thread: 2008-01-07 : Another year's worth
On 2008-02-13, Ben Lehman wrote:
Huh.
Here's my thought on the matter after a showering.
In Shock:, particularly (although also in PTA to some extent and in MLWM), you decide beforehand what's at stake* in the game, and what remains is to determine the means by which it reaches crisis. I make my guy, he's a member of the clone army, and I go "my story goal is to express my individuality." Maybe expressing my individuality is going to end up being this complicated thing between me and this one engineer in my unit, or maybe it's going to involve subsuming the entire earth into a hive mind consciousness under my authority, but ultimately it's going to come down to me expressing individuality. It's the means, and the means only, that are to be determined.
In Sorcerer (and lots of other games), my character has the means written down on his sheet: Sorcery, violence, suasion. What we determine during play is not those means, but rather, what is at stake? Why is this guy doing this?
yrs—
—Ben
* Can I use this term in an ordinary sense without people being confused and thinking I'm talking about Dogs-style conflict resolution? It remains to be seen.
