thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-21, Alex Abate Biral wrote:
Rafael Posted:
Most creative artists (whether authors, composers, or visual artists) struggle with "writer's block" or similar problems. They get "stuck" doing the same thing over and over again, or maybe they run out of ideas, period. Many, many good writers use some kind of procedures to break through that: they may draw random words out of a dictionary, pull a story out of a random newspaper, or even roll dice (there are whole schools of "aleatoric composition", for example, in the classical music world).
(snip...)
I think an important point here (sorry if you already figured out), is that many of the rules about when and how rolling is interesting aren't based on "rules stuff".You still need a human to interpret the rules and decide whether a rule should be applied in a situation. For example, setting the stakes for a roll in Burning Wheel still requires the people involved to understand what would make a good stake. What the system does provide, however, is a good idea of how to do so.
Rafael Posted:
Do you claim that allowing players mechanical means to shape the story will allow everyone to enjoy the game even if there isn't a consensus of what a good story would be? Because that seems unlikely; we've discussed rolling dice to decide between equally satisfying outcomes, but that presupposes that they are equally satisfying for all.
I wouldn't claim this. Even people playing for the same kind of stories and who have similar literary taste may not mesh well together in an rpg and I doubt there is any kind of system that can change how all these people interact (though it might be possible to find a common ground between some of them).
But I think you are looking at this by the wrong angle. For example, if I said that the stories created by games with shared authorship are good, you will think they probably aren't better than ones created by the best storyteller in the group, as the people who aren't so good will just pollute it. I think (sorry if I am wrong) that you are specifically looking for things players might want to do but the GM wouldn't allow them.
The way a good rpg with shared authorship works, however, is a little like culinary. I, for example, love tomato sauce. But to make a good tomato sauce, you can't use just tomatoes. You need other ingredients, like garlic, onions, salt, etc. So, these games try to find a way to mix the people playing, all of which have unique qualities as a director for the story, to create a play session they wouldn't be able to create if only one of them took the GM duties.
