thread: 2015-07-04 : The Object of an RPG is to...
On 2015-07-15, Vincent wrote:
Chin up! You're like "...I haven't yet seen any compelling reasons to believe I am wrong," but you shouldn't hope for compelling reasons out of me, that's all.
So, to answer your question, yes, I believe that Four Panels has an object. Here's why.
Imagine that my sister Ellen comes to visit me, and I say, "hey, I know this game, Four Panels. Let's play it."
She likes games, so she says, "sure! How's it work?"
I'm already folding some paper. "See, I draw a figure on this panel, then you draw a figure on this panel, and then-"
"Hold on!" she says. "What's the object of the game?"
"Oh, it's no big deal, it's just to see what we've got at the end."
"Cool, okay! Carry on."
The end.
By telling her that the object of the game is just to see what we've got at the end, I've given her exactly the information she was asking for.
In the case of Four Panels, I think that both of these are perfectly true:
"Oh, it's no big deal, the object is just to see what we've got at the end."
"Oh, there's no object. We'll just play through and see what we've got at the end."
And that's fine. "The object of the game" is natural language, not jargon, not part of a model. Its purpose is to communicate, not to rigorously distinguish between one thing and another.
