thread: 2005-03-18 : Audience?
On 2005-03-19, Ghoul wrote:
The reason, I think, is that many game systems and/or play styles, even if they empower players when their characters are present, depower them when they are not. Thus, while you are right and they can be Engaged when Audience, it is much more common that they are left to do so "on their own" rather than with support.
You're very right that PTA is good for this. I listed earlier a few other published systems with interesting ideas in this area that I could think of right when the topic came up.
One question I'm interested is "does the subset of games where Audience is limited in Engagement have some advantages or is Audience Engagement inherently and automatically a good thing?" It's pretty clear you've already answered this for yourself, so you don't seem to find the concept of Audience interesting. I think, thought, it may be an open question and there may be some value in the Audience having different access to story influence than non-Audience and different impacts on the resulting play based on just how those differences are structured. Even though, as Vincent points out, they must buy-in to events for them to be true, this in no way demands his second point be anything beyond the informal social feedback level.
Clearly, the decision made here would effect play, but perhaps not only in good ways. Thus, I tend to think that there is an Audience role into which players shift during play, a state that has more power than non-player (non-players having no role at all in play, by definition) but less than the current "on-stage" players (i.e., those with characters in the current scene). There is a wide spectrum of Audience role between "none" (which may or may not be an inherently broken point on the spectrum; I'm not convinced one way or the other) and, say, Universalis where, at any point any player (with at least one coin to hand) can step onto stage either as a character or an event. PTA strikes such a balance, with Audience empowered to do some things through fan-mail but not anything.
The issue at hand, I think, is what impact various Audience participations have on play, including what minimum role Audience must have (Vincent's initial comment), what the nature of their role can be (much of this discussion's listing of examples), and ultimately what the impact of defining Audience's role can have on play. I find that quite interesting.
