On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Mike Harvey wrote:
> For something like 10 years I've been gradually meandering down the road from
> my origins in gamist D&D through simulationism and then into storybook land
> (and recently pulling back again), but I'm starting to feel a little lost.
I've done some of the same, and it was wandering out into "really
vague rules-light" land that got me feeling lost... I realized that I
_want_ a certain level of rules as the "contract" of how things work.
They don't have to be real detailed, but there has to be enough for me
to be comfortable that I'm not just making it _all_, including the
PC's successes and failures, as I go.
> RPGs and SPGs (story-playing games) overlap in the middle, and most of us
> play somewhere in that middle. But where I used to see narrative as an
> evolved aspect of RP, lately I'm starting to see it as othogonal to RP;
> something that is non-RP, something from Outside.
Hm. A narrative is formed out of play, but I'm not sure how important
that narrative is _to_ the play as it happens. The power of
experiencing the story from the inside can fully override a lackluster
narrative.
Which is, of course, why gamers often hate to hear other gamers' war
stories... "you had to be there" is practically the _point_ of
roleplaying. To someone who wasn't there, it's just a lackluster
narrative.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ Fudge Factor Webzine -- http://www.fudgefactor.org/ ]
ANY system works with enough hammer thumps.
----------------------------------------------------------------
GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
