thread: 2011-01-25 : Social Context and Design Scales
On 2011-01-26, Vincent wrote:
Larry: In 1st Edition Shadowrun, a partially cybered physical adept with a smartbow, just because of how the game's different initiative, damage, armor and attack rules worked, could just kill anybody anytime. Not being able to just kill anybody anytime was a barrier between what are my choices now? and what is are we doing in this game? - so playing Travis' partially cybered physical adept with a smartbow was like having a superqueen in Chess who could move to any square she wanted. It collapsed the long-term game down to "oh. I kill him." "Oh. Checkmate again."
More on point (c) coming! Point (c) is the whole point.
Gregor: Good question! Nope! Creative Agenda (which we still call Creative Agenda) is long-since given by the time we're talking about this stuff.
What are we doing over the course of the game? We're playing young men and women with books and guns who travel from town to town dealing with their crimes and trying to help them, and seeing how they themselves cope with what they see and do. Or else we're taking turns playing protagonist and antagonist in closely-related short stories defined by the intersections of cool sf shocks and social issues we're all interested in.
Creative Agendas underlie them all, but what do we do in this game? has a unique and specific answer game by game.
