thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-03, Chris wrote:
Hi Jason,
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?
It's really a matter of suspense of disbelief... all stories are contrived to a degree, but at certain levels we can accept them as "real enough" to enjoy just the same. Likewise with gaming "real people" you can keep the tension and escalation of problems, just minus the super powers, spooky stuff and high tech, and still produce a decent conflict. We can go across the boards with movies ranging from Requiem for a Dream, American Pie, Unforgiven, Boyz in the Hood, The Notebook, etc, etc. which keep amping up tension, sometimes with highly contrived situations, but still work.
I mean, for a perfect example, try reading Shakesphere. You need incredible amounts of suspension of disbelief for what happens in his plays.
What is the key jump we're talking about here is getting play to -stay- focused on the human issues and pacing it correctly. PrimeTime Adventures does it, Dust Devils does it, so does Riddle of Steel, and if you want to get into the fancy-schmancy powers area, so does Sorcerer, Mountain Witch, Trollbabe and MLWM. It's not the powers that make the games here, its the resolution and pacing mechanics that keep the focus on the human issues that make it happen.
When we look at most games that try to emulate resolving some form of "physics", there is nothing inherent in physics to encourage the addressing of human issues. That's why most of our real life lives are usually ho-hum and boring interspersed with really cool or wack shit, unlike TV or movies where technically everything should be engaging.
In order to make up for the lack of pacing mechanics, many games come up with reasons why monsters can appear at any time(flight, teleportation, rifts, time travel, conspiracies "they're everywhere", random encounters, etc. etc. etc.) Likewise there is some "end of the world" BS going on as well, because no particular relationships are focused on or made a part of play, so everything becomes abstracted... Consider the difference in emotional engagement between Maximus from Gladiator who just wants to A) be with his family and B) keep his word compared to Nameless Superguy who saves the world... Sure he saved the world, but its not the same as saving the world just to save one person. That's drama.
