thread: 2006-01-26 : A Public Service Announcement
On 2006-01-26, Roger wrote:
I had to go review the definition of Theme (and also Premise) over in the Provisional Glossary. I'm going to assume Vincent is using them as defined there; if that's not the case, I imagine he'll correct me.
One corollary of "a broader range of themes across play is higher quality than a less broad range of themes across play" seems to be "a broader range of premises is higher quality than a less broad range of premises across play."
Also, as far as I can tell, these standards of quality can only apply to actual instantiated events of play, rather than game systems. It doesn't seem meaningful to say, for example, "Spawn of Fashan is a high-quality game because play is thematic", since there's no actual play there to judge one way or the other.
It may be fair to conclude that a game system is of high quality if it tends to produce high quality instances of play, but there are a few leaps of deduction there which have me a bit uneasy.
It also strikes me that the particular quality Vincent is referring to is, I believe, the quality of being a role-playing game. If the quality is low enough, the activity ceases to meaningfully be a role-playing game at all. That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a kick-ass good time.
