thread: 2005-12-01 : The World IS a Better Place
On 2005-12-13, Steve Marsh (Ethesis) wrote:
The stuff on your "character" sheet isn't about your character at all - it's stuff that you, the real live player, have at your disposal when it comes time to decide how the game's going to go.
That's a problem I have with many "modern" games (gee, they look so 1977ish to me, but that is a whole 'nother story).
In many "modern" games (meaning a game where the flow of the game is more determined by player force of character, charisma and imagination than rules boundaries) the metagame is the one you play in order to control the rules. It is a lot like watching five year olds play Monopoly where those with the strongest force of personality get to change the rules from time to time.
Kind of like guys, in the old days (err, 74-75) who discovered the idea of writing stuff on their character sheets. You know, "oh, that +25 vorpal holy avenger? I got that in Jake's game last week. Specially atuned so my chaotic neutral character can use it when backstabbing."
Good players are just more subtle, but it seems similar to me, has for thirty years.
Now, what has changed, is the introduction of d20. Which I abandoned about ten-fifteen years before it saw print (and I'm sure that there was no continuity between my version which I passed along to guys at TSR and the one used—many ideas come up over and over again).
Instead of the model of D&D as a gateway, with migrations to other systems (for a long time, before the haze of smoke obscured them, Chaosium's place in the ecosystem was to use D&D as a gateway and to trail in the market, picking up players as they evolved. It was a great niche. Now, those same players move on to other d20 products).
The fascinating thing is that Diablo/Guild Wars/World of Warcraft have absorbed the D&D play experience into a social on-line version that is pretty solid. And that allows for scenario design that executes easily.
Which is always the heel.
Not to mention, those characters exist somewhere besides your head, and force of personality only allows you to gain social advantages, not rules advantages. (Hey, I got my first occulus in ladder play through social advantages, I'm not knocking it, just don't want it as the primary requisit for players).
My two bits.
