thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-18, Paul T. wrote:
Well, the thing is, solitary authors and composers are not a good analogy for roleplaying games, which are 1) a group endeavour, and 2) linear. By linear, I mean that you start somewhere and you go somewhere, without (usually) the option to go back and edit, or write the end first and then the beginning, and then rewrite the end. It's in "real time", not a product you go back to finalize and then present to an audience.
So, a better analogy might be improv theatre, or other collective improvisation, like improvised jazz. If you question adherents of any such artforms, you will find they use all kinds of rules and structures to make their collective improvisations make sense and to make sure they don't step on each others' toes. Both as a group (rules like "Say yes, and" for improv actors, deciding on a song form and key for jazz musicians, etc) and individually (many performers will set personal challenges for themselves, creative constraints to work with).
Those have powerful parallels to roleplaying games.
Consider this: in a lot of roleplaying circles, there is talk of "GM burnout". That's when a GM just gets too tired of running a game and needs to play for a while. The game typically suffers heavily, and many groups are on the lookout for ways to minimize that.
Now, why would this happen, if a game was fun and easy to play? The players in those groups typically do not experience "creative burnout". Just the GMs.
Carefully chosen structure helps there, too. I, personally, don't think any game should push its players to "burn out", assuming they're having a good time and want to keep playing. Spreading around responsibilities and demands is helpful there, as well as making the duties we carry out more easily performed.
Does that help? I don't know if I'm just blabbering into the wind, or making sense.
