Think about your favorite game. Or system of games, whatever word you think expresses the concept.
Maybe that's D&D 5e. Maybe that's some Fate stuff. Maybe that's Carcassone. It's probably something pbta, but maybe it's Stranger Gravity by Jay Treat. Maybe it's something osr.
Now ask yourself: How is power and leadership handled in this game? Is one person in charge, or distributed? Are there specific roles that the game gives out? How are these enforced?
Pause for a second. Think about if that affects your enjoyment.
Now, think about how your workplace distributes power and leadership.
how do you feel about the differences?
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MY had a "leader" role at first, explicitly, then that was altered to indicate that people could indicate leadership in their characters, but the system wasn't going to codify it.
ReplyDeleteWorkplace hierarchies seem pretty stupid to me. There is some value to people having a big picture on things and helping facilitate between silos.
Yes, and I'll take that week off, paid.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, Jay Treat?
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl How does your workplace distribute power and leadership?
ReplyDeleteI'm imagining a workplace set up with the same distributed authority as an improv group or freeform LARP.
ReplyDeleteSuch a thing could actually work well if everyone's fully invested in the company, so the above is just a joke.
Right. We only need the sort of top-down management because people aren't invested. And people aren't invested because they are alienated from their labor.
ReplyDeleteI keep going down this path I'll be a communist.
Still, my favorite methodology does call for fairly minimal hierarchy.
William Nichols: I love how your middle paragraph uses the future tense.
ReplyDeleteJust skimmed the tenets of communism. Don't believe I am one.
ReplyDeleteFair enough! I don't regret tweaking you, though :)
ReplyDeleteMe too. I'd been thinking I was socialist, but I'm not quite. What's the thing that's half way between capitalism and socialism?
ReplyDeleteOr more- where does positive/constructive feedback come from in your environments? If it comes from nowhere, how does that affect your feelings about the environment? If the feedback came from someone lateral, rather than higher-up, does that change the emotional response?
ReplyDeleteI focus on these, because often, other forms of exercising "power" in the workplace/games boil down to guidance/feedback, or petty control stuff that's obviously bad and terrible. But a lack of the guidance and feedback can be as terrible as micromanagement.
For me it’s very hierarchical. I’m 3 steps down from the CIO; I don’t know how it’s organized above that.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what features you’re looking for me to describe though.
Jay Treat Depends on what you mean, I think.
ReplyDeleteIf you want small companies, competition among them such that people win, basic provided for everyone, and companies to need to be in the public interest?
That's free market capitalism with actual safeguards and laws.
Rabbit Stoddard That's also true!
ReplyDeleteI try to get feedback from as many people as possible. And to give it when I think it'll be helpful.
and so much of the top-down crap is just power games.
Jay Treat German/British/Japanese/Canadian/etc. social democracies? Government provides decent social welfare system, paid for with high income and property taxes, has some regulation, occasionally there are government-owned industries but most industries remain privately owned. Or maybe the Alaska system? Natural resources (oil) are publicly owned and citizens get dividends from the distribution of those resources to private companies, but otherwise the system is capitalist.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, my favorite game has an economy that resembles capitalism on its surface. GM (capitalist) gives Fate points (money) to players (workers) to narrate bad things happening to them (to purchase their labor). Players then pay Fate points to narrate good things happening to them (buy stuff).
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of differences. In the Fate point economy, everything costs the same amount (1 Fate point for a +2 on any roll or ability to declare 1 story detail), and everybody gets paid the same amount (1 Fate point per story complication). Everyone does not have equal access to information, but there are easy, known ways for the players to find out information or even create information about NPCs. So it feels like the game is a very idealized, primitive form of capitalism that does away with the vast inequities in capitalism as it is practiced in the real world today. Capitalism where the workers have the same amount of power as the capitalists--or even more power, if they act collectively (create advantages for their teammates to use). A system that encourages players/workers to act collectively.
I wonder if that's why Fate and I never got along: the encoded power imbalance.
ReplyDeleteI work at a worker-owned cooperative. We still have power dynamics, and it's a struggle for sure!
ReplyDeleteJay Treat market socialism.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism will eventually erode or subtly bypass any and all laws or safeguards if in any way shape or form they inhibit profit or growth. Full stop.
ReplyDeleteI work in academia and my research group could be described as a game of apocalypse world where you don't interact at all with the other characters. Every three months the GM/ Professor makes you act under pressure to get something published.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Horribly long thread-hijacking Fate-defending response follows. But it may be germane.
ReplyDeleteFate encodes power equity, because if the GM wants to screw you, he has to pay you, and he has to pay you exactly the amount you need to screw him back later. The game provides an economic model of the three-act play. Act 1: GM puts the player up a tree, gives a Fate point. Act 2: GM throws rocks at the player, gives another Fate point. Act 3: Player uses stack of Fate points to get out of the tree.
Nearly every time I've played an RPG, including pbtA, there's been a power imbalance at the table. Often those imbalances occur because one group of players wants to play a certain kind of game, and others want to play a different kind of game, and the game system and/or GM rewards one of these groups and punishes or obstructs the other. One group is inevitably better at using the game system to accomplish its goals, or they are more willing to stomp on group dynamics to get their way.
Fate is unusual in that the rules for social combat are exactly as complex, satisfying, and useful as the ones for physical combat, and the rules for stealthiness are exactly as powerful as the rules for swinging a two-handed sword down on someone's head. So there is absolutely no advantage within the system to playing the barbarian, or the battle babe, or the unstoppable killing machine. In fact, the system rewards characters who have disadvantages the GM can exploit, not characters that are carefully designed to be GM-proof!
Let's say I want to play a one-eyed half-kobold bard who is a terrible ukulele player and is universally hated but is excellent at lying, insulting people, and dodging because he spent the first ten years of his life ducking objects thrown by his mother and the other full-blooded kobolds.
In any edition D&D, I could play that character, but I might as well come to the table wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm going to be getting the rest of you beers all night because my character sucks."
In Dungeon World, I could play that character, but I would have to convince the GM to accept my custom playsheet, and I'd have to figure out a bunch of custom moves that fit that character. I wouldn't know where to begin, but that may be a function of my inexperience with pbtA.
In Fate, I could play that character, and I could create that character in less time than it took me to type the last five paragraphs, and THAT CHARACTER WOULD KICK ASS. He would be the keystone of the party, someone who was constantly earning Fate points and then spending them to create advantages for the rest of the party.
Fate isn't immune to bad group dynamics at the table, but it's a system that provides rules for the kind of game I want to play. So it gives me a lot more table equity than game systems that have rules only for the kind of games other people want to play.
Kind of like a company where the publications department has the same budget as sales, IT, accounting, and HR. Or a society where intellectual property lawyers and teachers and janitors all get paid the same. So it's like the capitalism that conservative economists keep talking about, the one that doesn't actually exist in the real world, a capitalism where everyone has the same amount of power as everyone else.
bankuei.wordpress.com - The Same Page Tool
ReplyDeleteCan you unpack that, Yochai Gal?
ReplyDeleteNo defense needed, Ron Stanley; that wasn't meant to yuck your yum, and you should run it for me sometime.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I assume you're referring to the "Same Page Tool" - it's a useful way to make sure everyone plays knows exactly what to expect at a game.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what you mean, Yochai Gal. That wasn't where I'm going at all, but I'm interested. Please expand.
ReplyDeleteOh, I was referring to Ron Stanley's paragraph:
ReplyDeleteNearly every time I've played an RPG, including pbtA, there's been a power imbalance at the table. Often those imbalances occur because one group of players wants to play a certain kind of game, and others want to play a different kind of game, and the game system and/or GM rewards one of these groups and punishes or obstructs the other. One group is inevitably better at using the game system to accomplish its goals, or they are more willing to stomp on group dynamics to get their way.
I thought the tool relevant, I guess.
Stranger Gravity is my favorite game. The distributed power and leadership are exhilarating, but also extremely stressful. Work is less exhilarating, but also less stressful. That's how I can do it for 40 hours/week instead of 4 :)
ReplyDeleteYochai Gal That is beautiful and extremely relevant. Thanks!
ReplyDelete