Practicing democracy

Whatever it was I expected when I joined KTDARPG, my first role-play experience, I don't think it was for the game to be a place where I'd see democracy in action.

Every game has rules & guidelines that structure player actions. We know when we start pretty much what's acceptable & what isn't. We know if a game is G-rated or PG. We know how many & what kind of characters a player can create. We know the nature of our world and most of its boundaries (and we usually spend a LOT of time pushing those boundaries and seeing what we can get away with!).

But issues & situations are always gonna come up that the rules don't anticipate. We've had that happen many times in the past year. Some of the most noteable issues dealt with the portrayal of religion in-game, the proliferation of modern technology, and just how complete is a player's control over the characters & landscapes s/he creates in the game.

It's the way problems & issues are resolved that I didn't anticipate.

Rather than the game owner making executive decisions & the players having to go along with them, players were asked for their input & viewpoints. Through group discussions & the use of opinion polls, the game owner was able to gauge what the players wanted as we all move forward in the game. When a ruling finally was made & incorporated into the official game rules, it was something everybody could live with because we all felt we'd had a chance to be heard & have our views considered.

I'm not saying we always agree. Hell no, we don't! We can be a pretty belligerent bunch of free-thinking individuals in-game, especially when it comes to plotting & trying to one-up the rest of the pack. We're also not very politically correct when it comes to how our characters interact with each other (to which I say thank god--there's enough of that out in the real world).

It's just good to know that we can try to be fair with each other, when it comes to defining this game for which we all feel a degree of ownership. I admit, some of us are better at that "fairness" than others. (My hat's off to the Greatest of Players--those who are able to find a way to compromise their own ambitions & desires on occasion for the good of the game. Compromise is truly the hard part--thank you!) But at least we try. -Chyna