thread: 2005-03-15 : Immersion Zen
On 2005-03-15, Brennan wrote:
The zen may require a leisurely pace. It may be that games like Dogs and The Mountain Witch and My Life with Master play too unremittingly - they don't give the in-play downtime nor the between-play creative power that a less immediate game would.
I don't think so. I really think it has a lot to do with character ownership. I, like Kat, am only somewhat amused by Universalis, whereas Dogs and even Mountain Witch gave me much more of the role-playing ya-ya (zen, if you will).
I think because Universalis is focused so strongly on the mechanics of building the story, rather than the unique and fully owned character available in the other games, it doesn't satisfy as fully.
Your examples are all laser focused on a single type of story, told over and over, but these stories are all specifically aimed at illuminating character, or some aspect that is emotionally related to character. Universalis can do just about anything, but it definitely seems to put the players at a remove from the characters in the story.
