Game Ideas Un limited: Partnership

  My wife and I often have difficulty working together.  There are a lot of reasons for this; but one of the critical reasons is that we have entirely different core notions of what working together means.  It may help understand party relationships and actions if we look at how this can be so.

  To her way of thinking, working together is best exemplified as being together while working.  You wash the dishes and I'll dry them; you dust the dresser while I change the bed; you peel the potatoes while I chop the onions.  If it's time to shop, we should go to the store together, walk up and down the aisles together deciding what to buy.  We can both work on weeding or both clean cabinets.  There is an aspect of this which springs from the notion many hands make light work; but there is also a more essential idea of mutual support and encouragement, that two of us can keep each other company, take the drudgery out of the task, help each other as needed.  There is much to be said for working together as being together while working.

  Obviously, though, it is not how I think about it.  My notion of working together should be described as independently moving through different tasks to achieve the same total goal.  If we're going to go to the store together, then she should be picking the produce while I manage the meat; let her look at cookies while I carry dairy to the cart.  This will make the task quicker.  Better yet, would it not be better use of our efforts if I go to the store while she cleans out the refrigerator or makes supper?  Divide and conquer, taken entirely the wrong way, is the aphorism which best approximates my attitude toward cooperative work.

  It is thus perhaps not surprising that when someone on a forum elsewhere asked for ways to keep a party together, I asked why you would want to.  I cited the earlier column on Multiple Staging (which I am pleased to note has been included in the new CD from RoleplayingTips.com).  There is much that can be done by allowing the party to separate and move in separate but related adventures or actions.  Working together, to my mind, more means dividing your efforts to accomplish more tasks at once.  A divided party makes for a more interesting game.

  Yet it must be admitted that my wife is also correct.  Working together equally means combining your efforts to finish one task more quickly or effectively.  A united party is more powerful and may more easily overcome its obstacles and achieve its goals.

  Six weeks ago in Spin we mentioned the idea that human resources suggested using people as assets; and as I considered this column I realized that that was what we might call a very gamist approach to running a company.  I say that because it then appeared to me that my idea of using individual characters each in the most efficient way possible was a very gamist approach to play, and that therefore it could be argued that my ideas about working together, as far as game play goes, are gamist.  Yet in the aforementioned Multiple Staging it was the narrativist reasons for dividing the party that were emphasized, the fact that it makes for a better story.  It occurs to me now that keeping the party together can equally be a gamist decision; if we are going to face an adversary who we fear may overwhelm us, it is certainly likely that we will want to have everyone together when we do so.  These ideas of working together, either by dividing to tackle individual tasks Mission Impossible style or by going in all together like a Navy S.E.A.L. team, can indeed be chosen from the perspective of what gives the greatest probability of success.  They can equally represent an effort to get the best story, or to play it as it would most likely actually happen.  Whatever your ideas about how to run a character party, be mindful that these different ideas about working together are both valid and useful in play.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.