On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 08:42:47AM -0600, Carl D Cravens wrote: >These guys are so deep into "telling a story" that they're willing to >abandon the "roleplaying" aspect of roleplaying games. When they >start questioning our "obsession" with playing our "role" (our >personal character), I think they've gone way over the edge of >"roleplaying game." I started to get that impression when the idea of downplaying the importance and influence of the GM became popular. As far as I'm concerned, the GM-as-God is one of the key distinctions between an RPG and everything else. (See my post last year about the Arkham Horror boardgame - it's a GM-less game with strict rules, some of which are there to enhance the atmosphere.) >It's weird... for so long, I've been telling people that >"story-oriented" roleplaying isn't just group novel writing. But I >think that's exactly what designers like Vincent and Ron are trying to >accomplish... they're not writing roleplaying games anymore, they're >writing rules for group novel writing. This is my main reservation about Primetime Adventures: it _is_ an improvised collaborative game, and there's no way anyone could spend much time coming up with the sort of subtle and intricate background that's one of the things I love about conventional RPGs. The proposal seems to be that, because someone else might come up with a better story about your character than you, you shouldn't prohibit that person from doing it (and therefore there shouldn't really be a "your character" at all). What if the other person comes up with a worse story? What if you had some ideas about your character's background that haven't come out in play yet, but which aren't compatible with the new proposal? I can see this killing as many interesting stories as it starts. R -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
