thread: 2012-11-15 : Positioning: the Big Model vs Emily, reconciled
On 2012-11-16, Vincent wrote:
Tim, Ben, TMC: Let me jump into this and say that since we're including freeform, "legitimate gameplay options" just means "you say something and people agree that it's true, or consider it a legit thing to have said even if it turns out to be false, or they use it as a jumping-off place to say something else that turns out to be true instead, or whatever."
We could probably put our minds to it and come up with cases where there's a fictional element that doesn't give rise to gameplay options - that is to say, something's true in the game's fiction but nobody can ever possibly build on it in any way. I'm comfy saying that such a thing wouldn't be part of anybody's position, but it's kind of an unusual case. "If somebody says something that nobody can build on, nobody can build on it."
To me, then, Ben's saying that "if somebody can legitimately say something that nobody can then build on, it is an indicator of a flawed design," which is kind of a weird direction to me to take the question, but sure, I can see that. It doesn't seem like a very strong statement to me at all, though, since something must be going pretty wrong if people are saying things that they can't follow through on.
It's not the same as the case where something's true in the game's fiction and we could build on it, but nobody happens to do so. In that case, it IS part of our positioning, just like the opportunity to castle in Chess can be part of your current position even if you don't, then, castle.
Josh, too: don't add "defined" to your thinking about a player's selection of legitimate gameplay options. In roleplaying, the selection's almost never defined.
(Otherwise, yes, your construction reads as identical to me.)
This makes GcL go "Bad design=encouraged to say things that are difficult to build on?"
That may be a stronger statement yet a still reasonable conclusion. Encouragement and difficulty being situationally debateable and all.
This makes VB go "Maybe?"
I'm describing, not prescribing. Bad design isn't what I'm thinking about.
This makes GcL go "Agreement on Maybe, then!"
and on not talking about bad design. More interesting would be saying things that are good to build on, anyway. "Good" of course also being situationally debateable.
