[Agon] - So-so'ing our way around the Island of Lycophon
Darcy Burgess:
Hi Callan,
I totally misread your post, transposing "content" where you wrote "consent".
You're reading too much into the play. All I was trying to say was that if you don't want to engage in the SIS, you don't want to role-play. Consent was the furthest thing from my mind.
Apologies for the piss-poor illustration. It's obfuscated the point of this discussion.
D
Filip Luszczyk:
Darcy,
Quote
Second guessing whether or not we're actually expecting to role-play strikes me as so much hand-wringing.
It seems you are misreading my posts as well.
It's obvious that you were expecting to role-play (specifically, I find Callan's points regarding inclination spot on). Your assertion about your friends' expectations might or might not be accurate, but based on the data you are willing to provide it seems less than obvious.
What is completely not obvious and what I'm trying to figure out since the beginning of this discussion, however, is whether you were also expecting the gaming experience intended for this particular game by design (i.e. in the "feature not a bug" sense). "I love Agon," you proclaim, but it isn't clear what you love the game for specifically. It isn't obvious whether you love the game as is (excluding the challenge setup issue mentioned in your opening post), your love is limited to specific (and perhaps peripheral) aspects of it, or maybe you love what you'd want the game to actually be, but isn't. Plainly speaking, I suspect the game fell flat because it wasn't the game you actually wanted to play that night, and it wouldn't go worse with, say, Arkham Horror (oh, and I still recommend trying out Beast Hunters, if only for the comparison of fundamentally different "gamist" experiences).
The sort of gaming experience in question might or might not be what you term a "role-playing game", might or might not rely on your idiosyncratic understanding of role-playing, and might or might not involve mature enough approach to art* (whatever you see as art, as that's yet another vague territory). Perhaps discriminating between roleplaying, creative writing, music and tactical games and moving on from that point would prove more fruitful than considering the game in terms of activities it might essentially not be intended to support.
Well, overall, based on the last few posts, I no longer expect to be able to help with what you want in this thread, and likewise, there doesn't seem to be anything of value to learn for me here. I just wanted to clarify my point.
* Mature content, beware. The satire might prove difficult to understand for individuals representing certain outlooks.
Callan S.:
Hi Darcy,
Returning to my first question - when you say there is an absence of SIS, is there an absence of it, or is it just in measure to your own values that there is an absence? For example, in a game where you'd say there is an SIS, there's probably someone in the world that would say you had no SIS at all and you weren't roleplaying.
Quote
Second guessing whether or not we're actually expecting to role-play strikes me as so much hand-wringing.
If your taking it that them wanting to roleplay means they want to reach the exact level of SIS you need to say there was a SIS, you may be wrong. Their idea of what qualifies as an SIS may be different to your idea of what qualifies. Or perhaps it's the same. But asking on the matter isn't hand wrangling because you may differ with the rest of the group, or with individual members of the group.
I think a hurdle in this discussion is that your treating your own standards on what is or isn't an SIS as if it's not your own standard but a global standard. And your taking it that if someone says they want to roleplay, they are agreeing to this global standard - when they aren't, the only standard there is your own particular one.
The other players may have differing standards on what constitutes an SIS. Or maybe their standards match or roughly match your own. I wanted to ask about that uncertain element.
Darcy Burgess:
Hey Callan,
Of course my expectations differ with other peoples'. I'd take that as rote, and so should everyone else vis-a-vis their own expectations and those of others.
My assessment of my group's relative expectations, flawed and coloured by my own preconceptions and biases as it is, led me to believe that there was something to discuss here. I'm not looking to waste anyone's time in this thread -- trust me that I thought that there was something of substance to discuss here, not merely another internet thread that amounts to "oh, theyz dontz play wellz 2gthr, suxxor"
So yeah, Glenn, Glenn, Jason and I had different expectations of how vivid the SIS would be. Unless you want to find them in realspace and ask them, could we please take it as given that the difference is manageable enough that we can discuss the meat of the question?
Thanks,
Darcy
lumpley:
Darcy: yeah!
My working theory is that people most reliably say what they're imagining when someone else at the table needs them to. (It's not a complicated theory.) So in my own designs I've been trying to make sure that whenever your character starts to move, someone else at the table needs to know about it - not just for general "everybody should know about it" reasons, which aren't reliable, but in order to make their own concrete gameplay decisions.
I've been focusing on initiation and execution as the key moments for sharing, though; I've thought very little about intent and effect. Say more about those?
-Vincent
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