What is Right to Dream for?
ThoughtBubble:
So, I have an example for you. We're in the middle of some Right to Dream play in my current game.
My overarching goal for this game is to make the world feel as real and reasonable as I can. Real and reasonable meaning "like the original, adventurous, cartoon inspiration."
For example. I've done a re-working of some of the basic monsters in the early dungeons. The dungeons were set up as a training exercise, and the monsters were at a pretty good level of challenge for the party. However, the monsters were too challenging for the expected targets of the training. So, I re-did all the monsters, apologized to the players, and blamed a mischievous NPC. I think this would be generally counterproductive in a Step On Up sense, and meaningless in a Story Now sense.
The best moments in the game are when some details come up, or are added, and there's a sudden revelation. For example, due to some art, it turns out that one of our character's family is a group of reformed pirates. One of the side NPCs, is (in her unrevealed history) also a reformed pirate. She's been rather nice to the character, mostly because he gets in trouble. But now there's a connection there that we're going to explore. And the world is a little richer for it.
This game is very concretely about the slow revelation of a world, enjoying the taste and texture, and finding out what these hidden secrets are.
Caldis:
Quote from: Simon C on March 18, 2010, 06:36:02 PM
I think my point is more that calling it Right to Dream doesn't give me any tools for examining play, working out what the fun parts were, and finding out how to make other games similarly fun. Treating it as if it were Story Now, and looking at the premise of play, does give me those tools. It's more useful to me to ignore Right to Dream as a thing, and just treat all my play as Story Now for the purpose of examining my play.
In other words: Cool. It's Right to Dream. What use is that to me?
What help is "story now" without the further detail that focusing on premise brings? The words on their own are more a motto than indicative of a deep understanding of the subject. The right to dream requires similar attention and you see a lot of it in many traditional games, including probabilities of dice rolls to get that feeling of realism or a focus on whats important in the game.
So how do you build the dream and get that realistic feel you want? Well you move from systems like early D&D where hit points are an abstract measure of how hardy your character is and an attack roll is supposed to represent a series of attack and defensive actions to later systems where more detailed systems that got you in the feel of every sword swing and parry.
I think there are a lot of "tools" that came with right to dream think, a lot of them have become so ingrained in the hobby that it's hard to see them as anything more than just part of how roleplaying is done.
Simon C:
This thred is moving a little faster than I'd like. I'm not really able to keep up with so many different points of view, and as Eero pointed out, people coming in with radically different interpretations of what the Big Model says (or should say) is making the thread even more confused.
Probably something I should have started out saying is that my thinking on Right to Dream is pretty heavily informed by Vincent's (somewhat) recent writing on the subject, mostly contained in these two posts:
http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=444
http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=443
It's hard to tell, but I think Vincent's thinking has progressed (diverged?) from the Forge orthodoxy on Right to Dream to some extent, which might be causing some of the confusion.
One of the important things that I take from Vincent's posts is that "simulation" in the sense of having mechanics that recreate the feel of real-life situations, or else enforce genre tropes is a technique that can fit within any creative agenda. That's I think causing confusion because people are saying "Of course Right to Dream is useful - with Right to Dream you can think about simulation and appropriate emulation" and I'm all "nuh-uh, that works for ANY game".
Let me talk more about what I'm trying to get at. Here's Luke Crane's (incredibly controversial) definition of RPGs:
"[An RPG is] A game in which a player advocates the goals, priorities and survival (or doom) of a persona who, in operation of the game's mechanics, is confronted with one or more ethical choices."
Here's Vincent talking about game design:
"When you design a game, you're taking three different positions, expressing three different insights, putting forth three different opinions. Saying three different things. First, you're saying something about the subject matter or genre of your game: something you think about adventure fiction, or swords & sorcery, or transhumanist sf, or whatever. Second, you're saying something about roleplaying as a practice, taking a position on how real people should collaborate under these circumstances. Third, you're saying something about real live human nature."
So what I see in both of these is that there's a moral dimension to RPG play, by definition. Making a clear space for that moral dimension within your design, or within your play, isn't a question of agenda, it's a question of good play vs. bad play (in the sense of more or less fun). I think that a lot of the thinking on Story Now has monopolized discussion of the moral dimension of play, such that the thinking is that it's only relevant to Story Now games. In other words, I think that a lot of the insights about how to make good Story Now games are actually insights about how to make good games in general. I'm not sure if there are a lot of insights about how to make good Right to Dream games, but I think that probably many of those apply to all games too. (David, I'm still getting to that thread you linked me, but thanks for doing so, I think it will be useful to me).
contracycle:
Wel, of course Narr etc can take advantage of tight causality and emulation. That should, I would have thought, go without saying. But it's not a priority, and so to a great or lesse degree it can also be downgraded in significance and importance by comparison with attention focussed on premise. And similarly, Sim and Gam games can and do partake of moral concerns in some respects, but they too can afford to downgrade it by comparison to the real driver which is provoking interest and engagement.
Do all games say something about human nature? Hmm, maybe, I'll even go so far as probably, while rejecting Luke Cran's formulation out of hand. But I point to these caveats: we might well be saying about the world rather than human nature as such, and that it's only there in an implicit, mood music sort of way.
I agree with your point that "moral dimension" as you put is under investogated for sim games. I totally agree that they can benefit from this, but primarily in the sense of filling out human in-game interactions and motivations. They will be a thickener added to the existing material, and in some cases the actual conduct of play may become superficially similar. But I don't think they will be engaged with the same way; they will be lumped in with other forms of cause-and-effect rather than explored in their own right.
David Berg:
Quote from: Simon C on March 20, 2010, 11:36:37 AM
people are saying "Of course Right to Dream is useful - with Right to Dream you can think about simulation and appropriate emulation" and I'm all "nuh-uh, that works for ANY game".
I agree (that it works for any game)! It's not uniquely true for Sim, it's just especially true.
If you get your challenges and premises rolling, you might be able to get by with less perfection on the simulation/emulation/etc. front (as Gareth just said). If the simulation/emulation/etc. is the point, your standards might get more exacting.
It's also worth noting Constructive Denial (willfully experiencing the fiction as an active arbiter of what can/can't happen in play, rather than maintaining awareness that it's just people making shit up) as a limiting factor on the tools available in Right to Dream play.
So, all the stuff I mentioned in my prior post can help or hurt any roleplay, but it can absolutely make or break Sim play.
As for a moral dimension, isn't that endemic to sentients in conflicts? The only way to lose it would be to play automatons or encounter zero resistance. Otherwise, "What will you do to get what you want?" is out there.
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