Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9082157" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, BitD characters are not generally motivated by greed, except as a sort of expected/auxilliary sort of motive. PCs start in that game as the lowest of the low in a crapsack world. So there's a strong 'survival fiction' (albeit in an urban environment) element, which usually manifests in terms of scraping for cash to simply continue to exist. Money is more just one of the resource games that you play, NOBODY really 'gets rich', certainly not unless you survive to higher tiers. In the game I was a player in my PC did end up with some saved coin, technically enough to retire comfortably, but we had to claw our way up to tier 5 to get to that point. I obviously would never say that there are no characters with the ultimate aim to become rich and powerful in narrativist play, its possible! However, you will probably find that play will lead more to a deepening of the character concept that probably leads to more interesting things. At the very least you will confront questions like "will I let my family die in order to get rich?" or something similar (I would certainly expect GMs to frame situations that produce those sorts of dilemma). Nor is anyone stating that simulationist play has to be utterly devoid of dramatic needs, but they are going to be subservient to the notion of the 'plausible scenario' and just the basic fact that players are ignorant of a lot of significant factors that decide what will be addressed or not. As [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] noted, such play is focused heavily, IME, on a detailed methodical navigation of the environment in which the main focus of choices is generally on things like 'which way do we go?' or 'can we cross this stream?' or 'can we ally with this orc tribe?' etc. These kinds of questions, often tests of skill, are the locus of play.I agree, BitD is a game where the FORM that the PC's actions take, and the arena in which they generally play out, is pretty circumscribed. But Doskvol is still, at least in the game I played and others I've witnessed some play of, just a sort of backdrop, and the real action is taking place in interpersonal space between the PCs and with NPCs and involves motives, fears, needs, etc. that are usually dramatic in nature. Obviously EVERY RPG has some sort of 'mental superstructure' in which 'the PCs take action' has to be incarnated. Otherwise you'd have Shops and Vegetables.Sure, but EVERY SINGLE B/X character has that same 'need', and its hardly 'dramatic' (I mean, it can be made so, but the game doesn't try to do that). I agree basically with what you are saying here. I just express it in terms of Blades characters seem to be more psychologically complex, and their internal life is more directly relevant to the play of the game than with D&D. And that is by design, the game is deliberately made that way.</blockquote>

Verification