Johnny-come-lately sez, "Please don't let me derail things onto a conversation about non-linear games and pre-destination, but..."

2 cents:

Sense 1) The resistance of the Pats of the world to flashback games might be somewhat mediated by a foreshadowed climax rather than a foreshadowed denoument. e.g. "PCs A and B are in a Mexican stand-off! Will one of them pull the trigger?" vs. "PC A has PC B's unbeating heart in his hands!" This leaves the key decision in the hands of the players while nonetheless creating buy-in by asking a pressing question. (What motivation do they have for maybe killing each other in the first place?)

Sense 2) -Warning, minor gaming story!- One of my favourite gaming experiences was playing in a game inspired by David Lynch movies and Twin Peaks in particular. I agreed to play the semi-NPC fatal woman (Laura Palmer) who constistently reappears as an archetype throughout Lynch's work, meaning that my character's death was foreshadowed from the beginning as the linch-pin (sorry) around which the story revolved. Basically, I was playing the McGuffin. Partly because of this structural role I played in the game, and partly because of the theme of the game itself, I ended up playing this character not as an internally consistent person with her own personality, but precisely as a McGuffin - an object designed to move the plot. (If you know Lynch, this is precisely the role of the fatal woman in his movies. She is not a character in her own right, but a kind of materialization or externalization of the anxieties, desires, fantasies and fears of the male protagonist.) So, when deciding what to do, I asked not "What would my character do?" but "What will provoke the right kinds of reactions from the GM, the players, and the other PCs and NPCs?" The end result was that, because I was not identified with my character on the level of her personality and desires, I wasn't bothered at all by the prospect of having the outcome written ahead of time. It became an exercize in seeing how dramatically I could stage my character's immanent demise.

Cheers,
Ogreboy88

Thank you. Right there is a perfect encapsulation of my argument against immersion gaming.

Don't get me wrong, immersion is a fine thing, but by locking yourself into that mode of thinking all the time, you're robbing yourself of some really wonderful opportunities for drama and storytelling.

I understand that this is of course not for everyone. But there are some people who might have never considered this style a possibility before, and if they tried it, they might like it. One of the reasons I sought out stuff like The Forge ten years ago was because I knew that there was something the gaming I was doing at the time that I wasn't entirely happy with, but I didn't know what that something was, or what alternative there might be.

-- Ben

While I will agree that not all, and in fact, most games are best if not held strictly to real-world logic, I cannot think of a game that functions well without internal consistency. If people are dieing in a game, then people are able to die in your game. Unless there is something tangible in the game that keeps them from being killed, lethal force should at least have the possibility of killing someone.

If your game is in a world where no one dies, cool, I can roll with that. You see this a lot in settings where the losing side has some sort of emergency escape system [CoH, Power Rangers]. Lost battles tend to be setbacks rather than defeats. Though at some point one side or the other will probably try to circumvent this. Good guys won't want to continue to risk public safety and bad guys want to defeat their enemies so that they can achieve their overall goal [world domination/destruction, summoning their dark lord, ect.] The only way to avoid this is to enforce ignorance of the option, which can be fine in more pulpy, goofy genres, but stretches credulity in most settings.



I guess, for me, role playing is defined by immersion. Making in-character decisions based on out of character concerns is pretty much the definition of meta-gaming as I understand it. I've played games like the one you are talking about, but I don't really think of it as role-playing at that point. It's just gaming. Or, sans game mechanics, it's a cooperative storytelling exercise.

Any dice-based system is inherently inconsistent, and yet, how many games have people played in the entire history of gaming that use dice?

Also, you haven't passed your Wanker Ceritifcation Exam yet, so you're not allowed to use phrases like "I don't really think of that as role-playing at that point."

The results may be inconsistent, but the range and the odds are not.

Also, is this a test?

Fair enough, but results are what we're talking about, as in the events of the story - be they success or failure, be they life or death - are determined randomly. Unless the randomization is being subverted somehow, by interpretation or cheating, which is a separate point.

Also, define test

Of course, it's rare for victory or defeat, life or death to be decided on a single die roll. Even when those die rolls happen, the odds are rarely 50/50. One outcome is more likely than the other. That's not random, just probability, which I prefer over contrived narrative certainty.

Unless you have another definition for random.

Chance is still chance, regardless of the odds.

Ahh, but there is a difference between chance and randomness. There's always a chance that things will not go as expected.

I don't see how that refutes what I said.