day of class consists of an orientation program or lecture.  No one likes it.  It works.  It establishes a sense of investment: we took the time to train you, we took the time to bring you on board, we took the time to explain all the crash landings you might make in the future.  You invested the time to let us teach you these things.  Your investment and our investment helps create a sense of social responsibility between us.  This further helps you consider your attendance, your behaviour, your respect of other people, as something that matters.  Really, you can read piles and piles of research on the subject.

Knowing what to communicate, and doing so from a list, won't guarantee that the player will understand or hear it, but the player won't be able to say, "No one told me."  Make notes on your orientation list for things that were questioned and with a later session you'll know to repeat those things specifically for further clarity.  Reminding the player on fuzzy subjects gets ahead of the frustration and defensiveness from players who try to bluff their way through things they don't understand.  You should know from experience as a DM that many things about your game are bound to be misunderstood or misinterpreted for a long time ~ even by your old players, who will also benefit from these orientations as fuzzy elements of play are cleared up.  Never rely on saying anything once and expecting the players will understand it perfectly.

Encourage the other players to join in with the orientation.  This should not be a dictated line of points, but a friendly conversation all around.  Much of the orientation can be made while a new player rolls up their character, chooses their equipment and asks about the campaign.  NEVER, ever, ever, introduce a new player with a pre-made character sheet just so you can get the game started off the mark like a sprinter in a race.  Very few players will "get it" from this much context, many will soon quit your game and most that stay will make endless mistakes because they simply don't know how things are supposed to work.  This will frustrate other players and you, for nothing but the sake of an hour that could have been spent specifically bringing the new player up to speed.

Physically put your new player next to one of your more gregarious old players, one who will be helpful through the game.  Let the gregarious player mentor the new player, answering questions quietly, pointing out details on the character sheet the new player may have missed, helping with advice about equipment and so on.  Encourage the new player not to get fancy about their choices of skill, spell or weapon; opportunities can be made later to upgrade either.  Simple works best for now, it will be one less complexity to worry about.  Depending on the player's experience, you may want to dictate these things, or even the player's class and role, explaining that this too can be adjusted after several sessions.  It depends on what you and the player feel you can handle.  New players will often be grateful if they are asked to make fewer decisions.

If you are building good parties from the start, you should find one or two players who will graciously carry out the role of mentoring the others.  As a DM, you can then share this responsibility; you can relieve your burden by assigning players to help each other and by specifying the positions of the players around the table, so that you can seat players who are having trouble nearby and leave contented, confident players in the furthest chairs.  Don't let the best players seize the seats next to you; they don't need your help.  They're only seeking those places so they can block other less active players from participating, by seizing your full immediate attention as much as possible.

Every player, new or old, should always be encouraged to ask questions and expect answers.  Long answers can be addressed briefly and discussed at length in post-session discussions, which can sometimes go on for hours if players don't have to rush away.  A good campaign needs plenty of off-game discussions; no campaign can be healthy if players arrive minutes before the session starts, leave minutes after it stops and casual dialogue never has a chance to bloom.  If time is a factor, then schedule chatter sessions outside the game environment from time to time, at the bar or a restaurant, to let players divest themselves of thoughts, reservations, issues or any other matter relating to the game.

Explaining the game up front will save time.  If you don't take that time now to clear up matters, you'll still be orienting your players on those same matters ages into the future.  The more times you half-explain things, the more inconsistent your explanations will seem and the less valuable will be your time spent.  Lazy instruction will only end in your thinking somewhere down the line, "How many times do I have to explain this?"  You will only a few times, if you explain it patiently and not on the fly.

Most definitely, include in your orientation the overall vision of the game you'll be running.  For now we can say that "vision" is something that transmutes through your game much like the reconstruction a human experiences following a series of ruptures; it is the sense of how the game should be played from the viewpoint of someone who has made mistakes and now realizes their personal responsibility in making the game work.  Visions require investment and a big picture grasp of hundreds of elements forming together into a whole.  New players, even after orientation, will see only a small splinter of that whole.

Finally, remember that orientation is not a one-time event, but a continuous process.  Even long-time players need to brush up on some game elements that haven't been touched on for a long time, as does any DM who plays a very wide game.  The complaint about DMs who must look up the rules all the time is only valid with regards to rules that are used every session.  Rules or parts of the campaign that have remained unused for months or even years always deserve a fresh look.  The players are not the only ones who need continuous orientation.  DMs are responsible for orienting themselves as well.

13th Class: Game Consensus

Today we want to look at how some of the material we've been discussing has a practical application.  To begin a brief overview, we began with the question, what parts of the game are absolutely fundamental, regardless of the participants and their impact on the material?  We then discussed the methods by which we prepare ourselves for playing the game, employing research, estimation and planning, resources and education, then practice and rehearsal.

Afterwards, we examined the process by which an uninformed player of the game becomes competent, then how a competent player becomes an expert ~ and linked to that, an examination between subjective and objective evidence and its influence on our thinking processes.  We then discussed methods of determining the values of subjective evidence, as a means of pursuing objectivity where none exists, through conventions, preparations and mentorship.  Our next three classes dealt with popular theories of RPGs: storytelling, heroism and episodic game-play.  Then with our last class, we pursued the fundamentals of meaning-making, in which we spoke about the meanings we make for ourselves, that serve as a stand-in for knowledge, when making decisions about presenting role-playing games.

Our intention today is to show how preparedness readies us to be mentors, through our understanding of the principles, language and distinctions of RPGs, that in turn places novices on a strong footing to apprehend the game and make themselves capable of the social interactions that take place at the game table.  This is not only a matter of creating new gamemasters, but also through improving the comprehension of the game players themselves, enabling them to know more thoroughly the game they are playing, through the eyes of the person running the game.

This is all important.  All the participants, and not just the Dungeon Master, need to understand every facet of what is happening, all the time ~ just as the participants of any recreational joint activity are given full and complete information about all the facets of any particular game, sport or recreation.  We inform others interested in fishing where the fish are, what the rules surrounding fishing are, what lures and available means of fishing exist and we do so cheerfully and without reservation.  Likewise with participation in a team sport, or when we sit to play a board game.  Socially we consider the social process of meaning-making includes full disclosure where the rules and opportunties are concerned ~ we only conceal our individual strategies and tactics.

As individuals, it falls upon us to explain concepts and limits to other players freely.  We do so because the activity is communal and friendly.  We do so because fellow informed players who learn the game we play waste less of our time asking questions, making confused and erroneous choices, failing to take part in discussions because they don't really understand what's going on and ultimately choosing not to take part again, either because they don't "get it," or because they are ashamed to admit they need help.

It does nothing for us not to explain how specific tools, weapons or spells work.  We have nothing to gain by insisting that players teach themselves, to "prove" themselves worthy of our games, as though the goal is to demonstrate commitment to an ideology rather than active participation.  It does nothing for the DM to reserve knowledge about rules from the players, as an "edge" that gives the DM more power to pervert the game in the DM's favor, as though knowing what the rules are exists as a challenge to the DM's power, rather than a means of facilitating easier and better game-play.  A lack of clarity among players and DM is tiresome and destructive to game play.  A social agreement upon the rules ~ all the rules, all the time ~ creates momentum, trust, unified goals and streamlined play.

Where possible, we should take the time explain the terminology used throughout the game, suspending the game as necessary.  If need be, we can invest some time explaining the relationship between the terminology and how the players view the matter being represented - for example, what a "hit point" is in the game we're running, and what it represents.  We need to obtain a consensus on the use of each skill used by the players, what it does, how it works in this campaign, what limits it has ... and then expand that practice to all the aspects of the game.

In some sense, this is like the "session zero" that is postulated by some participants ~ but we really need to go further.  Role-playing games change progressively as more skills, powers and levels of status become available to the players, so orientation needs to be a constant part of the game process.

Where a consensus cannot be reached; where discord repeatedly disrupts the game over a point of the rules or a point of character building, or with role-play, then discard that rule ... disallow that means of character building ... and reduce the use of role-play.  We cannot stress this enough.  Meaning-making demands social connectivity and relative thought processes, in order to produce a symbiotic thinking apparatus that enables all the participants to share the experience.  If discord keeps popping up, it is a system error.  The system is driving the participants apart.  The answer is to change the system ~ either replacing it with something better or removing it's necessity.  Organizing thinking among the participants improves the subjective experience for all, because it is the same subjective experience.

By investing comparatively little time in making all the participants aware of the game's precepts, we reduce opportunities for gamesmanship.  Gamesmen take advantage of conflict, distraction and antagonism to "break the flow" of the activity.  "Flow" is the mental state of operation in which a single person, or group of people, are fully immersed in an activity to the point where they are fully absorbed.  A common experience where flow occurs is when one's sense of space and time is lost.  Hours go by without consciously experienced as one does when participating in activities that are dull, repetitive or taxing.

Breaking flow is the act of disrupting immersion by tactics such as asking questions that have already been answered, demanding approval or attention, making comments or refences to material that are out of context, dragging out a decision that needs making, adding unnecessary noise, giving purposeless or directly destructive advice, speaking out of turn and so on ... all elements which are advantaged by unclear semantics in the rules, practices that spark conflicts and multiple interpretations of the same game element.

When explaining the rules and precepts of a role-playing game to the participants, the least likely person to appreciate the effort will most likely be the player who feels they "already know the answer" ~ which precludes the certainty of consensus ~ or who feels that the practice is a "waste of time."  This last clearly indicates that one participant at least is not seeking the social aspect of game play, but is instead already angling for advantage against the others.  The most troublesome players will most likely resent any methodology, most of all one that brings the less prepared players up to speed on aspects such as character abilities, options and ways to strengthen their character's effectiveness in play.

In particular, many DMs will resist enhancement of their own players on these lines, being themselves anxious to advantage their own understanding of the rules while undermining the understanding of their players.  Such DMs will resist any attempt to gain knowledge from the player's perspective.  DMs of this type should be recognized early and avoided.

Very well.  With our next class, we'll be discussing the group dynamics of play, covering group strategies, learning through game play and the manner in which brighter more experienced players can be encouraged to "apprentice" players of lesser calibre.

Consensus isn't easy.