thread: 2014-07-24 : The Trouble with RPGs (ii)
On 2014-07-24, MichaelPrescott wrote:
Jesse, what your post about Burning Empires is making me think is that the game simply misstates the object. (Or, perhaps, that there's a more useful object than the explicit one.) It might be something like, "Engage the mechanics to portray a character conflicted between their personal goals and fighting the infection."
So, it's useful to present the object of a game when play groups will likely not stumble on it in play. Yet, discovering an object can be delightful.
Also.. I feel like there can be multiple objects in a game that are comprehensible at different times. Monsterhearts might have an object or portraying a teen struggling with three kinds of identity crisis, but if you don't know how to do that, "Use the moves a lot," and "Let others' moves influence you," seem to work really well.
This makes CW go "Not *can*, *must*"
I think that any game reasonably called an RPG must have multiple objects, and the players bring some of them totally aside from the design.
This makes GcL go "I agree, CW"
For what that's worth. But a designer CAN try to take that into account when they design object(s).
