[Liquid] Well, I just rolled the dice for show
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hey, it was stupid of me to throw that „I’ve made up my mind but I won’t tell“ out there. It seemed clever when I wrote it. ;-) I’ll just say what I think.
Harald, Jesus, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll is an excellent example as it was a successful PtA game for me in ways that other PtA games weren’t because the group was paying more attention to details and making less extensive use of stakes and narration rights than in other games I’ve played in.
My experience with WuShu and sometimes PtA has been that narration rights, especially when combined with a “style over substance” mindset, lead to a mode of play where people, for lack of a better word, neglect the Shared Imagined Space. They don’t care for details, they don’t care for consistency (whether based on genre conventions or “realism”), they don’t pay attention to what their fellow players establish.
I’m sure many people play PtA without neglecting the SIS. I hope some people play WuShu without neglecting the SIS. But I suggest that one merit often overlooked about good old-fashioned role-playing, where resolution mechanics strongly build upon already established SIS elements, is that it makes people invest in the SIS. It doesn’t help in making the SIS interesting or meaningful—at that, PtA is much better. But it makes the SIS substantial.
Now, why did I not feel betrayed when I learned that the GM had not even applied the rules most of the time? Were not the rules what made the SIS substantial? Well, no. It was our attention to it, our investment in it, that made it substantial.
So I’m not saying PtA sucks. But I’m saying that one should invest in the SIS, and specifically, in Situation, moment-by-moment. Who’s there, what’s going on, what does it look like, sound like, feel like? In my experience, if you have a game system that works perfectly well without investing much in the SIS, people may tend to rush the story and their imagination of the actual in-game situation gets rather blurry. Such games still sound great in a write-up but to me, they’re leaving a bad taste, like reading a good book way too fast.
- Frank
Paul Czege:
Hey Frank,
Great question.
With the vast majority of games that apportion narration rights, play is about everyone gamely deferring to the mechanics and politely and supportively accepting contributions to the SIS. You know how the rest of the family claps and politely enthuses "good answer" on Family Feud, even when the answer is clearly pathetic? I think what you had in your Liquid game experience was social collaboration where quality mattered. Group dynamics and the expression of real, human authority determined what contributions made it into the SIS.
Your Liquid game wasn't made memorable by the way the resolution mechanics incrementally built the SIS; it was made memorable because the gateway to the SIS was dynamic, social assessment of creative contributions. Mechanics for the sanitary apportioning of narration rights can't compete with that.
Paul
Callan S.:
Hi Harald,
If your ability to perceive the system your in is reduced, then there are blind spots where you don't know what's actually going on. That lends itself very easily to illusionism, even by accident.
Frank,
Quote
In my experience, if you have a game system that works perfectly well without investing much in the SIS
How do you mean 'works well'? Do you mean the next procedural step or the next options you can take are clearly presented in the text, regardless of how invested you are in the SIS?
As opposed to, perhaps, not knowing what procedure to do next or what options are available unless you really have invested in the SIS?
oliof:
Callan, I don't understand what you mean with blind spots. I guess you refer to the GM not using the system all the time but 'just rolling with it' when you talk about blind spots. That this is one part that makes up illusionism does not mean you have illusionism whenever you hit it.
My understanding of "a game system that works perfectly well without investing much in the SIS" is a set of rules that gives you spotlight irrespective of your involvement with the SIS.
Frank, players that don't invest in the SIS fall into the "lame" category as much with "good old-fashioned role-playing" as with games like PtA. I fail to see a difference in that regard. Care to explain?
lumpley:
Quote from: Frank Tarcikowski on February 13, 2009, 08:39:08 AM
In my experience, if you have a game system that works perfectly well without investing much in the SIS, people may tend to rush the story and their imagination of the actual in-game situation gets rather blurry.
In my experience too. Emily and I were having just exactly this conversation earlier in the week.
Callan: it's not a matter of not knowing what the next procedural step is, unless you've invested. Instead, it's that no procedural step makes any sense to DO, unless you've invested.
Raising and seeing in Dogs in the Vineyard is a small example. If I put forward a 6 and a 7 and say "I raise," you can't possibly decide what dice to put forward in response, until you first know what my character is doing. "So ... what so you do?" you'd say. We have to invest in the fiction in order for play to continue.
In a game where you CAN decide which dice to put forward in response without knowing what my character does - in a game where the concrete, specific details of what my character does DON'T have serious, consequential effects on the mechanics - you'll be putting your dice forward without caring where my character's standing, what's in his hands, whether he's sweating or cool, whether he's coming with an uppercut or a body blow or a knife or an axe handle.
Expand that idea outward and outward from this one little moment within resolution, and you've got what Frank's talking about (I'm pretty sure. Frank?). If the game's mechanics overall work perfectly well when nobody cares about concrete, specific fictional details, you overall get play without concrete, specific fictional details.
-Vincent
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