thread: 2015-04-27 : Followup Questions from Owen
On 2015-04-28, Owen wrote:
Man my second question was really vague! What I meant was this:
What do you think RPGs can teach us about other media? What can other media learn from RPGs?
Like for instance, I was writing a combat system for one of my games. I watched a bunch of fight scenes from TV & movies, saw what they had in common, and extracted a kind of generalised fight scene model from them. I took this model and put some RPG bits and pieces on it - dice rolls*, attachment to a stat, etc. - and I guess I've answered my own first question there because the model originated outside RPGs. Putting it in an RPG allows you to play with the model and so perhaps understand it in practice - giving it to me in a really engaging, brain-sticking way.
* Uncertain outcomes - I think RPGs as a medium are defined by uncertainty and open-endedness. As a result I think there's tons unscripted media can learn from RPGs as are (Like RPGs have got the best random generators anywhere) but right now I can't think what scripted media could learn from their structure, except insofar as you could record the unscripted stuff, polish it and present it as a script.
