thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-02, Neel wrote:
1. Vincent read me exactly right.
2. There's a quote from Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead (which I just saw last night), which is really appropriate to this discussion:
Violence and death give you a conflict that will almost always build into a story (because kill or be killed is a conflict almost all characters will respond to, and which has a clear resolution: someone dies). That's the why of "why superpowers?"—almost all superpowers in rpgs focus on violence. I don't think this is "less sophisticated"—Macbeth is one of my favorite plays ever, and it's chock full of superpowers and murder. But: this is not the only story-frame I want to mess with. And that's why I'm interested in this subject.PLAYER: Well, no, I can't say it is really. We're more of the blood, love and rhetoric school.
GUIL: Well, I'll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them.
PLAYER: They're hardly divisible, sir - well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrently or consecutively, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory - they're all blood you see.
