Recreating the Providence of the fiction of my youth
jburneko:
Joshua,
My question is similar to Callan's: was there any actual risk involved? That includes the idea that all consequential failures and losses were simply presented as colorful twists on the current problem prompting you to ever increasing imaginative weirdness.
For what it's worth, you were the kids I (and still do) look at kind of strangely. I don't really "get" this kind of play. I think that's because for a long time I really didn't see any point in making a formalized game out of this kind of creative building. Hell, I do this with more co-workers. My name is Jesse. One day one of my co-workers made a joke about me being like Jesse "The Body." Then another one said that I was more "regal" than that. That I was really, "Von Body."
Three years of "Von Body" jokes and now Baron Von Body runs the Hegemony of Tea where peons work the field kept in line by patrolling hungry lions. The first thing he does in the morning is cleave his bed in two before mounting a steed that goes charging down the stairs. As the mount charges down the stairs, Von Body beheads the peons that he has lined up each morning along the banister all before crashing through the front door to begin his day.
Did we really need a formal game to do this kind of "watercooler fantasy" as I've come to call it? No. When I sit down to GAME, I want something a little more focused and purposeful. However, I've more recently come to form an appreciation of games that can give watercooler fantasy a little more shape and direction so that they're not just bits of randomness thrown together.
To that end I suggest you look at The Committee For The Exploration of Mysteries. I hold this game pretty much as the under-appreciated king pin of watercooler fantasy. The resolution system doesn't actually resolve anything because there's no actual risk. Not mechanically. Not fictionally. It simply informs the trading (and escalation) of problem and solution much like you describe in your story.
Opposition: "You turn in to a root"
Player: "I make myself into a tea which I use to control a skeleton."
Opposition: "You can't see or hear."
Player: "I rig up a camera and microphones."
Opposition: "But you're still a vampire and hunger."
Player: "I attach hypodermic needs to my fingers."
Those are my thoughts.
Jesse
Joshua A.C. Newman:
Callan, my intuition says, divine intervention rolls were used when there was no plausible way out to the player and something had to happen from outside. My guess is, the boymonster would have imprisoned me and we'd have had to do something else for me to get free.
What was at risk was, do I get to say what happens or does Gary?
Jesse, here's the important part:
Quote
so that they're not just bits of randomness thrown together.
There was absolutely no randomness. It was all created out of pieces. We all knew the "world" (Providence, where we all went to clubs, had friends, sometimes lived, combined with Clive Barkerish horror, with which we were all familiar, and each our own proclivities, which we also knew), which means we had all the pieces to make stuff.
I'll have to check out the Committee. I'm only aware of it and haven't played. I suspect that it's not what I'm after, but I'd like to know how it does what it does.
Frank Tarcikowski:
Joshua, thanks for posting this. It resonates very well with some things I have been thinking about a lot for the last year or so, about why certain things worked well back then and don’t work well now, even though on paper (or screen) it looks like they should. If you like to, check out my thread [liquid] Well, I just rolled the dice for show.
I think “handwaving” is a bad term for an important technique that would be more fittingly described as, I dunno, maybe “mutual approval”. The visionary Mr. Paul Czege has it all figured out in the above linked thread:
Quote from: Paul Czege on February 13, 2009, 08:46:22 PM
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.
I know nothing of Xenon, but I suggest that a lack of structure or, more precisely, of very clearly laid out procedures and roles, may be prerequisite for the kind of creative, collaborative goodness you guys had back then.
Is this anything along the lines you are thinking, or am I hijacking your thread?
- Frank
Joshua A.C. Newman:
Yeah, Frank, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I actually had a long series of posts on Facebook about authority that I should really turn into a blog post.
I'm trying to figure out how to divide it up so each others' contributions as creative constraints. I'm pretty confident that such a system will yield a complex, mysterious world where there will be things behind other things when you look there.
Callan S.:
For myself, that doesn't seem to make sense? You can't have a lack of structure and have a structure to divide up others contributions as constraints?
I'm not even sure a lack of structure is the only way to obtain this creativity - throwing suggestions back and forth over the table at a game can be just as mutually supportive, encouraging and wild, even if your using a rigid game system. But alot of people seem to want to talk directly into the SIS, and for example, just say you start using a skeleton infused with tea, rather than throw across the idea "Hey, just imagine me making a tea of myself and pumping it into a skeleton...how cool is that!?" as a validation stage (as mentioned in this thread). I think there's an idea in RP culture that "In RP, you can do anything!!1!", which encourages bypassing any validation/throw suggestions back and forth stage.
Mind you, come to think of it, there's also a pattern of GM's speaking directly into the SIS without a validation stage, either. That imbalance of position (you seeking validation from someone who doesn't or wont seek validation from you) probably encourages players speaking directly in, as well.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page