thread: 2005-11-14 : Long and Short
On 2005-11-15, Roger wrote:
This reminds me of that bit about my great-grandfather's axe, which has had its head replaced 5 times and the handle replaced 8 times.
I don't want to mischaracterize anyone, but it seems slightly disingenious to say "Running an arbitrarily-long game is easy! Just switch all the characters and settings every six months!" I know no one is actually saying that, but it seems like the logical conclusion of some of these lines of thought.
Of course, there are bodies of fiction which run on and on and on. I think their key attribute is that their stories are fundamentally episodic—at the end of each episode, nothing has changed.
So, what does it take to build a truly endless RPG? In my opinion, the system must enforce exactly that rule: nothing changes. I'd like to be able to point at an extant RPG as an example, but I'm not aware of any which actually do this. GURPS is probably the closest, in the sense that, in the general case, characters advance at such a glacial rate that they may as well be static.
But I'm up to a challenge, so here's the deal: the next RPG that I write will be my attempt at this. There will be no character advancement. If you start the game as Sherlock Holmes or Doc Savage or James Bond, you'll end the game the same.
If there is an extant example out there, I'd sure like to hear about it.
Hopefully this is still well on-topic for "long and short games."
This makes VB go "thanks, Roger!"
You talked about what it takes to accomplish it.
This makes KM go "Except."
It’s not true nothing changes, he said, firmly. Stasis is not the point. Quite a lot of things change, sometimes alarmingly, but the politics is all personal, maybe. —Sure, some things don’t change: roughly the same group of people keeps meeting on a regular basis for roughly the same amount of time to go through roughly similar processes that tell stories within the framework of a larger world that is not fundamentally changed; there will (for a while, at least) be magi in an Order dealing with the world as it is. But there’s lots of room for change in all that. —So some things change. Some fundamentals don’t. Solid floorboards that let all of us dance as we—no; strike that; goopy metaphor. Stick with sprinting and marathoning. (Foxes and hedgehogs?) It’s a question of pace.
This makes JL go "Conservation of Change?"
Thinking about episodic fiction. It seems that the characters and situations change, but as one thing is resolved, another thing crops up to take its place. Episodic fiction is like a dramatic hydra: able to renew the pressure on the character every episode.
This makes Isk go "Solomon Kane and Conan"
This seems to me like fruitful ground for exploring Howard's unchanging but nevertheless continually compelling characters. So I believe there's plenty of scope for dynamic, exciting play with little actual change.
This makes VB go "it's a myth that characters change anyway."
Protagonists, I mean. Protagonists are always unwavering, about the one thing that matters - which means that they come down on one side this time and the other next time, sure, depending on how the sides relate to what matters. Think about it - when did Sam Gamgee "grow" past his loyalty?
This makes BR go "When he let Frodo leave him."
Same deal with Conan and his scorn for civilization -- it rather changed when he became king.
Protagonists do change. However full change is rarer than growth -- which is almost fundemental in longer works. Short fiction, however, doesn't try to show change or growth -- it tests established traits. Thus Conan's change happens only between stories, and the things we are told that he is are tested in the story.
This makes TI go "Character change"
Character change is what education plots are all about: Tender Mercies, Grosse Pointe Blank, My Best Friend's Wedding. In The Great Gatsby, Falling Down, we see character change of an unhappier kind. Roger what you're doing sounds exciting. Instead of letting us change character through play you could let us [i]reveal[/i] character: Bond is always dutiful but needs a constant series of more dangerous opponents to demonstrate this quality at deeper levels. Holmes is always ingenious but requires a constant series of different puzzles to keep demonstrating this quality in new ways. Both are satisfying substitutes for actual character change. Picard is my favourite for this kind of thing: he never really changes, but we feel we know him better after each episode.
