thread: 2005-10-20 : The Fruitful Void
On 2005-10-20, Vincent wrote:
Here's Ron Edwards:
I made this point recently in [Musha Shugyo] Honor mechanics, in which I talked about how My Life with Master has no "Defiance" score. It doesn't have to. The interactions of all the existing scores, puts "defiance of the Master" into a premium focus during play, as a kind of unnamed score.
Without such "fruitful voids," perhaps envisioned as what you get when you show a person seven of the eight corners of a cube, a rules-set is no fun. It's just a full cube; you can look at it, pick it up, mess with it, and nothing happens except it stays a cube.
My point is absolutely independent of what the rules in question are about. We could be talking about social interactions among characters, physical combat, interactions of the characters with the physical environment around them, rules for the players interacting as people, or whatever.
My point is also independent of the scale and scope of the rules. We could be talking about tactical details of combat options, or we could be talking about some universal mechanic for morality.
from Designing a relationship, not a rule?
