What is Step on Up for?
Simon C:
Hi Jasper,
I'm not really interested in the question of what is or is not a roleplaying game. What I'm interested in is the question of what is most useful for explaining what happens in roleplaying games.
I accept completely that for your play, challenge is by far the most important factor in explaining why you play the way you do. For sure, it's the point of play for you. What I'd like to suggest, however, is that I think it's very unlikely that it's the sole point of play, or that there are not other concerns that motivate you to be playing this game, this way.
If we assert that challenge is the only thing that matters to your play, we're left with a lot of questions:
What are the characters' personalities for?
What is a "comic foil" for?
What is the game's setting for?
What is the game's colour for? (i.e. why are you playing fantasy warriors, rather than just pieces on a board?)
What is the point of organising challenges into a string of encounters, rather than as isolated events?
What is the SIS for?
I think this last question deserves a little more attention. I briefly addressed it in my second post above, but I wasn't very clear.
You suggest (and I think maybe this was Callan's point as well?) that the Shared Imagined Space is also an arena for challenge - that you use things like knowledge of the setting, mastery of the rules, deductive logic and so on to solve problems in the game, and that this takes place in the shared imagined space.
Granted. I've seen this in play, and in fact this was a large factor in my Labyrinth Lord play, as I describe above. I know what that kind of play looks like. In his blog Vincent talks about "Unreliable Currency". Unreliable currency what Vincent calls the kinds of advantage you get from manipulating the shared imagined space - where a judgement of the fiction is required to know if a certain rule applies.
My experience is that as people get more invested in challenge, their willingness to accept unreliable currency is less. In a game of chess, no one would accept a rule that you could only capture another piece if your piece was attacking from the higher ground. It barely even makes sense in the context of chess.
Things only enter the shared imagined space by the consent of the players in the game. I'm suggesting that if challenge were the sole focus of the game, that no player would assent to things entering the shared imagined space that disadvantaged their character, unless the rules specifically dictated that thing.
greyorm:
Quote from: Simon C on March 27, 2010, 12:07:54 AM
Sorry, but I'm literally unable to discern a point in what you've written. Can you rephrase?
I will second that. I started seeing what I thought would be points, Callan, but then found myself totally unable to parse what you were getting at.
(Also, thinking the use of SIS in this discussion is a boogey-man. Yes, Simon's not quite using it right, but I think we all get what he means in his usage, so a detailed discussion of what SIS "really" is might just drag this thread down into semantics hell.)
Clearly, challenge can be an effective technique to generate a theme*. Someone wants something, there are obstacles to getting it, they confront those obstacles, they succeed or fail. This, and how this comes about, the choices made, says something about the character and the wanted-something.
(* Theme is never a question, it is a statement, so that may be throwing some folks off. I'm blanking on what the "question theme" is actually called, but I get your meaning, so we can keep using "theme" here until someone recalls the correct terminology.)
However, this brings to mind the question: since pseudo-challenges only pretend to resolve anything, if actual challenge addresses theme by virtue of resolving what is done and why, then is it ever "just" challenge (ie: overcoming something to overcome it)?
Callan S.:
Quote from: Simon C on March 27, 2010, 12:07:54 AM
Callan,
Sorry, but I'm literally unable to discern a point in what you've written. Can you rephrase?
I'm describing a playstyle to contrast against what your trying to say. You might not be able to see it.
Jasper Flick:
Quote
My experience is that as people get more invested in challenge, their willingness to accept unreliable currency is less.
What does "get more invested in challenge" mean? Does it mean prefering a known, finite set of rules that can be objectively applied, without room for interpretation? If so, sure! If I want that, I play chess or a computer game. If I'm playing to win, with concrete real-life stuff on the line - like winning money - I don't want to depend on consensus or arbitrary judgment calls. This is definitely not playing a roleplaying game. In fact, it doesn't have much in common with everyday life experiences either.
For my AP, my level of "investment in challenge" is such that I'm willing to accept arbitrary judgment calls, group consensus, unreliable currency, and what have you. In fact, I even like stepping up to the challenge of succeeding when unfavorable - from my point of view - calls are made. This stuff happens all the time in real life too, I can cope with it, no problem.
So no, challenge is not the sole focus of the game. Never claimed it was. "Playing for the challenge" shows my Step of Up priority, but I already illustrated that I enjoy diversions that do not engage priority #1. It's just like you don't "address premise full frontal" 100% during a Story Now session, there is an ebb and flow going on. Other stuff happens, which might be used for more fuel, or might end up being a little break from the intense action. Such breaks are important, but obviously not the main point of any activity.
(Now if you have a serious CA clash (your main priorities are different) then your break becomes another person's moment of action, and vise versa. If a break takes too long or is unwelcome, people "tune out". If this regularly happens in lockstep then you're basically working different shifts. The GM is now dividing his time between different games played with different people. At least, that's my personal experience.)
ThoughtBubble:
Simon,
Loking at your last post to Jasper, it looks like it's possible for a game to contain theme, but have things in it that the players find more important then that theme.
Given this, I feel like you're trying really hard to explain the Big Model to us. You've added theme as a way of selecting what's important to the Exploration of a given game.
I think this is cool, and I feel like you're on the verge of giving us some really good insight on how to use theme as a method of selecting what gets into the SIS.
-Daniel
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