thread: 2006-02-20 : Open House: Ask a Frequent Question, pt 2
On 2006-05-28, Vincent wrote:
Judd's right.
Personally, I'm skeptical. I've never met a player - and I'm certainly not one myself - who can reliably say what's important right now, let alone what's going to be important a session from now or on an ongoing basis. You can't substitute reading a character sheet for watching what a player actually does and responds to.
But I'm reserving judgement until I see the game designs that the flags people make.
This makes MSW go "duzzat mean"
...that you don't count Dogs as a flaggy game? Have you played Nine Worlds or TSOY? The upcoming and awesome Stranger Things is neato flaggy as well.
This makes Judd go "The best systems for ths kinda thing..."
...allow for the Flags to change and evolve.
This makes BL go "Ah, crap"
We really shouldda played Riddle of Steel.
This makes FSF go "I think there is value to flags, but they are also tricky"
I thought it was interesting that Burning Wheel admits two purposes to instincts. One is things the player just doesn't want to hassle with. The other is things the player wants to struggle with. I can see that two-sidedness coming up in lots of apparent flags. Does the character have a high skill because the player wants lots of challenges to that skill, or because the player doesn't want to have his PC fail and look bad? And then there's the possibility the player puts the item on his sheet, not because it's important to the game play, but because it's part of the "concept".
And then there's the possibility the player puts something on the sheet because he thinks it will be cool. And then the player latches onto some entirely different coolness, either because he didn't really know what he wanted, or because the cool thing he wrote down turned out to not be all that cool, or whatever.
