thread: 2005-05-20 : Things on Character Sheets
On 2005-05-20, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Very cool.
But... (you saw that coming, right?) the little arrows in your diagram go both ways. The things written down on paper (cues) are not only an attempt to approximate the things in our heads (SIS). Sometimes the mechanical cues tell us stuff about the imagined character that we didn't know beforehand.
To (mis?)quote Ron Edwards, "sometimes the dice tell you that today is the day your character gets kicked to the curb." And likewise, even something as mechanics-fiddly as "Hmmm, I have a spare 1/2 point, what's a neat skill, oh, okay, 'small sailboat'—now why does he have THAT?" can prompt you to imagine your character more richly.
I'm thinking particularly of Tony Lower-Basch's CAPES here, where you write down a bunch of often loosely worded abilities and often end up discovering just what they mean in play. But DiTV does this too, especially when you look at the Fallout list and think "Oh! It'd be cool if she changed like THAT!"
But yeah, the essential point: a character's not real, it's just a tool for the real person playing. Yes.
