thread: 2006-10-05 : Reward systems
On 2006-10-17, Vincent wrote:
Hey Tim.
To Christopher's post, I'd add about situation and scene. Here's how I think of it:
A situation is, like, a list of who's interests are what, plus any salient details about who's where. A situation is abstract, imaginary, disembodied. Sister May's agenda is to overthrough the US; it's in her interests for Brother Jed and Sister Rosaria to back her without question. That's an element of a situation; this particular situation has at least three, probably four or five, elements in addition.
Then you embody the situation in scenes. You take this abstraction, this list of information, and you make it material: "So Sister May goes into town with Brother Jed. While he's buying bandages and medicine, she buys the gun shop bare." That's a scene.
Over the course of however many scenes, where the characters run around and do things and interact and fight and make up and kill and die, right, the situation, the higher-level, abstract, situation, should change. For instance, maybe after three scenes between the Dogs, we'd say this of the situation instead: Sister May's agenda is to overthrough the US; it's in her interests for Brother Jed to back off and let her try, and for Sister Rosaria to continue to back her without question.
It's this higher-scale situation that I'm talking about. Punches and conversations - Dogs' conflict resolution rules - happen within scenes. A series of scenes is the process by which the in-game fictional situation develops.
Make sense?
