thread: 2006-01-12 : A third kind of me
On 2006-01-13, Charles wrote:
There's also the problem of levels again. Games like DitV may be push heavy in the mechanics (althoguh DitV maybe less so than others), but that doesn't say anything about push and pull at the social level.
I think part of the origin of push heavy mechanics is that mechanics (particualrly with a "say yes or roll the dice" rule) are about handling potential failure situations (game failure, not character failure). While pull dynamics have their own form of failure, it isn't as dramatic a failure as bad push mechanics. Also, I think push is harder to do without mechanics, as pull is about agreement, while push is about disagreement.
Also, pull mechanics (fan mail in PTA is a pull mechanic) are being developed along with push mechanics (by the same people), but I think maybe so far they tend to be side mechanics, rather than the core mechanics.
Actually, isn't PTA a pretty pull rich game in general?
This makes ecb go "game failure?"
Do you mean the player failing in a resolution of conflict?
This makes CS go ""I walk" threat in every push."
No, I mean that each point of "I want this," "No, I want that to fail," is without a functional resolution mechanic a potential game breaking loggerhead.
A "why don't you create something about this," "no" makes a boring game if repeated over and over, but a single incident of it is not a potential game failure. I suppose the, "create something about this NOW!" "no!" is, but that is shared ownership push, not pull (to my eye).
