thread: 2009-12-04 : TAKE IT TO YOUR BLOG, BAKER
On 2009-12-10, Vincent wrote:
Now I can refer to Your 3 Insights and say better what I mean. Your game expresses your point of view on three things (its subject matter, roleplaying as a practice, real live human nature), and every rule is its own small part of one, two, or all three of those expressions.
So a rule like "when my guy attacks yours, the group decides how badly your guy gets hurt" says something about roleplaying as a practice. A rule like "when my guy attacks yours with a big gun, your guy gets hurt more badly than with a small gun" says something about roleplaying as a practice, PLUS about the game's subject matter, or about real human nature, or both.
I said up top: "'RPG rules coordinate social interaction, that's all' is the position from which you begin to design, not the end sum of design." All you have to work with are the social interactions of the players, yes. But nobody loves a game just because it manipulates their social interactions.
