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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6052919" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>This thread seems as good a place as any to mention something I noticed last week when reading <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20121115" target="_blank">Chris Perkins's column</a>: one thing that Perkins talks about is a deal done by one of the PCs with Dispater, which ended up being one element of the campaign's dramatic resolution. And in the comments, we get this:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">EvilDM1395: Chris I am disappointed in you for the first time. Dispater is the most paranoid of the Archdevils of the Nine Hells and I doubt would even project himself to make such a deal. Now it would have been much more interesting to have Mephistopheles, Archdevil and ruler of Cania, to make such a deal as he can't be trusted as the betrayer that he is.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Chris Perkins: The player character chose to summon an aspect of Dispater, so it wasn't my decision. . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">EvilDM1395: Didn't realize the Multi-verse was dumbed down that much in 4th Ed . . . Not matter, Dispater is still cloistered Devil who has almost no interaction with others due to his self preservation and paranoia. The rest of the game sounded great.</p><p></p><p>I don't know about others' responses, but I just don't get where EvilDM1395 is coming from! "The rest of the game sounded great", but (by obvious implication) it would have been <em>even better</em> if Perkins had copies some other author's conception of Dispater, rather than following the lead of his player and letting Dispater's personality emerge and unfold as it did in <em>his</em> game.</p><p></p><p>What's up with that? I mean, it wouldn't have made anyone at the table have any more fun. It wouldn't have made the climax of the campaign more dramatic. How has aping someone else's fiction become, for some players at least, a self-standing measure of the quality of an RPG experience?</p><p></p><p><em>That's</em> the true sacrifice of creativity that (in my view) has tended to infect the contemporary RPG scene.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is Ron Edwards on Jonathan Tweet's RPG Over the Edge, beginning with a quote from the rulebook:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">The first time I played OTE, I had a few pages of notes on the background and nothing on the specifics. I made it all up on the spot. Not having anything written as a guide (or crutch), I let my imagination loose. You have the mixed blessing of having many pages of background prepared for you. If you use the information in this book as a springboard for your own wild dreams, then it is a blessing. If you limit yourself to what I've dreamed up, it's a curse.</p></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">All I see, I'm afraid, is the curse. The isolated phrases "mixed blessing" and "(or crutch)" don't hold a lot of water compared to the preceding 152 extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting. I'm not saying that improvisation is better or more Narrativist than non-improvisational play. I am saying, however, that if playing this particular game worked so wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming during play ... and since the players were a core source during this event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play ... then why present the <em>results </em>of the play-experience as the <em>material </em>for another person's experience?</p><p></p><p>The issue is the same: what is the source of the pressure to treat the <em>output</em> of others' gaming as the <em>input </em>for one's own.</p><p></p><p>That's not to say that setting is bad. But setting should be something the participants in the game can build on and use in play; not something to which they are expected to <em>conform </em>in play. This is why I, personally, far prefer 4e's cosmology to Planescape and its 3E variant.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6052919, member: 42582"] This thread seems as good a place as any to mention something I noticed last week when reading [url=http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20121115]Chris Perkins's column[/url]: one thing that Perkins talks about is a deal done by one of the PCs with Dispater, which ended up being one element of the campaign's dramatic resolution. And in the comments, we get this: [indent]EvilDM1395: Chris I am disappointed in you for the first time. Dispater is the most paranoid of the Archdevils of the Nine Hells and I doubt would even project himself to make such a deal. Now it would have been much more interesting to have Mephistopheles, Archdevil and ruler of Cania, to make such a deal as he can't be trusted as the betrayer that he is. Chris Perkins: The player character chose to summon an aspect of Dispater, so it wasn't my decision. . . EvilDM1395: Didn't realize the Multi-verse was dumbed down that much in 4th Ed . . . Not matter, Dispater is still cloistered Devil who has almost no interaction with others due to his self preservation and paranoia. The rest of the game sounded great.[/indent] I don't know about others' responses, but I just don't get where EvilDM1395 is coming from! "The rest of the game sounded great", but (by obvious implication) it would have been [I]even better[/I] if Perkins had copies some other author's conception of Dispater, rather than following the lead of his player and letting Dispater's personality emerge and unfold as it did in [I]his[/I] game. What's up with that? I mean, it wouldn't have made anyone at the table have any more fun. It wouldn't have made the climax of the campaign more dramatic. How has aping someone else's fiction become, for some players at least, a self-standing measure of the quality of an RPG experience? [I]That's[/I] the true sacrifice of creativity that (in my view) has tended to infect the contemporary RPG scene. [url=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html]Here[/url] is Ron Edwards on Jonathan Tweet's RPG Over the Edge, beginning with a quote from the rulebook: [indent][indent] The first time I played OTE, I had a few pages of notes on the background and nothing on the specifics. I made it all up on the spot. Not having anything written as a guide (or crutch), I let my imagination loose. You have the mixed blessing of having many pages of background prepared for you. If you use the information in this book as a springboard for your own wild dreams, then it is a blessing. If you limit yourself to what I've dreamed up, it's a curse.[/indent] All I see, I'm afraid, is the curse. The isolated phrases "mixed blessing" and "(or crutch)" don't hold a lot of water compared to the preceding 152 extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting. I'm not saying that improvisation is better or more Narrativist than non-improvisational play. I am saying, however, that if playing this particular game worked so wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming during play ... and since the players were a core source during this event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play ... then why present the [I]results [/I]of the play-experience as the [I]material [/I]for another person's experience?[/indent] The issue is the same: what is the source of the pressure to treat the [I]output[/I] of others' gaming as the [I]input [/I]for one's own. That's not to say that setting is bad. But setting should be something the participants in the game can build on and use in play; not something to which they are expected to [I]conform [/I]in play. This is why I, personally, far prefer 4e's cosmology to Planescape and its 3E variant. [/QUOTE]
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