thread: 2006-01-05 : I suspect but can't prove...
On 2006-01-07, Neel wrote:
Hi Matt, I don't think it should be confrontational, because that makes people dig in. What I'd like to see is a game that supports and encourages all the players to take responsibility for making all the characters and the whole game work. I'm dreaming of something like this:
-*-*-*-
Matt: Hey, Neel, you've been running Wolfboy as a total ninja—he's got no ties to nobody and this game is about family.
Neel: Uh-oh, you're right. I was too focused on being mysterious and brooding and got tunnel vision. Fix?
Matt: Easy; Wolfboy is totally lusting after Jeanette Grey.
Neel: Sounds good; let me add that to the character sheet.
Vincent: Wait, Matt, Jeanette is married to Polyphemus. She's been faithful, too, so is she...?
Matt: Hormones say "Wolfboy". Brains say "Polyphemus". She's pretty torn.
Vincent: And pissed off about being torn, of course. It must be really embarassing for a psychic to be unable to control her emotions.
Matt: That's great. I'll add "Angry about love" to her character sheet.
Neel: Yeah, that's awesome—it's total soap opera. Wolfboy and Polyphemus are friends, definitely, to up the angst.
Matt: No, I think they should just plain hate each other, but squelch it out of loyalty to Dr. Z's vision for peace. Want to hold an author auction, Neel?
Vincent: Nah, it would be cooler if you two saved the friend-or-foe thing for an in-character scene.
Matt & Neel: Okay!
[play continues]
-*-*-*-
Joshua, I tried to get at your concern with those last couple of lines. You don't have to do everything at the same time. If all the players were constantly in author mode, then, yeah, it would be pretty tough to roleplay. But you can have different modes of play in the same game.
In this made-up dialogue, there's some kind of distinction between the collaborative PC authoring scenes and the "in-character scenes". And the collaborative authoring scenes don't have to have strong ownership, even if a character is always played by the same player.
This is actually pretty close to the pattern I saw when playing deep in-character; you'd have minimal second or third-person during the formal session, and then afterwards everyone went to dinner together and talked and talked and talked about the game. Dinner was what made the game work, because characters got refined and our assumptions about the setting and the antagonists got harmonized there. It was really a part of the game, only in a different mode.
Now that I think about it, every game that has a character creation system already does multi-modal play. You play one in one mode at the start, and then play in another mode for the rest. (And the people who do worldbuilding or scenario prep have another kind of game, which could also benefit from being opened up.)
This makes Matt S go "right on!"
This makes VB go "how about this..."
"Matt: Easy; Wolfboy is totally lusting after Jeanette Grey. Neel, add that to your character sheet." The same? Different?
