thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-03, Charles wrote:
Vincent, it is true to some extent that our play is conflict conflict conflict (although our current game is maybe a little bit less so), but it is also true that there was a lot of interesting not stepping up going on. Asonder and Elias may have spent hours of game time yelling at each other, but nothing ever budged, and in the scene in which they faced each other down over Elias's mistreatment of covenant servants, and Asonder told Elias that Elias needed a good spanking, both of them really really wanted to escalate to violence and didn't. You may say, "Not exactly the Dead," and its true, but I'm saying the pleasure was the failure to escalate further, not just the escalating as much as we did. I'm also saying that it was the failure to resolve that made it interesting. Furthermore, I'm saying that a game in which Tydfal's unwillingness to confront Elias at all was given equal screen time, and was equally supported by the system would be a cool system. Tydfal's unwillingness was rich and complex unwillingness, not just "I'm not going to worry about that" unwillingness, but we never really got to see it.
I'm not really arguing for my play style, and I'm not arguing for some sort of s*********ist identity politics (how could I be, when I'm saying that not stepping up makes good thematically rich story? Or was that not the identity politics you meant). What I'm arguing for is better methods for dealing with not stepping up, because not stepping up, handled well, makes for powerful, thematically rich stories. And it can be a lot less of not stepping up than Asonder and Elias not actually attacking each other.
We agree. Not stepping up is cool. Not stepping up builds tension. I go one further and say, sometimes, not stepping up can be resolution (so long as it ends the situation for the moment). "I walk away, having not confronted my demons, leaving the argument for another day," can be resolution.
What I'm saying is that people building real people games (whether those real people also battle laser sharks or not) should pay attention to the interesting aspects of not stepping up. Not stepping up is something that most existing games (including free-form games such as my groups) don't address very well. Perhaps this is obvious. It certainly isn't obvious from the way that most people talk about dramatic games, and it isn't obvious from the way Neel was talking about dramatic real people games.
One of the reasons? How many games give good support to internal monologue? Very, very few that I've ever heard of, but internal monologue is where the really interesting parts of not stepping up generally happen.
Oh, by the way, I think this is a point where maybe I'm saying "you win," cause I think I'm saying formal mechanics might be able (even though they generally don't) to give better support to this than free-form system.
