Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="JonWake" data-source="post: 5826843" data-attributes="member: 95255">Thank you for pointing out another benefit to randomization: avoidance of cliche. Here's the thing:storytelling, in the best of circumstances, is hard. It's really, really hard. Dodging cliches is a full-time occupation for professional writers, and lets face it, most of them aren't that good at it. If you don't have the time to mine your stories into the dirt, they will be filled with cliches.&nbsp; It's not a shameful thing, it's just human nature. We're inveterate memetic recyclers.And avoiding a cliche in an RPG? Effectively impossible. In fact, you probably shouldn't try, because no matter how much work you put into a world or a storyline, the players are going to be recycling all the plots they've read for the past thirty some odd years. And that's if they're not just recycling D&amp;D tropes, which are cliches of cliches. D&amp;D is a photocopy of a photocopy at this point. We're the Andy Warhol of fantasy fiction. (I guess a D&amp;D game could be considered the original democratic mash-up. We're the vaccuum tube of remix culture.)So the chances are, you're relying on cliches. As that there's no such thing a a full-time DM, we pretty much have to. It's not a big deal, but we have to acknowledge it. However, using a good element of randomization can circumvent this to a degree. Randomly creating an organization can lead to one that looks unlike anything you'd think of normally, likewise with encounters or character reactions. Naturally, we're still filtering a random chart through our expectations and are free to ignore any ludicrous response, but think of randomization as the seed value for your internal storytelling program.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JonWake, post: 5826843, member: 95255"] Thank you for pointing out another benefit to randomization: avoidance of cliche. Here's the thing:storytelling, in the best of circumstances, is hard. It's really, really hard. Dodging cliches is a full-time occupation for professional writers, and lets face it, most of them aren't that good at it. If you don't have the time to mine your stories into the dirt, they will be filled with cliches. It's not a shameful thing, it's just human nature. We're inveterate memetic recyclers. And avoiding a cliche in an RPG? Effectively impossible. In fact, you probably shouldn't try, because no matter how much work you put into a world or a storyline, the players are going to be recycling all the plots they've read for the past thirty some odd years. And that's [B]if [/B]they're not just recycling D&D tropes, which are cliches of cliches. D&D is a photocopy of a photocopy at this point. We're the Andy Warhol of fantasy fiction. (I guess a D&D game could be considered the original democratic mash-up. We're the vaccuum tube of remix culture.) So the chances are, you're relying on cliches. As that there's no such thing a a full-time DM, we pretty much have to. It's not a big deal, but we have to acknowledge it. However, using a good element of randomization can circumvent this [I]to a degree[/I]. Randomly creating an organization can lead to one that looks unlike anything you'd think of normally, likewise with encounters or character reactions. Naturally, we're still filtering a random chart through our expectations and are free to ignore any ludicrous response, but think of randomization as the seed value for your internal storytelling program. [/QUOTE]

Verification