[Theory] Let's have a good look at Colour, again
Caldis:
I think you are missing the point Jay. The Color is hugely important but it only remains color as long as it's not part of the action or resolution of in game events, once it's in it becomes part of system/character/setting/situation. So color acts on the other elements, influences them and merges with them to create elements colored for this game. It's a lot like paint, when you paint a fence white the fence is still a fence, it still serves the purpose of a fence but now it's a white fence.
JoyWriter:
Oh ok, Jay, well provisionally I'd say scrap that part of the big model then! As I've said I think colour is useful for discussion when it means what I've come to understand it as. And in that form, does it match up with your impressions? In other words does my analysis agree with what you see? After all, I can only talk for myself.
Ben Lehman:
Jay, you're confused. You're agreeing with everything while pretending to disagree. You're also bringing in GNS when it really doesn't need to be involved. Color is at the Exploration level, and Creative Agenda isn't the big driver here as much as just creating.
Fred, similarly, I think that talking about it in terms of "good" and "bad" play is pretty restricted by local social contract and creative agenda. I think that color, and what it does, isn't about whether what's done is good or bad, just how it happens. Likewise, I'm not sure I see any color connection in your first point. I mean, was there any description of the food as badly cooked, sitting out for a while, and so on? If not, the food poisoning seems not particularly color connected.
--
Hey, look. Here's where I'm getting my term "ad-hoc system" from. Vincent!
So check this out.
In games where the written mechanics provide a lesser a part of the system, the chunk for decisions is larger. Right? That means that the part for ad-hoc system is larger. Which in turn means that Color becomes more important to the game. This is the sort of thing that I was talking about Polaris being designed to provide for: since there are no mechanics for a character being tough to kill, if you need them, you must provide them via color -> ad hoc system transition.
This has some pretty neat implications to the importance of color wrt pre-written system. The more that your system covers all possible outcomes, and when to use them, the less important color is. Thus it is possible for something like Shock: to become almost entirely a mechanical exercise (despite the generation of a lot of color, it doesn't often matter in the same way that color matters in, say, Amber.) whereas it's not possible in a game less mechanically complete.
(I'm not saying it's possible to play Shock: like chess. It isn't. But it's possible to talk about this as a matter of degree.)
yrs--
--Ben
Simon C:
Ben,
Why is it useful to distinguish between colour and setting?
Does colour only matter to ad-hoc system? Why?
Ben Lehman:
Simon: My thought (and this is just my thought, at the moment) is that color results in ad-hoc decisions, whereas setting (and character) result in principled decisions.
yrs--
--Ben
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