thread: 2009-12-18 : Seed content
On 2010-01-22, Bwian wrote:
If you don't provide seed content yourself, you're not leaving it up to the group, but to the random media crap-soup we all swim in.
This seems a little harsh. There are all kinds of limitations on group and individual creativity etc. that vary from person to person. The 'crap-soup' is some kind of indicator of the content that interests people?
Won't some groups want (or need) more (or different) seed content than others? And individuals within a given group probably vary too. In what I think of as traditional RPGs, much of the seeding is left to the 'GM' (or whatever) - which might connect to the 'necessary leader(s)' someone mentioned early on.
(Thought: maybe part of the problem with relying on inputs from the 'crap-soup' is that these inputs are not 'seeds' - they are finished products, full-grown trees as it were, grown from a seed someone else planted and nurtured.)
The more concrete in the fiction you can make your rules... the more momentum they can build in play.
Some RPGs are so burdened with rules concrete-in-the-fiction that those rules disperse momentum.
I think the idea of 'seed content' is a very useful one. If anything, I want an image or a reference or a constraint or hint (or... rumour :)) that gets me moving, without giving me a destination. But this is just me.
In each moment of play, the seed content can be, if you design your process to work with it, last moment's content, live and electric.
A very attractive and interesting concept... if achieved the need for 'initial' seed content would be minimal.
Finally, you limit yourself to expressing only your insights into roleplaying as a practice.
I take your point as: Are we designing for designers? Or for role-players?
B
