tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post8718648978407061574..comments2024-03-28T21:13:53.845+00:00Comments on Fabled Lands: Blank slatesDave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-68261520676134646662014-03-24T15:25:31.033+00:002014-03-24T15:25:31.033+00:00I'd love to hear more about it, Tazio - and I ...I'd love to hear more about it, Tazio - and I think I'm speaking for many of the blog's readers when I say that. The purpose of my posts is really just to stimulate a discussion, and I like nothing more than when the comments range far and wide and turn into long and thought-provoking digressions from the original topic. So - fire away!Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-89367615537627912992014-03-24T00:37:17.294+00:002014-03-24T00:37:17.294+00:00Mr.Morris,
thank you for your very kind reply. Fir...Mr.Morris,<br />thank you for your very kind reply. First of all, it is a honor to be able to interact with you. Your books are an important part of my childhood and I owe it to you, Mr.Thomson and other authors of gamebooks, for having developed the love for reading I have.<br />That was something I really needed to say.<br />Moving on to your, I must say very solid points, I can only tell you that we feel the same way. I do prefer much to build my own character rather than having one handed down to me. I've seen some pretty effective games that give pre-made characters and scenarios like Montsegur 1244. Yet it definitely is not my cup of tea. If anything, my favorite type of rpgs are those where you have very clear limits to what type of character you can play, and then build on those limits. They foster my creativity to come up with a character I can find interesting.<br /><br />The example you make of a gm-less game is one of bad roleplaying, most definitely. That's exactly how you must not play any of those games, and just to think that anyone would play like that makes me cringe. But of course, we can say that system matters as much as we want, you can't hope that a good system makes up for bad players...<br />Just to clarify things, the narrative shouldn't be passed like a ball. If you do it that way, you leave other players with the additional burden of having to build on the piece of incomplete narrative you just tossed to them, and that's hardly fun. Sure it happens, but in a functional group, narrative should be built together and played to see what happens.<br />I have created my own gm-less roleplaying game and playtested it several time until it would be ready to be published, and it's built to focus entirely on the characters. I'd love to discuss this further with you if you would like, but I am a little unsure if it were appropriate because I feel like I am already abusing the space of your blog as it is...Tazio Bettinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08787163622198886309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-46464854804662337392014-03-22T15:21:25.151+00:002014-03-22T15:21:25.151+00:00You can certainly play with preset characters, Taz...You can certainly play with preset characters, Tazio. I have done that occasionally and enjoyed it, but I much prefer to develop my own persona in play. (Which itself is different from designing a character in advance, of course.)<br /><br />As you say, what I call the referee or umpire is just another player with different roles. When I start to disagree is if one of those roles is God :-) I am pretty wary of group-run games, though, because in the examples I've seen the players are all acting authorially most of the time. They'll say things like, "Little do we know as we drive past the gas station that our rival is inside buying Coke." And if they are thinking like that - passing the narrative like a ball, so to speak - then I don't think they are inhabiting the characters, which for me is the most fun aspect of role-playing.<br /><br />But overall I agree with you. Role-playing is not one straitjacket that everybody has to wear.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-42362609243116785902014-03-22T10:17:29.252+00:002014-03-22T10:17:29.252+00:00Mr.Morris, you wrote "In my view, the referee...Mr.Morris, you wrote "In my view, the referee of a role-playing game ("games master" if you must) gets to control the world, all of the events and the NPCs" but who says that's always the case?<br />I can tell you about several rpgs where there is no such thing as a GM figure (referee is just plain wrong to me: in sports a referee is not a player; in RPGs the GM is just a player with different roles). <br />When I act as GM playing my Apocalypse World campaign, I build the setting upon the answers to the questions I make to the other players who plays characters (the manual instructs me to do so after all). I try to stay away from interfering with their agency as much as I can, because I know that despite any game's best design, it's always possibly to fall into the mistake.<br />And as per the preset characters... lots of rpgs are made with pre-made characters. Think of all the live action scenarios that are built on that very premise. That's roleplaying too. The point is that you have a set situation, and you play to see what happens. You don't have a heavy handed GM that tries to force the players down a path he has decided.Tazio Bettinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08787163622198886309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-80617821805998785472014-03-17T19:40:01.335+00:002014-03-17T19:40:01.335+00:00I always came at writing gamebooks from the perspe...I always came at writing gamebooks from the perspective of roleplaying, so it surprised me to learn that most gamebook readers don't roleplay. I accept the reality of that, but it still doesn't quite compute for me.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-28601476048497672602014-03-17T14:32:31.467+00:002014-03-17T14:32:31.467+00:00I accept the character restrictions that come with...I accept the character restrictions that come with the format because I've never really regarded gamebooks as roleplaying. That said, I remember once, a very long time ago, clashing with someone over whether the reader's character in a gamebook should be allowed the option of committing immoral acts (e.g, slaughter of innocents): my position was yes.Graham Harthttps://twitter.com/editoriusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-44399299688544738352014-03-16T20:49:30.874+00:002014-03-16T20:49:30.874+00:00Jamie would be the guy to talk about that, Neil. H...Jamie would be the guy to talk about that, Neil. He's played all the Fallout games. I like the sound of what you're describing, but it still sounds much more restrictive than face-to-face role-playing.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-70626527463206975412014-03-16T20:47:45.889+00:002014-03-16T20:47:45.889+00:00That's why I like role-playing - though the po...That's why I like role-playing - though the point there of course, is to create and inhabit a character unlike yourself, not to be told what to think.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-1307945636553127582014-03-16T13:28:53.365+00:002014-03-16T13:28:53.365+00:00I remember someone on a podcast talking about doin...I remember someone on a podcast talking about doing a pacifist run of Fallout: New Vegas. They reach the point in the game where you confront the person who shot you in the head at the start of the game. To their surprise, although they couldn't actually forgive the person, they could say something along the lines of "What's done is done; what's important is where we go from here." Then the game takes that and the plot goes on from there.<br /><br />So the game is saying "You're a hardbitten unforgiving futuristic cowboy in a post-apocalyptic Western. You can be hero or villain and react to the situation as you want, but you're still they guy who got shot in the head and wants to know what the hell it was about." So it sort of splits the difference.Neil Willcoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07166832958072749813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-8779238850523531232014-03-16T11:02:06.338+00:002014-03-16T11:02:06.338+00:00I think there's room for both: at times, I enj...I think there's room for both: at times, I enjoy playing a strongly authored character, and at times I like being able to dictate what I think the character should be like. The advantage of the former is that it allows me to explore different points of view than I might normally encounter.taemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16238335852958762628noreply@blogger.com