Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6398835" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think I miscommunicated.What you are describing here is metaplot, or changes to canon.What I was talking about, in relation to 4e and Glorantha, is a setting with inherent dynamics, that drive play.OK. Do you think there aren't people who enjoy reading imaginary atlases and travel guides? Who buys all the Complete Guides to Middle Earth, etc, then?I've got a 1980s Dr Who Technical Manual and Star Trek Space Flight Chronology on my bookshelf. And a couple of Middle Earth glossaries (Robert Foster's and David Day's). But personally I don't identify playing RPGs with reading or reproducing such material. I think at least some RPG material - eg Expedition to the Demonweb Pits - is premised on a contrary assumption.Practically everything in fiction, especially adventure fiction, is contrivance: that the villains engage a hero who has something to prove; that Gollum is captured and interrogated by Aragorn, but then escapes just in time to follow and hook up with Frodo; that Frodo and Sam make camp just at the same time that the Rangers of Ithilien attack the Southrons; etc.The challenge in non-dungeon-crawl RPGing (and even some dungeon-crawling) is how to integrate authorship, which means contriving things, with the distributed labour across GM and players. Different approaches tackle this differently. One consequence of random generation - a time-honoured method of content generation - is a reduction in dramatic heft. Whether that is a good or bad thing is of course a matter of taste.For instance, it would be ridiculous to look at a module like Tomb of Horrors and wonder about its dramatic heft: its more analogous to solving a crossword puzzle (another species of entertainment, in addition to those I listed in my earlier post). Or likewise White Plume Mountain - which as a play experience ultimately has more in common with Talisman, I think, than it does with a module like (say) Three Days to Kill, despite the fact that both WPM and 3DtK use D&D mechanics as their engine. Planescape seems to me to be offering something different again. I'm assuming the objection here is political. I noted some of the political/cultural dimensions in my post, but there are board rules that put limits on such discussion. The example is from Luke Crane, and I think his conception of fantasy narrative tropes is pretty conventional. There are other ways to seed drama, but I was going with an example from a published RPG rulebook.A different, less loaded example from my own 4e game, that points to an ongoing backstory element as well as an element in the framing of a particular scene: the player of the dwarf PC wanted to use a superior polearm, so we designed a Black Peak halberd - a halberd that does d10 damage rather than d8. (The superior spear in Adventurer's Vault instead does regular spear damage but with +3 to hit.)In an early encounter - the 1st combat encounter of the campaign, I think - that PC duelled with a NPC weapon-master wielding a Black Peak halberd also. In the course of that fight, the NPC taunted the dwarf, and revealed a backstory detail that hadn't previously been known (I can't remember for sure, but I think I made it up on the spot): that the dwarves, when freed from the slavery of the giants, had had a sort of tutelary relationship with the minotaurs who had once ruled the Black Peaks region (the idea of a lost minotaur kingdom was inspired by H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth); and it was from the minotaurs that they had learned the techniques of forging and wielding Black Peak halberds.The dwarven PC defeated the NPC, but the stakes were already shifted: is part of his motivation for defeating this NPC to affirm dwarven competence, even superiority, against the taunt's of dependancy?This new backstory element also introduced a dynamic into a whole range of future situations involving this PC: when he is promoting dwarven virtues, or (heaven forbid) dwarven chauvanism, there is the lurking question of the extent to which the values and virtue he is espousing are really those of the minotaurs. Ethno-nationalism, for that PC, breeds immediate tensions around cultural cosmopolitanism and cultural transmission. Choosing one value implicates others.It doesn't strike me as terribly melodramatic, but no doubt melodrama is largely in the eye of the beholder. Some people find the Ring Cycle overblown; I find it incredibly moving.In the case of Planescape, though, I don't think it's just that I'm not moved: no one has yet pointed me to the actual drama inherent in the setting. Where is the conflict between values, that forces hard choices?Which is more dramatically compelling: Casablanca, or Star Wars? My view is: if Star Wars makes you cry you're sentimental; if Casablanca doesn't make you cry, you're hard-hearted.I posted examples upthread. Choosing honour over justice is a real choice. It's a commitment, expressed by authorship. Choosing to persuade an angel to let herself be killed in the name of her oath, rather than just cutting her down, is a real choice: it's choosing persuasion over force, a type of nobility over expedience, and also enduring a type of sacrifice - because in persuading the angel, the PC becomes close to her - and not just in the fiction but as part of the experience of actually role-playing out the scene, which puts the player in a certain emotiona state - and then has to choose to kill this person he has befriended precisely so she will let him kill her.Those are real emotional experiences. That's how narrative art works - by inducing real emotion. And authorship involves making choices about which values to favour and which to subordinate. RPGing combines authorship and audience in a distinctive way. [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] gave the example, upthread, of a Xaositect being confronted by a vengeance-seeking Guvnor. Where is the value conflict? In Casablanca, for instance, we don't get moved (except perhaps to concern or fear) by the fact that Rick clashes with the Germans - we know the Germans are wrong, just as the Xaositect knows the Guvnor is wrong. The Germans, or the Guvnor, are just a procedural obstacle. Although they are motivated by ideas, those ideas carry no weight for the Xaositect PC and therefore (in the context of the game) no weight, I assume, for the player.What is moving in Casablanca is when Ilsa clashes with Rick - because we care about her and Rick cares about her. What is an example of something from Planescape which would motivate a Xaositect to consider not unleashing chaos upon the multiverse?In my case, yes. That is what RPGing is about. As I put it in another fairly recent thread (on the old D&D forum, not the 5e one): in indie-style, there is no such thing as a sidequest because the whole game is player-driven sidequests.The focus of the game is the focus of the PCs' struggles, driven by the choices the players have made - initially build choices, but over time, as the game unfolds and the characters develop, choices made in the course of play.I don't get the contrast with "figuring things out as one goes" - the player of the PC in Luke Crane's game has to figure out as he goes what to do about his wife's flirtation with the vampyr, and the player of the dwarf in my game has to figure out as he goes what to do about his newly-acquired knowledge of the history of the dwarves.But I think you are right that many players don't want to play the way I want to play: I think many prefer setting exploration, and many others enjoy WPM-style dungeon delving (perhaps with a veneer of dramatic motivation laid over the top, like "rescue the princess" to motivate the dungeon crawl, or "find/create/deliver the McGuffin" to motivate the setting exploration). I'm not sure, though, how the preferences of others bear upon the question of whether or not Planescape is well-suited to what I'm looking for in an RPG.This is going a long way off topic. Suffice to say that (i) the nature of value is hotly disputed both among philosopher and among political actors, and (ii) the relationship between the metaphysics of morals and the meaning of sacrifice is a complex one.But even if one thinks that the conception of value at work in a piece of fiction such as Casablanca, Hero or any similar romantce is flawed, that does not preclude it being moving: emotions often don't follow reason and belief, and in the case of art I think that can be particularly so.This is why even moderate, measured liberals can enjoy, and be moved by, vigilante fantasies such as Dirty Harry or Batman; why those who embrace the values of democratic republicanism can nevertheless be moved by tales of true kingship like LotR or Excalibur; why those who regard 19th century romantic revolutionary ideals as passe can nevertheless be moved by Wagner.RPGing, at least as I conceive of it, isn't primarily a political act, or a piece of value theory; it is an aesthetic experience.</blockquote>

Verification