thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-18, cc wrote:
Vincent: It's easy! Since satisfying drama comes from passionate characters in action against adversity, all a game system has to do to ease the burden on the GM is to (a) make sure that the characters the players create and play are passionate, (b) make sure that there's adversity for the characters to act against, and (c) make sure that nothing then interferes with the characters' action against the adversity.
I'm sure this is true, as a description of satisfying drama. I'm less convinced that "satisfying drama" is axiomatically valuable in RPG. I've often seen characters that are motivated by drives that are decidedly non-passionate, being curious, explorative, mercenary, cynical etc. It is certainly true that they can subsequently become passionate through play, but the idea that characters should be created in this state from the get go feels alien to me, a sort of playing before you play. Also, I can easily imagine/remember instances of play that never achieved such an emotional pitch and which were nonetheless satisfying.
