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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8807870" data-attributes="member: 6779310">The most fundamental question in re intent was brought up in my English Methods class: Does authorial intent really matter at all?The general consensus was "Only if they're good authors. Bad ones or mediocre ones fail to enshrine their intent in the text." (Keep in mind, we were all masters candidates between halfway and 3/4 of the way through our programs. Almost all of us with bachelor of arts degrees.)Really, the meaning of the text is, at the end of the day, it's meaning as absorbed by the reader, rather than its author's intent. It's not VI Lenin's fault I found his address to the first supreme soviet humorous and ironic - and it is a very safe bet he didn't intend it to be...  Partly due to my limited Russian proficiency (far better then than now... sigh), partly due to the irony of reading it after knowing all his goals failed, partly because it's written so damned sincerely.Wraith works quite well in mixed party games of non-munchkins. WoD has a large munchkin quotient in the fanbase...Funny, but Dread. Alien, and a few other games do just fine ensuring players are popcorn for the bigbads...It's not that you're going to die or go insane — one or the other is a given in CoC, WFRP 1E/2E, Alien, and others — it's how you go out, and what you do up to that point; play to find out.It's been selling CoC for 40 years or so.An adventure that would drive the characters insane at the mechanics based rate is sufficiently unrealistic that it will, at best, make modern players laugh... keep in mind that (in the better school districts) we're teaching some elements of quantum physics and radioastronomy/astrometrics in grades 6 & up... so kids are often actually aware that our perceived reality isn't inherently sensible outside the scale in which we operate. They know that Science says "There's something out there generating gravitic interactions but without being otherwise detectible," and "there is a fundamental randomness to the universe at a VERY fundamental level which means everything's subject to random influences." Basically, we're driving them toward either mental disorder, desensitization, or retreat to religion. Sometimes more than one.And that's assuming that they're bonded to their characters. Which isn't a safe assumption for many playstyles. Often, those are playstyles of people drawn to watching how their character gets ganked. I've one player who is more interested in an interesting death than character preservation.Not of need; in at least a few (HōL comes to min, as does KAMB, Ninja Burger, and the original edition of Og) they're deconstructions. Intentionally reinforcing anti-genre play for its value as humor...Rein‧Hagen may have utterly missed his intent, but the design is no failure - it turned out to be one of the most popular anti-hero RPGs...Essentially, "Monsters R Us" as camp rather than serious drama. Rein‧Hagen's intent is irrelevant to play; only the group's intent vs the emergent behavior is important. It's one of the more successful designs, in fact...</blockquote>

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