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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3398721" data-attributes="member: 2067">I wonder how much some people show up to a given D&D game just because there's some social pressure to game with your friends when their minds are completely elsewhere. And I wonder how much that disrupts everyone else's enjoyment. I wonder if it's possible to make a D&D where you don't NEED the same people to show up week after week, you don't need a core group, you can run it with whatever's there (or even solo? A DM-less D&D with only one player?)See, it would strike me that this is a breakdown of Wright's system: when someone just plays the game because it's there, not because they want to frolick around in a fictional world. Someone who asks that doesn't really want to go on the quest (or they'd be LOOKING for what to do), they're just along for the ride, it would seem.I mean, everyone has off days where they don't want to go chasing adventure carrots down, and some people don't have the confldence/courage/desire to make choices for their characters (they're more there to hang out with friends). To force it seems counter to the idea that you play a game because you want to do something other than real life for a few hours.With the Wright school of game design, this really isn't a problem: they say go sail a ship, you go sail a ship. Of course, as a DM, it's your game too, so the enemy pirates they face and the nature of getting that ship is all in your hands. But you shouldn't, in this theory, ever say "No, you can't go pirating" or otherwise put roadblocks to that.But Mario (for instance) is just one big long obstacle course...there's not a whole lot of story in that game. It shows off game design quite well, but it doesn't tell much of a story. It doesn't let the user create, either, so it's pretty confined to "run this obstacle course." I mean, admittedly, running around a Mario obstacle course is some of the best fun that can be had with polygons and pixels, but it's confined to what it is.Wright seems to be saying that if you'd like to design an ideal game, you'd be able to run players through an obstacle course when they want it, or give them a head-to-head reflex-testing fighting-game experience when they want it. You'd be able to see what the player wanted, and you'd give it to 'em.That's why the D&D analogy I've drawn is a DM who doesn't design his setting before he has PC's. The DM's role shifts from setting the stage actively to simply reacting to what the players do. The game then becomes just a system of reactions.</blockquote>

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