thread: 2006-03-20 : Creating Situation: a practical example
On 2006-03-28, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
"We players are generally stupid about what really matters to us. I'd never take our word for it, especially if we're creating those flags during character creation."
Yes! "Flags" are a great idea, but the flags the players run up before they start playing are only indicating what they expect they'll care about (possibly further distorted by peer pressure and/or limited prior experience of things to care about). The best test is what happens during play: The flags that really matter are the ones the players plant firmly in the soil of the emerging fiction and shout "I claim this land for Spain!" (Or for my character, or whatever). Hence the beauty of what I believe Vincent calls "positioning mechanisms."
(And apocalypse girl is my attempt to create a game almost entirely out of positioning mechanisms....)
