thread: 2005-03-11 : Love, Friendship, Romance, Sex
On 2005-03-15, timfire wrote:
Tony: I don't think its mechanical support per se that makes those types of... err, negative behaviors acceptable in the games you mention. I think what's important is that those games support the expectation of those behaviors. Players go into the game expecting those types of behaviors on the part of the GM &/or other players. Those are subtley different things.
Mechanical support goes along way with building expectation, but it's not an end-all. Case in point, tMW explicitly & mechanically supports player/player betrayal. But I've seen players hesitate to betray because they weren't sure if that type of behavior was acceptable, and I've seen playing get upset that they were betrayed.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that a huge chunk of this stuff (love & sex included) is about Social Contract. Without an open Social Contract, no rules set will justify this type of behavior.
—Tim
