thread: 2005-03-23 : Strong Stuff Indeed
On 2005-03-25, Chris wrote:
Hi John,
It's what surrounds it—i.e. the content of the game—that matters. Right?
When we speak about focus in games, its about how consistantly the game hits a type of content on a regular basis. The character sheet and the mechanic bits remind everyone at the table what focus is supposed to be about, the markers in any game(and yes, I recognize D&D has its own form of markers), tell the GM what the player's are about, etc. These things help people hit consistant things in play.
When you don't have that, you don't get consistant "content of the game"... and that is what matters, as you say. If you had a game that was about fighting monsters, and included zero rules for combat, and simply chalked it up to, "Well, its up to the group to make it happen..." that'd be pretty lame game design right? If the content is what matters, you'd kind of want that to be focused, I'd hope.
When we're talking about ST, in its various games, almost always speaks of two themes- self discovery/exploration and a game specific theme ("Evil", "Ecological destruction", "Freedom of thought", etc.). In actual mechanics, and advice given on how to structure a game- we got nothing. Making a personal statement on anything is neither supported by picking a 2 dimensional philosophy/nature/demeanor to stick to, nor by having a prewritten plot handed to you on a plate.
My point is not that only some games have markers- I believe all games have markers, and as Vincent points out, the stuff on the character sheet is "markers" from the designer to the group about what play is about. Just by putting relationships as a resolution factor in Dogs, Trollbabe, and HQ, it instantly makes a part of play focused on the interactions of relationships. Having a *** Contact in WW means what? It means "I hope the GM let's me have a NPC I can interact with... let's cross our fingers"
It has no mechanical back up(nor, in ST, much GMs advice on how to use it either), it's a prayer in the wind that the GM will use it. In the end, might as well not be there, except as a reminder that I poured points into an empty factor on my character sheet.
So D&D, focused game? Yes indeed. It never claims to do Soap Opera. ST? It does claim it and falls short big time. The point I'm making is pretty obvious- System matters. All that this blog-thread right here has been is just a call to the fact that Character is a part of System.
