thread: 2006-07-27 : 10 Observations from my Berlin trip
On 2006-07-31, Ron Edwards wrote:
Several points to consider here ... I'll take them in order of ease.
1. The significance of old and young is a motor for inter-generational conflict. I've seen it take on frightening power in a number of games.
2. The idea of a minimum number of cards has come up before. If there is any rules-change to be made at the last second, that will be it. I may backtrack and re-think my entire rationale for Card Numbers per principal from the ground up.
3. Harald, I think your point about not enough randomness (or not enough material per Flashpoint) is good, and maybe I can improve the rules based on it. As far as randomness killing the flow is concerned, I'm more skeptical.
I want to point out an interesting detail. I was the only person there who got to watch all the groups at once. Looking around the room, I saw people laughing, waving their arms, congratulating one another, getting excited, and generally looking like they were having a good time. Yet very little of the comments afterward seemed to express that. Could there have been some kind of disconnection between the experience of play and the reflection upon play?
Perhaps that's just my imagination, but here's a very marked example from a game last year. In the middle of the session, a fellow playing announced to us all that "This is the best game ever!" He was really excited and enjoying all the events, and in fact, presented one of the most heartfelt moments of Spione I've seen.
But the next day, talking about the game over some beer, he shook his head and talked about all sorts of things that seemed like real problems to him. I didn't know what to say. None of the things he was criticizing seemed actually to have happened, or to be consistent with his delighted, creative enthusiasm of the night before.
