[Beholden] Ronnies feedback
Ron Edwards:
The Game B version of Beholden is what you want to do, so OK. I don't see much need to debate the point because the Ronnies are about you designing the game and you're stating your vision and values for it quite clearly.
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Here's a specific question: Do you agree with my assessment, and if so, to what extent do you believe Games A and B are incompatible in my rules?
I agree with your assessment of the basic descriptive difference between Games A and B.
I've only read the original draft of Beloved, and my comments here apply there as well: I think introducing ambiguity, or rather, customizability, to the fictional set-up is counter-productive. I see it differently from you: that Game B doesn't make it personal, it makes it safe.
I do see A and B as incompatible textual concepts. You either permit such customizing or you don't - you can't make "optional" into an option to make the game "both."
Again, please don't read this as advocacy. The game's yours and should reflect your own ideals or visions.
Best, Ron
Baxil:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 19, 2011, 12:55:53 PM
I've only read the original draft of Beloved, and my comments here apply there as well: I think introducing ambiguity, or rather, customizability, to the fictional set-up is counter-productive. I see it differently from you: that Game B doesn't make it personal, it makes it safe.
Now that is fascinating! Can you elaborate, on "safe" in particular?* I'd like to listen (not debate). And if that means you advocating for Game A, I am explicitly asking for it.
The truth is -- once I finish my current playtest -- I'm not very attached to Beholden. It's an experiment. Extending the experiment by rewriting/replaying it once I'm "done", and seeing how a few specific changes can turn it into an entirely different game, I think could be a great exercise for me as a game designer.
BTW, if what I just said contradicts what I've already discussed here - I'm sorry, I'm seeing myself do that with this game (throughout my playtest notes). It's squirming around like an embraced eel. Getting outside perspectives is helping me tamp down the flailing parts, and also to figure out where it's trying to go when I'm not fighting to make it be what I currently want.
- Bax
--
* If the answer involves "read such-and-such in Sex and Sorcery," say so; I ordered a copy on Friday.
Ron Edwards:
As you squirm with the embraced eel called the game, I squirm with the embraced eel called you ...
A lot of this does have to do with the content in Sex & Sorcery, but my precise point here is more of an elaboration or position statement rather than what's described or claimed in the book.
I'm suggesting that given the opportunity to customize (for instance) the characters' genders in either Beloved or Beholden, it is very easy for a person to choose some combination which is in a comfort zone for them. This can arrive in several forms, depending on whether the person is more comfortable opining superficially about their own preferences, or if there is some combination which is so "other" for them that they can objectify it. I've observed the latter frequently when het players wax eloquently about their characters' gay romantic or sexual content in play, but somehow never stray from portraying it in idealized or caricatured form.
My reading of both games is that each presents a (or different facets of a) specific kind of romantic interaction: the pursuit of an ideal.* And it's framed in the gender combination of man-courts-woman, which happens to be the combination most observed and more importantly most institutionalized and situated in terms of power. And as if that weren't enough, we have an exceptionally-developed literature, both classical and modern, which hammers home that "love," i.e. seeking romance and sex via pursuing an ideal, is itself an ideal in specifically this man-courts-woman form.
That is one dense fucking package of claims, expectations, societal norms, and leave-us-not-forget laws to contemplate. And I suggest that it's relevant to everyone, whether in grappling with its internal contradictions when trying to do it, or in grappling with others' expectations or retaliations when doing something else, or whatever. In that sense, it is very real.
My suggestion is that making the game about that will refract into many different - but all confrontational - responses across the range of everyone who plays the game. I also suggest that specifying any other specific gender combination might do the same, and be interesting on its own hook, but that this one is especially punchy because of its direct association with institutional power.
Whereas (to continue with my suggestion) permitting the game to be itself refracted across the range of players encountering it would to some extent, meaning in some I think large percentage of people doing it, result in literally neutering it by removing the "you must confront this" aspect of the original version of Beloved and my perceived version of Beholden.
So that's my advocacy for Game A.
Best, Ron
* It so happens that my own experiences have led me to think that combining (i) seeking romantic or sexual contact with (ii) pursuing an ideal is much like taking a barbecue fork and shoving it inches deep into my own eye, so I am not really a target audience for either game. But that's enough "all about me" for this discussion.
Ben Lehman:
I think that there's some weirdness here because Beholden and Beloved have very different rules.
In Beloved, the main character is you. Not, like, some abstract figure. You. The player.
In Beholden, unless you are a shape-changing goddess, the main character is not you. It's some other character.
I suggest that this means that the solution for Beholden is not the solution that Beloved uses.
yrs--
--Ben
Ron Edwards:
That's a good point. Not having read the revised version of Beloved, I don't think it's reasonable for me to include any comments about it.
So let's stick with Beholden, all by itself.
Best, Ron
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