thread: 2009-06-08 : Restating: Fictional Causes and Realization
On 2009-06-09, Guy Shalev wrote:
Christian, I've actually come to a realization the other day on why freeform chats, or even not entirely freeform chats are so much about the descriptions and the small stuff, which results in a soap-opera mode of play: They often lack the ability of actually bringing forth concrete and real change. To put it in Vincent's words, they can't burn the building, they can't do XYZ, so they're left with talking a lot about things that are small.
Perhaps the relevance to us is clear - the players (including GM) need to have a real ability to affect events, if you want them to truly do things.
Vincent, I hope I'm not overly pimping myself, but I'm going to link to myself some. I really agree with what Frank said, regarding "Such games still sound great in a write-up but to me, they're leaving a bad taste, like reading a good book way too fast.", especially the "in a write-up". There's the point where we have "Stories later", as the story is constructed after play, as I think we always construct story after an activity. Just like humans are pattern creating engines, they are also story creating engines (see Pratchett, Stewart and Cohen's The Science of Discworld 2, and the concept of "Narrativium").
It doesn't matter whether a story is created now or not, but we fabricate something later, and I sometimes fear that as we move to "AP Report" bennies instead of "Theory" bennies, that we've again made a slight mistake, forgetting that it's the AP that matters, not the report of it. And thus we can also create games, and play them in a way that it's the report that's designed to shine, rather than the game. My post from yesterday about mechanics potentially robbing the emotional impact from games addresses this, and seems like a close cousin to your reply to Christian.
