thread: 2009-07-13 : How About Some Q and A
On 2009-07-22, Carsten wrote:
In the majority of games , there really only one act of assent to in-game authority rather than an ongoing continuous ones. That a person defined as the GM (such as in Storming the Wizards tower) has authority over the world, and can even veto player actions etc. is implicit in agreeing to play the game. This initial agreement needs no more moment-to-moment renewal than adhereing to the bidding rules when you play poker. If all of sudden decide that someone bidding out of game in pocker needs your "moment-to-moment assent", be prepared to come off as someone who doesn't understand the game (to say it nicely).
So if say in Storming the Wizards tower, your character has a streak of bad luck and goes down, and all of a sudden you decide to withhold your "moment-to-moment assent" and say:"no,no, my character doesn't go down, instead i want him to win." Be prepared to have us (the other players) say you cannot withhold your assent to what happened, either you play the game with us according to the rules or you don't. If you don't, you're welcome to run off and play Universalis with yourself, we others will contine to have fun within the evil old-fashioned authorative game rules.
Well, there ARE games where the "moment-to-moment assent" is important, e.g. Universlis, but even there are rules to handle the situation in a manner where your assent doesn't mean anything. If you still insist on not assenting, well, you're out of the game.
You may still hold on to the metaphyiscal theory of "Not actively dissenting implies passive assent". that theory, being metaphysical can't be proven or disproven. I merely wanted to indicate that there are also other, equally valid ways to construct authority, i.e. including it into the definition of how the game is played. Many good games do this, incuding Storming the Wizards Tower.
