What is Right to Dream for?
Frank Tarcikowski:
Simon, sure, I agree. I didn’t mean that theme. I meant the other Theme, the answer to Premise. But I’m probably the wrong person to argue about this because the whole concept of Addressing Premise never really worked for me. It’s just not a useful angle to me.
I was thinking the other day that I would like to hear your take on Step On Up. That’ll maybe clarify what exactly you mean by “theme”, too.
- Frank
ThoughtBubble:
Hey Simon,
I'm a little lost. Are we still on "There is no Right to Dream play"? It seems to me like we could be talking about any and all of the following:
All play is Story Now PlayThere aren't 3 discreet and separate Creative Agendasdiscussing games as they sit between "Challenging theme vs. Following theme" Creative Agendas are worthless for anythingWhat is Role-Playing really about
Where do you want this conversation to go? I'd really like to say something that can help you out here.
- Daniel
David Berg:
Quote from: Simon C on March 24, 2010, 09:37:01 PM
How robust a game's theme is to various character and player actions is a function of design largely, and theme partly, I'm thinking . . . Unquestioned aspects of the theme essentially become part of situation
Yeah! This makes sense to me. Let me see where this gets us: We already have the ability to talk about baked-in situation. Like, Dogs' missions of judgment, D&D's dungeon crawls, and any game's "Here's what the characters will be doing." So, what's added by viewing this thematically?
By being aware of the human questions implicit in the game's overarching situation, we can create specific situations in play that address those, adding a fuller resonance to play.
If you have a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff, how is that interesting in the context of real-world player concerns? Maybe folks are interested in how buddies bond through facing danger together. If so, the group might opt to play through things like fight aftermaths and medical care, which might otherwise be skipped.
Is this along the lines of what you're thinking, Simon?
In the monster-killing example, there are lots of potential themes. I'm not sure how is best for the group to tackle one or more of them. Maybe they need to actually discuss "how does this resonate for you?" pre-play? Because maybe it turns out that this group of players is interested in the morality of dehumanizing their adversaries; but the game never raises that concern, and the GM doesn't prep for it, and no one scene-frames toward it, so it never sees play.
Quote from: Simon C on March 24, 2010, 09:37:01 PM
Small moments of play, where your characters make choices like "kill the hostage or not" or moments of seeming colour, like the character humming the ballad, are given meaning by their reference to the overarching theme(s).
I'm quite disoriented on this point. What qualifies as an "overarching theme"? Is it a human concern that exerts an influence on the whole of play, a la your "skewer" formulation? Or is it just any old human concern that happens to arise at a given moment?
That was my point with the Delve examples. It seems weird to think of ballad-humming as having meaning in reference to "How much evil magic will you do to rise from peasanthood?" I wouldn't know how to prep or frame scenes toward encouraging an act like humming.
If we ditch the specifics and generalize the game's theme to "What will you do to get what you want?", then we're back to the land of theme that's so dilute and universal that it seems meaningless to discuss. Or, maybe discussing it isn't the point: the point is providing for it in terms of meaningful choices and obstacles, and that's true regardless of color or genre. (A la Luke's "All roleplaying" contention.)
What do you think?
Ps,
-David
Simon C:
Contracycle.
We could go back and forth with "I proved it" and "no you didn't", but I don't think we'd get anywhere. Read what I've written so far. If it seems like a compelling and useful way of understanding gaming, let's talk. If it doesn't, maybe we could just go our seperate ways?
Frank,
The Step on Up thread is in the works.
Daniel,
I guess this is a "what is roleplaying really about" conversation, at the heart of it, though it's kind of a fatuous question. What I'm saying, I think, is that the core of a coherant game's creative agenda is one or more themes, which are explored through play, where "explored" can mean anything from "challenged, addressed and questioned" to "affirmed, celebrated and reinforced".
David,
Yeah! You're asking some exciting, challenging questions.
I think that "design" means both what game designers do, creating system and often "baked in" situation, and also the work GMs and players do, creating characters, positioning them in the setting, creating opposition and opportunities. For example, when you sit down to play Cyberpunk 2020 and you say "let's play a team of off-license paramedics scrambling for insurance money!" I think that's an act of design. And yes, when you as the GM or as a player choose to play out a particular scene rather than not, or choose to apply a particular rules subsystem or not, you're making an aesthetic judgement according to your sense of theme.
I think the appeal of many traditional designs has been their ability to be shaped by the individual groups to address the particular theme(s) they're interested in, to allow play to shift over time and to cater to individual players. I think the trade-off for that is that they often don't offer particularly strong system tools for addressing theme, and that they leave a lot of the design work in the hands of the players and the GM.
An "overarching theme" is what turns the individual moments of play, the actions of the characters in the world, into a meanigful story. I mean "meaningful" in the most basic sense, as in "able to be understood". The events of play are no longer just "things happening" but rather events in a narrative. I'm invoking some literary and psychological theory here that I don't understand super well myself. Is this making sense to you though?
contracycle:
Quote from: Simon C on March 25, 2010, 12:31:34 PM
We could go back and forth with "I proved it" and "no you didn't", but I don't think we'd get anywhere. Read what I've written so far. If it seems like a compelling and useful way of understanding gaming, let's talk. If it doesn't, maybe we could just go our seperate ways?
Not as such, because your argument is that the terminology used here should change. I have an interest in that; I have even more of an interest that you seem to be arguing that Sim should be downgraded to merely being a subset of Narr, and that Narr is "true" roleplaying. I've read read you've written, and I don't think your taking on board the objections that have been raised. Thus...
Quote
I guess this is a "what is roleplaying really about" conversation, at the heart of it, though it's kind of a fatuous question. What I'm saying, I think, is that the core of a coherant game's creative agenda is one or more themes, which are explored through play, where "explored" can mean anything from "challenged, addressed and questioned" to "affirmed, celebrated and reinforced".
OK, you think that, I don't think that, and I'll explain why. As I've already pointed out, you're shifting the interest of exploration from the game wotld as imagined to some meaning which is interpreted onto it. I don't think this is at all descriptive of a sizable chunk of RPG that actually goes on. I've often seen people interested in and excited by a setting as such; it is the setting which engages their interest. What they therefore want is an excuse to go and wander about in that setting, explore its internal causality and consistency. This is exploration for its own sake not in service to addressing or questioning some alleged theme. If there is to be a theme, which I don't consider strictly necessary, I would contend that it operates only at the Technique level - it is a tool as much as the pencils and dice. It is not the point of play, and it is not central to the CA. It is something which provides the excuse they are looking for, a framework for the action in play. But it's a convenience, a pretext, no more than that.
Quote
I think that "design" means both what game designers do, creating system and often "baked in" situation, and also the work GMs and players do, creating characters, positioning them in the setting, creating opposition and opportunities. For example, when you sit down to play Cyberpunk 2020 and you say "let's play a team of off-license paramedics scrambling for insurance money!" I think that's an act of design. And yes, when you as the GM or as a player choose to play out a particular scene rather than not, or choose to apply a particular rules subsystem or not, you're making an aesthetic judgement according to your sense of theme.
I totally agree thast what you decide there is an act of design, and I have on many occassions pointed out the fact that we've done a lot of work on system design, with good reason and results, and relatively little on how the actual game-at-the-table is designed. Yes indeed, a game about off-license paramedics is going to be very different to a game about mercenary street-samurai. All of this is true, but that doesn't imply that the resulting appreciation of the game is anything remotely resembling an aesthetic judgement. It still seems to me that appreciation can be, and is, often located in exploration for its own sake, or in pursuit of challenge. The presence (or otherwise) of a unifying them to the actually represented action doesn't alter this central purpose of the activity.
Quote
An "overarching theme" is what turns the individual moments of play, the actions of the characters in the world, into a meanigful story. I mean "meaningful" in the most basic sense, as in "able to be understood". The events of play are no longer just "things happening" but rather events in a narrative.
Which of course begs the question, why should the output be story at all? Why is a "narrative" a necessary outcome? A lot of my play has had no narrative, never resembled story in any sense. As mentioned previously, I do see utility in importing some elements of story and narrative structure for various purposes, but it simply cannot be said that that the purpose of play was the creation of a story. It is evident that for story, anything that doesn't contribute to and drive that story forward should be cut, but I would contend this is wholly inimical to sim play. If the purpose of play is primarily exploration, then many incidents in play may be interesting to the participants without having any pertinence whatsoever to any alleged or presumed story. When asked why he climbed Everest, Mallory replied "Because it's there". I think that alone is sufficient to make experience of the IS meaningful.
Some elements of theme may be useful as Techniques, but I cannot see how it can be claimed that it is necessary. Your argument keeps coming back to the ideas of story and judgement, which are precisely the elements which make it unconvincing for me. You're imposing something which is central to narr as a universal good applicable to all of RPG. I don't think this is at all true. Time and again, RPG's have been built on things like Tolkien or Star Wars not because players were particularly interested in telling stories in those settings, but because they wanted to immerse themselves, or more precisely re-immerse themselves, into that setting. They're interested, essentially, for the toys and the cool colour. None of this is necessary or indeed particularly relevent to theme or premise; the narratives of these properties could easily be reproduced in other settings. That's just not what drives the interest for many people; what drives it is the setting itself.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page