Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5803871" data-attributes="member: 54707">Do you think that 5th Edition will herald the return  of the player (the emphasis on the game returning to the Player) versus the  majority of game emphasis being upon the Character?I am very  hopeful that the 5th Edition will lead to the return of the player and will mean  a lessening of the importance of the Character.Personally I think this  is a major reason the game declined in popularity over time, the emphasis  shifted from the (real, fluid, and adaptable) Player to (the very complicated,  cumbersome, restricted, and entirely imaginary) Character.This is my  personal analysis: over time the game became ever more complicated in  Character abilities and capabilities (attributes, skills, feats, powers,  etc.) in order to provide a sort of artificial method of creating "Virtual  Players" in the form of Characters. But of course no artificial or systematic  method is capable of producing Virtualities that are an acceptable  substitute for a Real, Actualized, Human Player. (This is an  essential point in game theory, even if it is not often overtly  acknowledged in RPG and PRG and ARG design.)If the emphasis of the game swings away from the Character  (I am not saying skeletonize the Character, I am saying make him subservient to  the Player, rather than the Player the "mere mechanical controller" of the  complicated, overly regulated Character) and back to the Player then I think the  game will have much wider appeal again.The game had become more and more  mechanically calcified and restricted over time, effectively assuring, whether this was intentional or unintentional, that the Character rather than the Player became the central focus of the game, whereas so far I sense that the  5th Edition seems to be shooting for an emphasis upon the Human Player who is  the Real Ghost in the Machine underneath the Character Persona.I guess  I'm saying will the 5th Edition move from Persona back to Person?My  supposition and suspicion is that, intentionally or unintentionally, it will. And that this will greatly improve the game in most respects. Your  hypothesis?</blockquote>

Verification