Art in mechanical design - has always been an awful idea?
otspiii:
Quote from: Callan S. on July 14, 2009, 04:21:23 PM
Misha, I think if it's not a 'larger goal' (as you put it), then you don't have it as a design goal (as I'd put it). Your coming to this thread with an entirely different set of priorities than myself (I say as the original poster and guide of what the thread talks about)
Even on art and fiction, we don't seem to match - how you've divorced fiction as a delivery tool rather than being art delivering yet more art, I don't know. But we don't seem to match here, either.
I'll totally grant perhaps I have some alien set of priorities that I've brought here that I've assumed most other people shared. But this thread is much like the premise of the impossible thing before breakfast idea - that base premise being if you have A as a goal and B as a goal, they just don't go together. In terms of this thread, if you don't have A and B as goals/priorities, then the thread doesn't address you, as far as I can see?
I really think that most of the perceived gap between us is the result of misunderstanding. Yes, I understand that our working definitions of art are different, and that two people using the same word with different definitions can lead to some big weirdness. This is why I asked you what your definition was. I know that it encompasses the fiction at this point, but is that all or is this an even wider issue?
I do not understand why you refuse to believe I care about group interaction. I see it as something that you naturally need to consider when thinking of individual experience, you think of it as its own design goal, whatever. It's still important to both of us, however we classify it in our design cosmologies. Just telling me "you don't care about what I'm talking about, get out" doesn't help either of us. I understand now that the topics I addressed in your first post are not entirely focused on the topics you were hoping to elaborate on in the thread. That's fine, I think they're still somewhat relevant, but I'll keep my points within the topic as well as I can with my understanding of what you're trying to achieve here.
Okay, so your core idea in the thread that you want to pursue is that if you have both thing A and thing B as design priorities they get in the way of each other. Err, specifically in this thread you're talking about injecting art/fiction into the mechanics and having a good group dynamic, right?
I came at it from a really weird angle, but I guess my main relevant point was contained in my third section about the fiction justifying not having fun. Basically, if you have two potentially conflicting design goals like wanting the mechanics to reflect the fiction/art and wanting a good group dynamic you should integrate the two. Make your design goal to have a fiction that encourages the kind of group dynamic you want, and then use the mechanics to reinforce the art and the group dynamic simultaneously. D&D's fiction involves the various types of adventurers who join up together to go have adventures and the roles they all fill, and the rules guide you into mirroring that fiction by choosing from a list of synergistic classes. Shadowrun does more or less the same sort of thing, although the distinction between classes isn't quite as hard-coded in. As for issues like your example with multiple attacks ruining the group dynamic, it's just a matter of asking yourself "does this reinforce my goal of having my fiction and my group dynamic both resemble each other and be fun?" If it doesn't, in the way that giving one player more turns/attacks doesn't, then just don't put it in.
Even the stuff I posted before that is semi-relevant, I think, in that the focus of the rules should be on capturing the attitude of the fiction rather than the description of it. When I posted it I just kind of assumed that the group dynamic was covered under the blanket of individual experience in other people's minds as well as in my own, and that assumption led to a lot of confusion, for which I apologize. Really, though, what I meant was that you should write out a fiction that would be fun to be a part of, and then make rules that let the player on some level enter the fiction. Make sure the fiction encourages a fun group dynamic, and then use the mechanics to try to encourage that group dynamic, as opposed to just writing a fiction based solely on concepts you find interesting and then trying to model those concepts in the game without regard for the group dynamic.
I'm sorry, and I assure you that my heart's in the right place, but I didn't completely connect with your topic in my first post due to an incomplete understanding of the core issue you were trying to explore. Whatever impression I may have given previously, these are issues that are relevant to me and I do think you're moving down an interesting and potentially fruitful path of thought. I'm desperately trying to connect with you and understand exactly what your goal for the thread is. I've done my best to connect to your topic with this post, although I won't pretend that I'm 100% confident I fully understand the subtleties of what "A as a goal and B as a goal" mean on a practical level, but I do hope that I've come a little closer with this post than with my first. If my understanding is still incomplete I apologize and await clarification.
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