thread: 2011-04-25 : We are creative equals
On 2011-05-12, Josh W wrote:
Linking to those points where the two threads overlap:
It occurs to me that writing principles by themselves as some set of kantian maxims or ten commandments may be easy to misunderstand. A bit of storytelling with example situations or even structured problems for the players to play out might be needed to communicate them clearly.
But that's not the only way to introduce them to people; I think it quite likely that many people only properly learn the principles of apocolypse world or burning wheel because of how they rub against systems designed to work with them. Perhaps you can make a game that embodies all of those principles with a mechanical support structure that easily swaps out.
In other words you make a game with a mechanical structure that is intended to only be fixed for four sessions or so, and then helps people channel their experiences within those four sessions to change the rules.
(Although that is a surreal way round; make an rpg to teach principles to help people to make their own rpg!)
Also considering gauging reactions, if the marginalia function was still working on this blog I probably would have given some little thumbs up or something to some of the ones I didn't comment on, but that's not the thing to be looking for, because really responding to principles like that is something that you do over a space of 2 months, writing an actual play report and saying "we decided to go with Emily's principle on this [] thread, and it worked like this....".
It's a slow burn thing.
I've still got the "start with "what are people doing" then story comes after" thing ticking round my head, I suspect that has some relationship to good storytelling practice and building a sense of place/life.
Did you have any principles/tips about doing prep research?
In games like that I tend to get to points where I don't really know what it's like to live there, empathy/imagination blocks. I spot that gap as we're drawing things up, so between games I sort of vainly hunt out historical novels or something, but mainly I just blunder through it in play till something clicks!
