Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8944989" data-attributes="member: 85870">So I just read the article again, a couple more things standing out to me --- I'm not sure why this particular phrase stuck out to me, other than I can see a parallel to ultra-hardcore pawn stance, dungeon delve, map-and-key play --- Take, for example, your average D&D B/X party of four level-3 adventurers entering "Keep On the Borderlands." Take away even the barest hint of narrative premise from the module, and once the team gets to the dungeon proper, there's certainly the possibility of little more than "button mashing" --- "We go to the nearest room on the left that has sounds coming from it." "Roll for initiative." A short series of d20 + damage rolls later, the encounter ends. "Okay, we go to the next nearest room that has sounds and footprints emanating from it." "Roll for initiative." A short series of d20 + damage rolls later, the encounter ends. But I think we --- meaning all of us in the hobby --- long ago realized that we were sort of missing out on the best parts of the hobby if the goal was to enter a permanently fixated pawn stance.But that first sentence, "no predetermined relationship exists between gameplay and aesthetic value." Okay, so, if there IS a predetermined relationship, what would it mean in context of an RPG?Is it "GM backstory" that creates the predetermined relationship? Is it PC backstory? If there is an aesthetic value, it is predetermined. So that goes into the next part --- Now let's substitute and expound -- "Care, by definition---at least in a gaming context---means choosing to have no choice; choosing to enmesh your character's psychology and motivation into a predetermined aesthetic relationship (predominantly GM controlled) in such a way that you can play as if your character's natural inclinations are in lock step with the dramatic needs of the scenario in front of you. If you are playing the game, you are doing so in service to the predetermined aesthetic; your character's choices, build, progression, and rationales are subsumed in the service of heeding to the aesthetic need. To break from the aesthetic need is to accept a break from the illusion of a 'living world', and you are now re-entering 'just a game'. Breaking from the aesthetic need leaves you with freedom of choice, but you can no longer feel the surprise, wonder, awe, inspiration, disturbance, despair that comes from exposure to something that aesthetically moves you.""Or perhaps conversely, care, by definition---at least in gaming context---means choosing to have no choice; it means giving up the game-driven power fantasy, the obsession over numeric superiority, the empirical 'need to win the game and be awesome doing it'. And in its place you instead give your character their full psychological due, their full emotional range, their fully formed sense of internal awareness, desires, drives, and instabilities. If you are playing a game at all, you are doing it in full truthfulness and integrity to the character you imagine, above and beyond your own inward desires to manipulate the gamestate --- for if we are to achieve aesthetic value in play, we must lose sight of the concept of a 'gamestate' entirely."One last thing that caught my eye in my third reading ---This questioning of the idea if narrative control even exists in gaming generally is interesting. Does narrative control exist? What does that even mean? Does narrative control lead to "aesthetic experiences," or some other kind of experience? It seems to me that the author's position is that it's the great paradox of gaming. The more control you give the player, the less likelihood that the player engages in any sort of combination of behaviors---inputs and outputs---that give rise to a meaningful narrative. If you want meaningful narrative to arise, it will be through the restriction of choice not through the expansion of choice. The author spends several thousand words expounding this very notion to us; the aesthetic value of The Last of Us as a video game comes to us because as players we're given no choices other than to care about the outcome of the protagonists.And what's intriguing to me is that it points to something I've long sensed, possibly even feared --- attainment of an "aesthetic experience" in gameplay requires willing sacrifices by the players of control. You either give up control to the GM narrative, or give up control to the internal psychology of your character.</blockquote>

Verification