thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-03, JasonL wrote:
Vincent:
Re: Directionless v Slow play
This hits me as key to the development of games that deal with 'real people' sans the spandex.
Pacing is one of the key things that drives fun for me in gaming.
I'd have a hard time playing any game that didn't continually escalate the tension.
In a game sans spandex, real people, real issues, how do you continually ramp up the tension without some serious timing considerations? I mean to say, how do you do this without the game being structured around a series of time-discontinuous events in the real person's life? We'd have to have pretty specific situation or character focus to get these kinds of drama-full stories that happen one right on top of another for the same person/character, wouldn't we?
This, in my mind, is part of where the spandex helps, because it's got a ready made reason to hop from one conflict to another to another.
Whereas playing "papers and paychecks" without some other, outside influence, just won't generate the conflict we need to have fun.
For what it's worth, I agree that real people, real situations, sans spandex games are doable, and we should have more of them. I just think they have to have a laserlike focus on some other factor that brings inherent tension/conflict with it.
Cheers,
Jason
"Oh, it's you...
deadpanbob"
