thread: 2005-11-10 : Open House: Ask a Frequent Question...
On 2005-11-11, Kip Manley wrote:
Ennead, but One of Nine. There seems to be a tension, and forgive me if I'm missing it, but to my uneducated eyes it seems to go somewhat unexpressed, but the tension or at least the two poles which for me anchor the tension I think I'm feeling are on the one hand focused lasers and on the other kitchen sinks. —On the one hand, you've got these brutally clear algorithms which immediately snap everyone's attention to This Interaction and These Stakes, around which are sedimented the signifiers of the other world which let you grab hold and run: guns and coats and Olde West townes; ice swords and mythic demons; pitch sessions and seasonal character arcs. And on the other, you've got the sediment itself: accreting another world bit by bit and mediated interaction by negotiated creation, that's bigger and wilder and weirder and woolier and more real than anything you could come up with on your own, and while the process is certainly governed by rules unspoken or not, the rules themselves are secondary to the point.
Aw, but fuck, see, I've already stepped in it, by attempting to suggest that this is rules v. not rules, which it isn't at all. There are rules, there are always rules, and I see the benefits to explicit and openly negotiated rules v. unspoken ad hoc and perhaps even unacknowledged rules, and I know the whole point is figuring out how to make group telepathy portable. —But it seems to me that in chasing that imminently worthy goal, something ineffable is lost: we've got all these gorgeous, intensely beautiful single episodes of singular types, and what I want is never-ending epic.
Oh, but it's not that at all, either, since, exception proving rule, there's no reason at all not to swing with Prime Time Adventures, say, for multiple seasons. Maybe it's as simple as the difference between taking a pattern and building a world around it, and building a world and finding patterns within it? And it's not the one is better than the other, or more Real, or better Played, it's just that my temperament, maybe, fits better with the latter than the former (though I could just be taking a pattern I like and building a worldview out of it—ah, scratch that, needlessly, impishly meta). —But the former is the business of game designers, and the latter is what some gaming groups do, and the former is more easily generalizable and sharable, and the latter not so much, and this is an inescapable tension, unresolvable, and anyway.
Is there a question in all that? Huh. I dunno. Do you see what I mean? Am I talking out my hat or missing the point? Because while it seems like some of these games would be great for a Saturday afternoon or a couple of weekends here and there, heck, astounding, impressive, would generate anecdotes we could talk about for years, it's still not what I would say invest in. Which is why I'm still on the sidelines, maybe. Or maybe I'm just shy and tired and set in my ways.
This makes JK go "Long Term does not necessarily = Investment and short term does not = a shallow game."
In my experience, anyway.
This makes CS go "forms of depth which develop over time"
JK,
would you agree that htere are forms of depth that develop over time that require that time to develop? Doesn't mean there isn't depth in some one shots, just means there is something that a long runnning game can do that a short game can't. Do long running games really possess no virtues that can't be equalled in a one shot? Nothing that can be done in a 2000 page novel that can't be done equally well in a short story? Nothing that can develop in a 20 year relationship that can't be created equally well in a one night stand?
This makes KM go "Campaign Fallacy--"
There's obviously something to it, or it wouldn't sting this badly. Maybe it's because I'm trying to chip away at an epic wall in another medium?
I'll allow as how there's definitely a point to it, and one well-taken, if you'll allow that we have, indeed, been building what we've been building for fifteen years, 1 current living campaign, 2 reasonably complete ones, 3 false starts that nonetheless laid important groundwork, and a number of long and fallow spells, yes. But also countless, countless hours of extra-game conversation, negotiation, writing, storytelling, worldbuilding. --The game itself is sometimes not the end, but one of the means to a more ineffable end; gaming sessions are nothing more (he said) than engines for the generation of anecdotes. But to pursue that ends us up in the blind alley of "you just want different things from games than we do, bucko," and that's fruitless. So I'll pick up some threads down in Vince's answer.
(Marginalia! Keen!)
This makes JK go "Not always, no."
I don't think long-running games have some kind of monopoly on play depth. Short-term games feature players who don't leave anything on the table, who face down their character's issues face on and do it TONIGHT, rather than waiting seven months.
I think short stories can and do achieve everything that has ever been done in a 2000 page novel.
I'm not saying a one-shot, I'm saying a finite campaign. I have been running games in that manner for a while now and my games have been stronger for it.
I have heard people write that if their campaign goes less than 50-100 sessions they see it as something that has fallen short; I am puzzled.
