thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-15, Pol Jackson wrote:
Vincent, you wrote: I'm wondering if it's possible to figure out exactly what the appeal of "fetishism" is to many gamers (I don't find it appealling, so I'm at a loss to explain it) and find some means of channelling that appeal into something that enriches roleplay instead of holding it back.Say you have a group of gamers who love cars. They talk about cars all the time, sharing historical trivia, customization tips, and current news.
They're overjoyed when cars pop up in their roleplaying games. They happily digress into discussions of which car their character should use for hunting vampires, which car would beat which in a chase in 1950's Chicago, etc.
I would be bored to death; I'm not a car guy. But these hypothetical players are creatively contributing to the game. And in their group, they're having a grand old time.
Now instead of "cars", think "Star Wars". Or "Firefly", or "L5R", or, in the case of my group, "Hogwarts". If you get a group of people together who are enthusiastic about a topic, it can raise the enjoyment of the entire game. Does my example help explain the "fetishism" appeal?
Here's my point: You can't tell anything about the creative quality of a game simply by the amount of source material being used in the game. A Star Wars game, for example, might be creatively vibrant, whether or not the players know the model number of the X-Wings.
Do you agree? Because I think that your point is "we need to make souce material work for us, instead of being the engine that drives the game", or something along those lines. I don't think you're saying that "games that use lots of source material are always creatively stagnant". Am I right?
Pjack
