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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8998895" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Have we been reading the same thread? People have explicitly said that without that Hobbesian central authority, exploration is impossible, consistency is essentially guaranteed to disappear and implicitly in short order, and participants will (not can, will) make illogical/impossible/ridiculous demands almost immediately.If that isn't dismissive of the very idea of &quot;cooperative games,&quot; what would be?You don't want players who are enthusiastic about engaging with the other characters at the table? You don't see any value in cultivating interest and investment in characters other than your own? These things are the glue that holds a story together. Even in works with one clear, central protagonist (something not true of most TTRPGs), the bulk of a literary work's content is not the direct actions of that one character. Instead, it's the connections between that character and others. Consider how &quot;Lancers&quot; (in TVTropes terms) tend to be among the most popular characters in fiction, but the whole point of the Lancer is to be a foil to another character, meaning their popularity is necessarily rooted in also caring about some other character.&quot;Caring&quot; doesn't have to be positive. It just means a given character's actions matter to you, that you're interested in what their eventual fate will be (and possibly would prefer a specific fate for them.) I absolutely always want to care about the other characters in the party, not because of my typical Team Dad tendencies, but because caring about them makes playing the game far more worth my time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8998895, member: 6790260"] Have we been reading the same thread? People have explicitly said that without that Hobbesian central authority, exploration is impossible, consistency is essentially guaranteed to disappear and implicitly in short order, and participants will (not can, [B]will[/B]) make illogical/impossible/ridiculous demands almost immediately. If that isn't dismissive of the very idea of "cooperative games," [I]what would be?[/I] You don't want players who are enthusiastic about engaging with the other characters at the table? You don't see any value in cultivating interest and investment in characters other than your own? These things are the glue that holds a story together. Even in works with one clear, central protagonist (something not true of most TTRPGs), the bulk of a literary work's content is not the direct actions of that one character. Instead, it's the connections between that character and others. Consider how "Lancers" (in TVTropes terms) tend to be among the most popular characters in fiction, but the whole point of the Lancer is to be a foil to another character, meaning their popularity is necessarily rooted in also caring about some other character. "Caring" doesn't have to be positive. It just means a given character's actions matter to you, that you're interested in what their eventual fate will be (and possibly would prefer a specific fate for them.) I absolutely always want to care about the other characters in the party, not because of my typical Team Dad tendencies, but because caring about them makes playing the game far more worth my time. [/QUOTE]

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