thread: 2009-07-26 : Very Briefly about Authority
On 2009-07-29, Josh W wrote:
cc, sometimes people are seriously passionate about "preserving" their character, my brother does it all the time: He's so invested in them within their context that he can't just copy and paste them out of the SIS if the game goes the wrong way, like another friend of mine does. He's just that invested in what is going on right now, even if a portion of his investment is fear of loss. So for him injury to a character is a big thing, and mechanics alike hitpoints are a means of protecting that character from negative change.
If you can deal with those people, you're onto a winner, because the mild preference brigade will for the first time be able to play with them!
On the last paragraph, dead right, authority is made irrelevant because everyone is in agreement or close to it, so someone can actually suggest stuff that is not "their job" and no body minds, the point is the authority issue dissolves.
Course, "creative intent" is not the whole story; there are many players for whom the advantage of lone authority over their character (and a turn structure that requires answers about their character), is that it puts them on the spot creatively, and makes a place where only they can answer. Carving out regions for challenge, even creative challenge, is an important part of setting up differing authority. I remember two friends playing chess and getting pissed off that I was mentioning what they could do, because they wanted the challenge, they wanted the hotseat. I've seen authority work that way in games too, towards the cause of spotlight time and decision making space.
Callan, that's sort of poetic. I can understand the sense of betrayal that some people can have when people start playing about like that; thank God people are forgiving. But for the sake of completeness, a rule can be vulnerable; a rule in action is different to a rule on paper, because the former is a way people coordinate themselves, and the latter is a description of a potential way of doing that, so when a rule structure stops being practised because it is overwhelmed by other forms of behaviour, yep, it was vulnerable. If you embrace that idea, you can look at why "drift" happens, or why we design new games, or indeed why we renegotiate contracts. Because the rules aren't the objective, they are the means to human purposes.
