[S/lay w/ Me] The Cowboy and The Clockwork Hacker
Callan S.:
That doesn't seem quite right...kind of like shaving off a bunch of dreadlocks to fit into military service in an orderly manner...or even into retail service in an orderly manner...
Eero Tuovinen:
Many games with this sort of formalistic system are very easy to adapt to different visuals and superficial genre conventions. I don't know if that's particularly a reason for the game's designer to strive to hit that possibility very insistently. A good example that comes to mind is Dust Devils: the game definitely has cachet for non-western play, but the original presentation of the game would not be so powerful if the game was introduced in a generalized manner. Fastlane is actually a good example of the opposite phenomenon: I think that the game would've gained more attention if it wasn't so meticulous about bleaching any genre-specific color out of its presentation until the only thing left is a superbly generic rules set described in the most abstract of manners.
I myself like S/lay w/Me's genre and color a lot, so I'm probably the wrong person to say this, but regardless: specific color and literary genre are often very important to the creative process of writing a roleplaying game, for which reason it's not necessarily a good idea to try to get clever with refitting your game into a genre you don't appreciate yourself. Not only is the creative impulse done injustice, but the overall quality of the end-product might suffer, too. I imagine that S/lay w/Me will find its audience from among people who can appreciate or at least overlook its chosen genre; the existence of people who don't appreciate its surface gloss isn't argument enough for worrying about its presentation, for where is the game that everybody everywhere likes?
That being said, "multiple covers" is a funny and appealing idea. As my own game Zombie Cinema garners similar feedback about how the game would be so much more popular with aliens instead of zombies or whatever, I have to say that it's not necessarily rewarding for the game's creator to fiddle with multiple presentations once the game creation process is over and you're ready to leave the project behind. Perhaps a Final Fantasy version is something for interested fans to work out in the Internet?
Jasper Flick:
I'm with Eero 100% (which I'm often, but don't bother to say much).
Putting a new flavor on something is precisely what a fan community is good at. If something really interesting does come out of such an activity and gets a large following, you could always decide to do something with it later. Otherwise, such "reflavoring" most likely won't see significant return on investment.
jburneko:
Eero,
I more or less agree with you in full. With a minor quibble in that I think when gamers re-skin games that's a lot more cognitive work that goes into that than what Sayler and I did. When people play Jedi with Dogs in the Vineyard there's some non-trivial re-contextualizing of the game elements that goes into that. I think that Jarred's Concrete Angels re-work of Dust Devils is a similarly considered application.
Sayler and I just played the game. Period. When Sayler was asked to "visually describe his character in 10 words" he clued in on the phrase "hunted outlaw" and a song he happened to have stuck in his head. We didn't then have to very carefully and consciously apply or re-apply the rules to better speak to that material.
Mostly, I was just remembering Willow's post and I linked what she said there to Laura's very similar reaction to the art. I included that as a "message" to anyone else who may be having similar feeling about the game. Hey, try it anyway, it works with whatever turns you on if the art in the book doesn't.
Jesse
bayonder:
Where can I get this game, I MUST KNOW!!!!
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