social contracts and kibitzing

Every gaming group has a social contract. This is a promise of all the players (including the GM) about what is okay and what isn’t. Some of this contract is constructed through rules and some is just a simple agreement among the people involved. One example is alcohol. We don’t drink while we RPG. We might drink if we’re playing something on the Xbox or a board game that doesn’t require a totally sober brain (or can be fun if you are a little schnokered). Some of this social contract is for the best, and some is just the way we’ve always played.

One of the common social contract elements with many of the old school gaming crowds is the “no kibitzing rule”. It essentially goes something like this: if you aren’t currently on stage with the GM, then you, as a player are not allowed to provide input for the players who are on stage. We had a brief chat about it late last night, looking for deeper understanding into why kibitzing was always such a no-no in game.

Jeremy suggested that it had to do with the Paper Wall that separates the GM and their players. That the GM is controlling the story and the GM should only be getting input from the players they are currently addressing. Speaking out of turn is rude and maybe even cheating. The funny thing is that Angela cited the lack of interactivity as one of the main reasons why she didn’t find Table Top gaming as compelling as PC/Console RPGs.

Last night the setting was that Jeremy, Eric, and Michael had come to the table to further the adventures of their young girls in my GURPS: Eberron setting. Michael didn’t have his character ready and decided to just sit and watch the action. He knew we were starting to play very non-traditionally and he knew that the gaming had become very good recently. He confessed that he was worried that the gaming was good because he wasn’t there. I knew better, but let him work that out for himself.

Eric had Celia in a situation with high risks and high rewards again. Thanks to a mistaken assumption of an organized crime ring, she was playing the role of a ringer. In other words she was working a client in a gambling tent in the middle of a carnival. It was a nice back drop and the setting was pretty vivid and lively. The client was a river pirate and he was being fleeced for everything he owned. He had been winning for a day straight and hadn’t really slept in all that time. It was getting close to the time where the pirate’s luck would suddenly run out and he would be likely to bet his very last possessions, a matched set of pistols. The carnies wanted the pistols badly as they were incredibly valuable, but knew that he wouldn’t bet them if he was in his right mind. So enter Celia with her charms. As an opener Celia bumped into the old pirate and successfully determined that the pistols were on his person with a quick pickpocket skill roll. She didn’t lift them, but she did find them. When the pirate turned to see who had bumped into him her excuse for the mishap was to be that she was drunk, but Michael hesitantly jumped in and offered that she had instead been under the influence of a fortune teller’s “incense” she had encountered earlier. Michael figured this would be more believable since she reeked of the stuff and might make her seem a little more… adventuresome. At one point the pirate needed a little more motivation to continue losing his valuables. Angela was sitting on the couch and totally outside of the game and offered up, “give him a kiss on the cheek for luck”. This totally rolled into the game and made the atmosphere more lively and risky. Later as the game was going very badly for our pirate friend he was sure that he was totally out of funding. Celia leaned closer to him and said, “You still have these”, pointing to his pistols. At this point Jeremy piped up and suggested that the pirate display a revelatory look on his face, stand up, throw back his coat while saying, “Oh yea! You’re right!” while opening fire on the dealer to get back his possessions that still lay on the table. We all laughed at what a great idea that was and then started the process to make it happen. Luckily Celia was quick witted enough to come up out of her chair and kiss the nasty pirate full on the mouth and said something along the lines of “there’s no way you can lose now”. After a successful Sex Appeal roll from Celia, the pirate grinned stupidly at the dealer and thickly murmured, “There’s no way I can lose now” as he threw the weapons into the pile.

So, what I’ve just described was written by everybody at the table, one without even having a character, and a person totally outside the game. In the days of yore this would have been kibitzing beyond anything we had ever known. I know I would have been frustrated with it. My entire story for the evening involved bumping into the bounty hunter they had encountered in Mistmarsh. Not a silly carnival and some hapless river pirate. Instead, by trusting the players, we get a story that was beyond anything I could have come up with on my own with just another player. In no way did the narrative edits and player input damage the plot, quite the opposite.

This morning I search on the Forge and find that the issue kibitzing is something that is actively encouraged typically. The player “on stage” can request no input, but most of the time it’s wide open. When making characters a lot of the indie systems even require kibitzing to make sure that everybody fits in together.

My favorite part of the evening was seeing Michael’s response when I told him that soon they would be helping me run NPCs. Not just NPCs that I had already drawn up and brought to the table either. I’m talking about inserting somebody who I had no plans for and playing them out as if they were co-GMing. That level of exciting around gaming hasn’t been present since 1993 for me. Sure I’ve had interesting sessions and fun stories, but for the most part the great sessions were the exceptions and not the rules. For nearly a month we’ve had the best gaming I’ve had in my life without exception. Who knew that breaking out social contract and kibitzing could be such an effective tool?

I really think that a lot of GMs could benefit from taking a hard look at their group’s social contract. Figure out why you do the things you do in gaming and what you fear would change if you did it differently. I would bet that most of us have been gaming with the same social contract for years if not our entire life. That’s not, by default, a bad thing but it is worth understanding. Think about how many stories your players have had and not been able to tell because it wasn’t part of the flow. Think about how many times you’ve asked them to blue book something that turned out to be way more interesting that anything you had going on that evening. Think about how many times a player has had a mind-blowingly cool back story that never once saw the light of day in your game.