Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7283526" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] - this whole discussion begain with a post from  [MENTION=6794638]MA[/MENTION]n in a Funny Hat. I feel it helps explain the strange turn the discussion has taken that you did not read that initial post, and hence did not know what I was responding to.To reiterate - MiaFH contended that a lack of roleplaying skills should not result in a reduced lack of attention in play. I responded that roleplaying skill - and, ih particular, a engaging the game with a reasonably rich character who provides hooks to the GM - is a reasonable basis on which to generate attention. As such engagement will naturally shape and drive the shared fiction.If you don't think that that is a skill, or that it's inverse - what I have called the timid roleplayer - is a lack of skill, well, fair enough. My own experience in a few different contexts makes me regard the ability to put oneself out there, by creating a rich character and then using it to engage, as a skill that can be learned and improved by practice.(Obviously the dictionary definitions of "timid" and "lacking skill" are different. My poiint is that, in this particular context, they are coextensive to a significant degree.)As far as your PC C is concerned - if there is a third player, who is engaging the fiction with a rich character who shapes and drives the fiction, then s/he may also find some way to engage in the scene I describe. "Spotlight", or what MitFH called "attention", can be shared - one person enjoying it doesn't preclude another enjoying it at the same time.  [MENTION=2205]Hobo[/MENTION] seems to assert the contrary - as do ou when you say that "both players are really alternating the spotlight in roughly equal measure". Again, I disagree. Turning from metaphor to literal cases, there is a difference between a spotlight flitting from dancer to dancer, and a spotlight on a couple dancing together. There is a difference between back-and-forth cuts from the face of one actor to the face of another, and the shooting of a scene where both actors are in frame and one gets to see the two together.To turn from "spotlight" to MitFH's word "attention": it is possible to attend to more than one character at the same time, if they are engaging the fiction together.I'm not supporting any particular playstyle. I am simply disagreeing with Man in a Funny Hat that there should be no correlation between attention and player roleplaying skill. I think such a correlation is fairly inevitable in player-driven RPGing, and I prefer player-driven RPGing.That's not an argument for player-driven RPGing. It's an argument from player-driven RPGing to the falsity of MitFH's contention.I don't really follow this. 4e, at least as I've experienced it, defaults to a rather player-driven game (some better-known illustrations: player-authored quests; player wish-lists for one category of "reward"); and I think it illustrates  [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s idea that balanced player options which allow players to engage the ingame situation together, in mutually reinforcing ways, makes spotlight non-zreo-sum.</blockquote>

Verification