[3:16] Home is for the hating
GreatWolf:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 12, 2009, 08:32:54 AM
Hi Seth,
For the first character who gets Hatred for Home, that character sheet had to have filled up all the other Weakness slots and made the last available via leveling up.
Once that happens, any character may identify a newly-acquired Weakness as Hatred for Home, regardless of where they are along the sequence of Weaknesses so far. It doesn't become "available" in the game-rules sense that the box receives a single diagonal slash. It becomes available in the conceptual sense that you may call the new Weakness you've just taken (i.e. placed the second diagonal slash to make an X) Hatred for Home.
Ah, gotcha.
Quote
The sharks did not have lasers! They had rotating 270-degree turrets on their heads which fired space-bullets. Everyone knows lasersharks are stupid, you silly person
*big laugh*
Callan S.:
Aww, I would have called it "Home is where the hate is" (home is where the heart is...geddit!?...ah, I'z lovez deliberate freudian slips...)
Hi Ron,
Just focusing on rules use I notice it all appears to be rules first, where you follow the rules and then either that inspires you or reminds you of something nifty to use. Basically working within its constraints gives good results, and doesn't even constrain you terribly (space sharks!). Even the big 12 mission 'show the policy' story is still something that rests on alot of rules first inspiration. As opposed to what might be called imagination first, where someone imagines first then only uses the bits of system which fit that imagining (and indeed may have to skip rules and fudge to keep supporting imagination first).
Or am I way off? I don't have any penetrating observation to add, just posting to highlight the rules first (assuming I'm right) and to go "See, rules first is good! Roleplay doesn't have to always be imagination first! Rules first is good! Is gooood!" for anyone who cares to read it :)
Ron Edwards:
I think you're on the right track, Callan. 3:16 and Contenders were the High Ronnies winners for the October round in 2005 (that long ago? geez), and I noted that for some reason, they both made use of what might be thought of as the My Life with Master structural approach to play, but ramped it up even more. Yet imagination is by no means in the back seat, even if it's not the starting point. Kind of like the way a driver encounters the interface of the dashboard and pedals and steering wheel, but the motor is really what makes the car go. So the rules are like the interface that lets everyone connect and engage to the shared motor.
I'm using these analogies partly for fun and parody of over-analogizing, but maybe they work.
Best, Ron
Gregor Hutton:
Thanks for posting Ron.
Is there a wide range of Level at the moment? I felt that the driving force once you get to Hatred For Home is the push and pull between someone short of Flashbacks (who likely triggered the Hatred) and who is looking to end it one way or the other, and others who have Flashbacks yet to use (and also to be gained when Levelling up or by allowing themselves to die). So the players who got the glory early are now somewhat at the mercy of the players who've not had that spotlight yet, or are willing to let their characters die to indtroduce a new one with some more power.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Gregor,
It's subtler and more interesting than that. The characters who are lower level hate home as much as or more than Deet does; they merely didn't get to that Weakness before he did.
Viper has at least one available Weakness, unused. So it's a pretty good bet that he will call it Hatred for Home when he does use it. Note that this is Tim K's second character and was built, apparently, already extremely disgruntled and practically anarchistic, totally uninterested in the missions as such. In other words, judgments and experiences from playing through the first character provided a foundation for playing the second in a very different way.
Kowalski is in the interesting situation of having been through 10 missions but only leveling up twice. You would not believe how shitty Tim A rolls for Development. So he hasn't had an available Weakness slot for ages. As you know, nothing stops anyone from playing a character as hating home; the question is merely whether it's been taken as a Weakness and hence, formally, is now "there in front of God and everybody" with an in-play Flashback backing it up in the fiction.
So no, I don't see a built-in conflict between characters who have and have not claimed that Weakness. I do see a conflict between those who do and do not buy into the Terran, 3:16 rhetoric and mission. The presence/use of the formal Hatred for Home might reinforce that conflict or it might not - it depends very greatly on the characters' history.
Now, could the formalization of that mechanic, exactly as written, provide a conceptual framework for such dynamics to be in play? Absolutely, and I think that is what is happening. Regardless of who has or hasn't taken the Weakness, the mechanical possibility of doing so is a very real part of play from the very beginning, even when it's not yet available. The psychological space or condition of hating home is on everyone's mind as a fixed, significant feature of the setting.
My point
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