[In A Wicked Age] - Getting our feet under us
Ron Edwards:
Hi James,
I know all that and appreciate it. What you're saying is not disagreeing with me. Obviously Best Interests are written to cut across one another to form conflicts; that's what they're for. My point is that a Best Interest works ... um, best, when it is somehow applied, or will be applied, or is trusted to be applied more deeply, plausibly, and engagingly than just "against." In practice, Tajie's Best Interest might work out well. But in that particular text in the game, that's all we see about her and hence there's an arbitrary quality to her presence in the examples, whereas in real play, we'd know a lot more by then, even if that "a lot more" began only as potential or avenues for later use.
I hate arguing about In A Wicked Age. I even hate discussing it on-line, mostly. People get really twisted up into knots and interpret what others say in the most unsympathetic ways, routinely missing points of agreement. That's why I've been reluctant to post about my own current game. Please, I ask you and everyone else - whatever anyone says about the game, here in this thread, approach it in the assumption that the other person is not saying something stupid or contradictory to what you think or do with the game. No matter how much it looks like it at the outset.
That's why I'd like to see Darcy's list of Best Interests, and even that's only a start - I'd then want to see the characters' "opening concepts" from the Oracles or derived otherwise, and some notions about their various abilities. It all goes together. We aren't going to get anywhere in this thread if we speak abstractly about any/all Best Interests ever, because anyone can take whatever anyone says and twist it or bend it a little to arrive at an unproductive and probably inaccurate disagreement.
Remember, Darcy said outright that his group's list of Best Interests were unintelligible. That is very strong language! That's our starting point. You aren't helping the discussion by pointing out that in your game, you and others play the Best Interests such that they are intelligible, at least not at this point, before we get a better idea about what they even were in his game. Only until we understand that, will comparisons with your game (and mine, or anyone's) be useful.
Darcy, can you help with that information? Unless we get concrete and specific fast, this discussion will go the way of most on-line In A Wicked Age discussions - nowhere and stupid.
Best, Ron
Darcy Burgess:
Hi Ron,
I can help with that. It's coming. I am in the middle of buying a house.
D
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