I learned about System from Munchkins
Daniel B:
Just skimmed the 'Ritual and Gaming/Game Design' topic .. mind = blown!!
Whole new avenues in my mind, for the creative process of this game..
Thanks gents, especially for the example Vincent
Joel P. Shempert:
As I read the opening topic, I too was thinking of Polaris...it's not just the candle, it's also the "take breaks between scenes and discuss how you're feeling" bit that reaches right down from Social Contract and plunks a shiny gem into System. It's not "deciding whose house to play at" but it's close!
Magical Land of Yeld includes the assignment of duties--mapmaking, calendar tracking, sidequest records, etc. to different players. Yes, that reaches into the SIS, sort of, but it's really more about who does the bookkeeping rather than what happens fictionally. And hey, old-skool D&D does it too!
These (and yes, the wine-and-sexy-friends clause) are great baby steps in this direction, but I'd love to see things get even more crazy-wild in terms of arranging Social Context explicitly. Ron talked about setting up group buy-in for a game on the basis of Color and Reward in this thread about my failed Sorcerer game. That's a HUGE Social Context thing (plugging right in to System and the SIS, natch) that it'd be great to see game texts tackle head-on. My friend Julian's storyjamming method utilizes short autobiographical monologues generated through a creative prompt, to bring out to make a space where the players are emotionally invested, or to rekindle investment mid-story. Similarly, for the game I'm tinkering with for Fairy Tales about adolescent trauma, I want to lead off with players' personal stories about teenage awkwardness. How to best facilitate that is a big question!
Peace,
-Joel
contracycle:
Can there be rules that govern behaviour? Sure. Can such rules then be organised into as system which informs the IS? Sure. Does this mean anything of much significance? No IMO.
Here is a common, although AFAIK never-discussed-in-any-text behavioral rule: you agree to be bound by the outcomes of die rolls. It's a behavioural rule, and one that extends far beyond RPG's, mainly in gambling. We learn this behavioural rule very early and I've never seen a game text discuss the matter. So far so normal.
Caldis:
I think it does have quite a bit of significance and there are games that do talk about dice rolling. Lots of games specifically mention the GM ignoring dice rolls if it doesnt suit what he wanted out of the game (there was lots of talk about the new Dragon Age game recently). I think it's pretty significant if players are playing a game and expecting their characters fate to be governed by the dice but in reality it all comes down to the GM's decision. This is a huge change in system.
contracycle:
Sure. And people have been known to refuse to accept the outcomes of gambling games too, with far more serious consequences. The point about gaming textx explaining why it's ok to reject a die roll only confirms that its a thing we learn long before we start RPG as a rule.
My point though is that I don't think this changes anything. System has always reached into the "behavioural" realm, but that doesn't turn any and every behaviour into system. I don't see anything novel here. Nor am I convinced that any behaviour specified in a game text can really be regarded as a component of system. Attributing more and more stuff to system makes it less and less useful as a term or tool.
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