thread: 2014-02-15 : Lies in RPGs
On 2014-02-16, Gordon wrote:
It's good to highlight that "particular, reasoned solution becomes unvarying, reflexive principle" transformation - thanks, Vincent. To Josh W's "bad design" trick I'd add a trick on the "good design" side - that there is only good design for a particular purpose. Overly-simplifying: Diplomacy is good design for people who can socially reconcile in-game lying and rest-of-life interaction. If you can't do that, it's a lousy design.
Defining "for a particular purpose" is also tricky, of course - to some extent a game (roleplaying or otherwise) of course gets to self-define, but it also runs into the realities of human interactions, socioeconomic factors, and etc.
Many game design-principle fights I've seen (again, RPG or not) are really arguing about the, um, reality of those realities. That theoretically including lies might be the very best solution is unimportant when it runs into "it's OK to lie like that to your friends in the context of a game" vs. "it's not OK to lie like that to your friends, ever."
