It's not about validity. Your experience is valid to you. It's valid in and of itself. But when you start to claim or imply that your experience is likely to be typical, that's something that can be challenged.
Not really. There have been enough people posting similar comments in this thread that any such "challenge" is largely pointless. It's not unique to me, and after that, well, how much it is or is not representative of anything beyond that is essentially unfalsifiable (other than, I suppose, pointing out that the largest RPGs don't seem to lend themselves to collaborative world-building). To that end, asking for more details of personal experience is pointless anyway, so I'm not sure why you keep doing it.
I have no doubt that you experienced the things you experienced. I just don't think they should be taken by others as all that indicative of collaborative world building.
Likewise, I don't believe that your experiences are instructive or noteworthy for anyone else. Quite the opposite, really.
As for my experiences, feel free to criticize them all you like. I'm fully capable of defending them.
...which completely misses my point of the futility of doing so. No one
has to defend their experiences, as you yourself just stipulated to a few sentences prior.
What questions do you have? I said... feel free to ask away. I am confident in my ability to discuss these games and how they work, and how they're similar to traditional play, and how they're different. And how none of the concerns you've expressed about collaborative world building have been very prevalent in them.
Of those listed, Dogs in the Vineyard and Mouse Guard are two that I'd say I'm not fully proficient with. I get how each works, and I've played enough to grasp them, but there are some details I may mistake or that I'm not 100% on. If you're very familiar with either of those games, I'd likely yield to that experience.
At this point, my questions are largely why you think your experiences are at all instructive to anyone else, let alone give you some sort of basis for criticizing the experiences of others. You claim to have played a number of non-trad RPGs; okay, but have you played
enough for that to be something that someone else should put any stock in? There are thousands of RPGs out there, and you seem to be acquainted with only a fraction of a percentage of them; why should we think that you have anything worth listening to if that's all you've tried? And of course, that's not even getting into the quality of those experiences in and of themselves (let alone how you measure quality).
All of which is to point out the futility of this entire endeavor. You can't simultaneously grant that someone's experiences are valid to them while also holding that you can criticize them. You can't even say that the points I'm bringing up are some sort of fringe, since there have been plenty of people here who have had experiences similar to my own. This attempt to say that your opinion is somehow more credible is entirely baseless.
Yes, the blurb from Mothership talks about how one specific group decided to make their own setting despite the fact that the book largely tells the GM to do so.
Do you actually want to discuss the three examples I offered? Are you familiar with any of these three games? Do your experiences with them differ?
Why? It's just three examples. Out of the myriad RPGs out there, why are these specific three worthy of special attention? What makes your particular examples of play with them instructive?
Who else would decide my opinion?
That's not what you're imbuing yourself with the power to decide: it's the validity of
my experiences, and that's up to me, not you.
Considering I'm not the only one that is taking that away from your posts, perhaps you're not being as clear as you think? Or perhaps despite all the "...in my experiences" you add, it doesn't change the vibe?
Can you quantify "the vibe" in terms of why you think talking about personal experience doesn't change it?
I mean, you've said how you feel about collaborative world building. I have no doubt that's how you feel, and I would expect that, based on those feelings, you'd avoid such play in the future. Or at least approach it cautiously.
I've said how I feel about collaborative world building. Do you accept that I feel the way I do about it, and that I will continue to enjoy such games and to seek them out? I would hope you do.
Likewise.
But if so, then what are we discussing? Why are we continuing this back and forth?
Well, I can't tell you why you're posting what you're posting, but so far your stated reasons have been to try and suggest that you think you have standing to criticize the personal experiences of other people. I don't think you do.
As I've said, I am only countering your concerns as being applicable to the game itself rather than to you and your group, and so anyone reading this exchange can know that collaborative world building need not be problematic in the ways you've expressed. Do you disagree with this?
Nothing "needs" to be anything in a game of imaginative fantasy, as I've said countless times by now. I disagree with the idea that someone who's had problems with the idea of overturning setting consistency is somehow "doing it wrong," which is what "criticizing your experiences" boils down to.
