thread: 2005-06-16 : The Forge and Me
On 2005-06-21, Ben Lehman wrote:
Two things.1) Adam is right.
2) I'm thinking more about what Charles said. I'm glad this is anyway, so I can say mean things about pre-existing games and no one will roast me.
I think that, in the ideal world, the concerns of the good player are totally different from the concerns of the good desiger (or, rather, the concerns of the player are a very small subset of the concerns of the designer.) And I think it is an important issue to talk about—what do you need to know to play, what is mainly a design issue?
But this isn't an ideal world. Frankly, any game that you are playing is highly likely to suck. In order to make your play experience not suck, you are essentially forced to redesign the game—taking some rules, destroying others, importing new rules from your prior experience in their place, etc. This essentially requires you to have the skills of a designer, simply to be a good player! Which sucks! But also explains why so many RPG players are also designers of some stripe.
yrs—
—Ben
