thread: 2009-05-07 : Explaining the Right to Dream
On 2009-05-12, John Kim wrote:
There's something here I'm not clear on. From Vincent's #1 and #2.
1. Over the course of play, everybody affirms, nobody challenges, my character's badassitude. Maybe because nobody came up with a good enough challenge and never tried; maybe somebody tried but I snapped at them out of the game and they backed off. Maybe for whatever reason, the reason why doesn't matter. The fact is, badassitude affirmed, wish fulfilled.
2. Over the course of play, at least once, somebody, some in-game circumstance, gave my character's badassitude a real challenge, and I took it. I accepted the challenge as a legitimate part of play - maybe grudgingly, maybe with enthusiasm, it doesn't matter which. The point is, I didn't get my wish-fulfillment badassery this time, because instead something challenged it.
I see these as far as they go, but this is only looking at treatment of a single trait (bad-assed-ness) of a single character. This doesn't describe a game as a whole.
So, for example, a game might have three characters whose bad-assed-ness is always affirmed, but one PC designed as the new guy whose bad-assed-ness is questioned. Further, you might have a game where bad-assed-ness was always affirmed, but morality was questioned.
