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Post by Stu Venable on Mar 13, 2012 19:11:35 GMT -8
WHY didn't I think of using marshmallows in my Ghostbusters game!!
We're going to try to talk about this on the next show if Kimi's available (she's not currently signed up for this Friday, but we'll shoehorn her in if we can).
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 13, 2012 19:17:06 GMT -8
I said it in the comment I left on that site, but this is exactly why I prefer my subjective reward mechanics to have fleshed out guidelines. When I GM, I'm always worried that I'll forget to reward a player for doing something awesome, or that I'll give one player a bigger reward than another player despite them doing essentially the same thing. I like it when a system gives a player the tools to say "Hold on there GM. I just did X, which means I'm entitled to a reward."
In the 4e D&D campaign my group played, the GM (not me) gave bonuses to your rolls if you narrated your attempt in a cool way. He'd say things like "That's worth a +3 bonus." or "Whoa! That was awesome! +5!" I noticed three things happening as a result of this.
First, the most vocal player of our group who has no problem calling out people on perceived bullshit would argue (often times jokingly) that his character had done something just as cool as the previous character yet had received a smaller bonus. The GM (who is very non-confrontational) usually gave in to the player's request to be given an equal or larger bonus. The quieter players rarely did this, and so often got smaller bonuses.
Second, the new player (both to our group and to role playing in general) was given rewards equal to the other players despite narrating less when attempting actions. This was a conscious attempt on our part to draw him out of his shell and to encourage him to role play more, but the longer it went on the more a few of the players (myself included) started to resented it. We felt it was unfair that one player was getting a bonus for something as simple as "I duck as I hit him" while the other players needed to narrate something truly spectacular to get an equal bonus.
Third, I had trouble narrating my actions, especially my combat actions because of the type of character I made. While other players were having their characters pull acrobatic stunts in combat and being rewarded for it, my guy was an old man, well over 50. I didn't see him getting all kung-fu in combat, and he mostly just stood back and used radiant-based area effect attacks (or rather I tried to; I missed a LOT). There are only so many ways you can narrate a creative way for a ray of light to shoot out of your hands or staff before you start repeating yourself. I felt I was at a bit of a disadvantage, especially in combat.
Now mind you, all these things were happening in a group consisting of five men. So this sort of thing happens regardless of a player's gender. I'm not saying that this sort of thing won't happen in mixed gender games mind you, just that gender is by no means the only factor to consider here. Also, do I feel that I was being singled out because of gender, age, ethnicity, social class, or something else? Absolutely not. The solution is not to call the GM or the game mechanics racist (I'm black, remember?) but to step up my RPing. Before you start throwing accusations around, you should analyze your own behavior first.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2012 4:32:30 GMT -8
Kimi, if you commented that maybe this all meant she wasn't a good RPer... yeah, that might've crossed a line a bit, and I'm not surprised if it got into a pretty heated discussion after that. If you had said that to me, I'd be pretty pissed, too. To be clear, I wasn't talking to the author directly. I was debating another girl gamer on twitter. The only reason I brought up her RP ability was because of the evidence stated in her post. She said that her group is usually great and includes "feminists". Maybe she is not getting bennies and is assuming it's because she's a girl, when really she needs to improve her RP. If there aren't other situations where there is sexist behavior, that leads me to question the entire premise of the post. Is it possible that her GM is sexist and doesn't realize it? Yep. Is it equally possible that her gender has nothing to do with it? From the information given in her post, yes. It is VERY important that we don't cry wolf with issues of bias and unfairness. If perfectly reasonable people are accused of it for simple human error, that will do more to strain the ties between male and female gamers. *grin* Okay, let me restate. I think you going there might have crossed a line in discussion with strangers. I do NOT, however, think your point was inaccurate. No, I definitely think you were on to something with that point... I just wouldn't have actually said it out loud (er... typed it visibly?) But no, I do actually agree with you. --Pukka Tukka
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Post by Stu Venable on Mar 14, 2012 9:51:28 GMT -8
I have another theory.
Bloggers need topics.
Bloggers regarding women's issues and gaming need topics too, and they have a niche subject that makes it even more difficult to find topics.
So they look for topics where they might not exist.
Bloggers need controversy and social injustice to decry.
This blogger didn't like the results this Paranoia bennie system, so she decided it was sexism at work.
But she didn't want to call her GM sexist, because it would either piss him off or hurt his feelings.
So she decided to blame the mechanic.
It's like a victim-less crime -- it's perpetrator-less social injustice.
So she gets to rail against social injustice and doesn't have to call anyone out as sexist. Win-win.
It's funny that they're now saying it's not the mechanic that's sexist, when that clearly the implication.
When you complain about sexism in a subjective mechanic, there are two possible sources of the sexism: 1) the adjudicator or 2) the mechanic.
If it's not the mechanic, then that only leaves one other source, doesn't it?
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Post by daeglan on Mar 15, 2012 13:01:33 GMT -8
Well no it does not leave 1 source. There are other sources. You are a sucky roleplayer. Or you could just being paranoid.
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Post by Stu Venable on Mar 15, 2012 13:18:35 GMT -8
Which wouldn't do when playing Paranoia. Wouldn't do 't'all.
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Post by rickno7 on Mar 15, 2012 13:29:44 GMT -8
I have another theory. Bloggers need topics. Bloggers regarding women's issues and gaming need topics too, and they have a niche subject that makes it even more difficult to find topics. So they look for topics where they might not exist. Bloggers need controversy and social injustice to decry. That is sort of what I was getting at when I was talking about it making bank for female video game bloggers right now. Bloggers that make money off of blogging actually do get rates depending on their readership, they get softball stories tossed to them like "if you talk about J-lo this week, especially her perfume, we'll send ya 100 bucks to your paypal" If your blogging stats are higher, you might get $150. Even if you make it look like you went to the store and got sprayed with the perfume, as long as you hit their highlighted words and say "it was good" by the end of the blog, you get your money. I do not know if they do this in the RPG table top world, but I know for a fact that video game companies hire Public Relations companies that do this. Offering them 25 bucks to mention that you want to play the multiplayer aspect of a game before you judge it is one example a friend of mine got. Then there are the bloggers that are on contract to do a certain amount of words per day. They need that kind of created controversy as well. If they do not put out the content, then they get a pay cut. This explains a lot of the "blogging about a blog I read" posts you get. A ton of video game blogs these days link to another blog so they get link money, and then BLOG about reading that blog so they get the words per day quota. That is how things get blown out of proportion. Add in the "response to the comments" blog of the controversy, and a blog about the news article now written about the controversy, and the blog about the famous person blogging about the controversy; you suddenly have hundreds of blogs across all corners of your hobby talking about it. Wil Wheaton's blog actually exposes a lot of that corporate control of the blogosphere that people just do not realize goes on.
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Post by Stu Venable on Mar 15, 2012 13:57:48 GMT -8
There's only one company with the money to pay off bloggers.
...
and they don't use bennies ...
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 15, 2012 14:30:36 GMT -8
If she thinks Paranoia is a 'sexist' game system....... I think I'll invite her to a FATAL game. Let's see her reaction when she's asked to roll for vaginal circumference.
Jokes aside - I'm not surprised to see someone having a rant about this or that form of bigotry being inherent in a system. It is rife in modern society. Insert any other flavour of 'ist instead of the word 'sexist' and the essay makes as much sense as it does now. These sorts of arguments are irrational - what she has experienced is most likely an apparency (seeing a pattern where none exists). There is of course, a chance that her GM is simply sexist - or even knowingly poking at her personally. It IS possible for a system to be inherently sexist (like FATAL), but the vast majority are not - including the systems she mentions. In fact - the majority of games specifically do not have any mechanical differences between males and females (and many spell this out explicitly).
I wonder how this person would do playing in certain game settings - like say, victorian era England? Would the setting be inherently bad because it was sexist?
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 15, 2012 15:21:01 GMT -8
My account actually got approved and I posted a comment on that site. I think my response was absolutely reasonable and fair. We'll see if it gets approved or not, since I said that the mechanics were not sexist. Looks like it got through - and as you might expect you got 'un-liked' a few times and received a snide reply that made no sense I'm ready to write it off as a traffic grab Also - on the same blog by a different author - something actually useful in a game: gamingaswomen.com/posts/2012/03/how-to-build-sexism/
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 15, 2012 16:29:21 GMT -8
Looks like it got through - and as you might expect you got 'un-liked' a few times and received a snide reply that made no sense Yeah, I saw that too. Especially the rapid-fire un-likes. I think we have an interesting sociological experiment right there; will I a male, get honest, unbiased feedback on any comments I post to a site aimed at women? Are the other members of that community automatically predisposed to disagree with me because of my gender? Interesting. I put up a response to all the responses to my original comment, but I don't think Im going to get a real discussion. The opponents to my arguments are just going to pick out the parts of my comments that are either poorly worded or support their argument when taken out of context. It's no different than arguing with a very staunch supporter of an opposing political party; you never have a real discussion because you're too busy bringing in outside stuff that's not relevant to the topic in an attempt to undermine your opponent.
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Post by daeglan on Mar 15, 2012 16:59:49 GMT -8
Amazing how sexist the women who complain about sexism are.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 15, 2012 17:12:35 GMT -8
That seems to be the case Hyvemynd - It looks like they have switched from the game being sexist - to the people being sexist (which they previously said was not the case), to society being sexist....
Really? Society is sexist? Last time I checked society was made up of people with all kinds of different attitudes - if most in a society are sexist then the people at their table were sexist and we are now stuck in a loop.
As for people being 'unconciously sexist' - Did I sleep through the great brainwashing of 2011?
I like to think human beings are smart enough to see the hypocrisy inherent in most anti-'ism attitudes......
EDITED: for spellign.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 15, 2012 17:40:21 GMT -8
I haven't read all the discussion yet, and would like to do so before I comment fully, but I have a comment/question about something in the OP... I came to the defense of bennies, because we all love 'em, right? They have only ever improved any game I've run or played in. *raises hand* Actually, I'm not sure I'm ready to say I love bennies. I haven't played many games that use them, but in my limited experience, I think they can make roleplaying competitive in a stressful way instead of fun and relaxed. Of course it depends on the group, but that just means the mechanic is neutral rather than positive, I think. So my question is, what makes bennies so lovable for you? Do you think I'm wrong and they're a positive mechanism, and if so, why?
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 15, 2012 18:38:41 GMT -8
*raises hand* Actually, I'm not sure I'm ready to say I love bennies. *raises hand* I too, don't really like Savage Worlds' Bennies specifically. But I do like other game system's subjective reward mechanics that are similar to Bennies. Like Style Points in Ubiquity. The way I see it, there are pros and cons for both subjective rewards and objective rewards in role playing games. Objective rewards are very clear about what needs to happen for the reward to be given out. The reward trigger is almost always mechanically based, preventing the argument of "Why was his narration cooler than mine?" But they don't really take player differences into account; there is no sliding scale for judging whether or not someone gets a reward. With subjective rewards, each player can be judged on their performance separately based on an individual scale. "The experienced player just did something over the top awesome. Here's a Bennie! But wait. The new player who knows nothing about role playing just talked in character for the first time! Awesome! Here's a Bennie!" On the down side though, (and what the article we're discussing points out) subjective reward mechanics can cause problems, as each player has a slightly different idea of what constitutes as being worthy of a reward, and that these kind of subjective rewards can be influenced by player bias. For me personally, I am in favor of structured subjective reward mechanics. Like the Motivation and Flaw mechanics of Ubiquity. Players choose a Motivation for their character at creation, which has guidelines about how the motivation can be RPed to earn a Style Point. The same thing for Flaws. This allows the player to point to the entry in the rulebook and say "Hey GM. I just did X, which triggers my Motivation/Flaw of Y. Can I have a Style Point for that?" It's much less pressure for me as a GM when the players are keeping track of when and how the are "awesome" rather than relying solely on me to be on the lookout for "awesome" actions. I, as the GM, already have enough to keep track of.
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