Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8631156" data-attributes="member: 82106">There's no weird duplication. You cannot have a game where the players central concern is the protagonism of their character, and yet have the game be centered on a story generated by the GM. Nothing is 'weirdly conflated', you are positing an impossible type of game design! Such a game cannot work, because in order for the players to fully articulate how they exist as protagonists, and how their dramatic needs play out, they need to be able to provide story input in the form of themes and situations that will do that.Now, its an interesting question as to whether its possible to articulate an agenda that can't comfortably fit within any of G, N, or S. I think you may be trying to posit that a very narrowly focused game could exist in which the GM effectively creates the characters, including their conflicts (or the game system itself does this) and then the players simply work through the consequences that play out within a curated story. I tend to think (and I highly suspect [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] will characterize it this way) that such a game is going to be well-described as &quot;the players passively experience the GM's game, with roughly the agency in a chose-your-own-adventure book.&quot; Obviously I'm open to how else it could be, but the above seems like some type of Sim or Gamist agenda, depending on what the players exactly DO and how it is designed. A requirement that they play within some dictated 'needs' created by the GM takes on more the character of fictional position type constraints than anything else, or maybe purely mechanical ones.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8631156, member: 82106"] There's no weird duplication. You cannot have a game where the players central concern is the protagonism of their character, and yet have the game be centered on a story generated by the GM. Nothing is 'weirdly conflated', you are positing an impossible type of game design! Such a game cannot work, because in order for the players to fully articulate how they exist as protagonists, and how their dramatic needs play out, they need to be able to provide story input in the form of themes and situations that will do that. Now, its an interesting question as to whether its possible to articulate an agenda that can't comfortably fit within any of G, N, or S. I think you may be trying to posit that a very narrowly focused game could exist in which the GM effectively creates the characters, including their conflicts (or the game system itself does this) and then the players simply work through the consequences that play out within a curated story. I tend to think (and I highly suspect [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] will characterize it this way) that such a game is going to be well-described as "the players passively experience the GM's game, with roughly the agency in a chose-your-own-adventure book." Obviously I'm open to how else it could be, but the above seems like some type of Sim or Gamist agenda, depending on what the players exactly DO and how it is designed. A requirement that they play within some dictated 'needs' created by the GM takes on more the character of fictional position type constraints than anything else, or maybe purely mechanical ones. [/QUOTE]

Verification