Okay, I've been rebuilding the web archives for GAMERS (no, don't go look, they're not live yet), and I ran across a statement of Roger's that I think I missed at the time: "An RPG is never going to be all that close to its source material unless its rules are about the sort of narrative you can create rather than the sort of thing a PC can do." I'm not sure that I entirely agree with that (I think individual instances of games can end up very much like their source material without explicit rules), but I think that does sort of summarize a dichotomy in rules approaches. I don't think I like rules that define the sort of narrative I can create (though, as it was put back when we discussed this here in 2001(!), I'm willing to allow that maybe I just don't like any of the implementations so far, rather than disliking the whole idea). I do like being conscious, as a group, that we're creating narrative, and doing some work to make sure we're all trying to create the same kind (or let the same kind happen, as the case may be). I also don't like rules about the sort of thing a PC can do when that interferes with the narrative. That's the hard part. PC-can-do rules are narrative-blind. Can they be otherwise, without turning into rules that restrict the narrative? -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
