thread: 2006-01-05 : I suspect but can't prove...
On 2006-01-07, Vincent wrote:
Fred, try it with me. We're both players in an Everway game.
You say: My guy is angry.
I say: No he's not. He's happy.
You say: Dude, he's my guy. He's angry.
I say: Nope.
You say: Angry.
I say: No. He's happy.
You say: Angry or I walk.
I say: Happy, or walk then.
You say: You're an asshole.
In the face of my dissent, you have no power to make your guy be angry. He can be happy or the game can end, that's the choice you have the power to make. You must appease me - me and the GM and every player - at every moment of play. Roleplaying is exclusively a process of making your own vision to accomodate everyone else's.
Similarly, the thing where I offer suggestions which you have the power to reject? That power is something we pretend you have. I can crash that process just as easily, simply by insisting that you take my suggestions.
Now, this is the underlying fact of the matter. Upon this, we build structures - and character ownership is a structure we build, just like GM ownership of the world. Useful for what it's useful for, but not fundamental, not true.
So there's the theory answer, and it's just the dumb Lumpley Principle, the stupidest, most obvious insight in the history of obviousness.
You demand a practical answer as well!
"The problem THAT model has is that the character portrayals lose continuity. They start being a bit more schizophrenic, a bit scattered. Now if that's what you're after, great."
I have no reason to believe that this is true. It's to all of our benefit, mine very much included, for me to support, not undermine, character continuity.
Buffy's writers got the characters right enough, consistent enough. We can.
