thread: 2005-05-20 : Things on Character Sheets
On 2005-05-20, Collin M. Trail wrote:
Great stuff.
So I think I'm with you on the basic concept of character sheet as a player resource. This sounds pretty close to what I was writing about the character sheet communicating things about the character between players and also helping to determine authority for making statements. If there is an important difference between these conceptions, we might want to clarify it before moving on.
One thing that occurs to me looking at this thread and my earlier writing- I think I had the idea that the mechanics which use character sheets should be realistic in the back of my head, and I can see how that shouldn't always be the case. In a game, it is most important that the mechanics be fun, and in a game that tries to address a premise, the mechanics should support that. If verisimiltude is desired, and it is hard for me to imagine when it isn't, the mechanism should respect the "rules" of the setting, but this isn't the same as saying that realism should dictate the outcome, just that the outcome should be compatible with realism. (However realism happens to be defined in the setting.)
I'm still struggling with my earlier question, though, which could be stated as how to apportion credibility so that the player's vision of the character is respected, while still providing interesting conflict. The two approaches I have seen to this problem both seem to fail. If the character sheet gives traits, and the rules try to describe what the odds are for various results in various circumstances, than the range of possibilities will be extremely limited, or some moderator will have incredible fiat power. If the player is given complete control over narration in certain circumstances, that seems to take the excitement out of conflict. How do we resolve this?
