thread: 2013-06-20 : The Sundered Land
On 2013-07-13, Gordon wrote:
John Mc:I'd stress that the relationship between "doom that pilgrim" and any other goals is more like a creative constraint than a conflict. "Man, right now I really wish rooks could move diagonally." Except they can't. Or "Jeez, I wish the Old Man could have saved the marlin from the sharks."* Except he couldn't. So not only "it mostly won't", but it "almost never has to" - and if it does, you've either stumbled into an odd corner case or you shouldn't have been playing this game in the first place.
I mean, it is entirely fair for Vincent to say that if you (as the World) choose something else over dooming the pilgrim, you didn't follow the rules. Which, sometimes, not wanting to follow the rules is a useful thing to inspire. You know that if you don't follow 'em anyway, you're messing with the game, but - we've all let someone else win a game, and maybe a bit of that possibilty helps drive Doomed Pilgrim. Maybe even sometimes that's the point of the whole game (Train?), but that doesn't seem to me to be what Vincent's up to here.
I'm just mystified by the idea of ignoring/denying other goals - of choosing things not over dooming the pilgrim, but in addition to dooming him/her. Mystified that Vincent in particular, and folks in general, would consider that desireable, or even possible. It strikes me as too close to saying "lets design/play this game as if we're not full-featured human beings." Perhaps an over-reaction due to personal distaste at seeing people arguably really attempt that.
*Because I did. I totally, totally did. Um ... Do.
This makes GcL go "The footnote"
Yeah, applies to both the Old Man and the Sea and my last sentence. Odd, how that happened. And - sigh.
