Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9500834" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here are a couple of other things I've read that [USER=85870]@innerdude[/USER]'s OP prompted me to recall:<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/reviews/4/" target="_blank">A review of The Riddle of Steel</a>:The Riddle of Steel includes multiple text pieces regarding the thematic drive of the game, which I have paraphrased to the Premise: "What is worth killing for?" It also includes a tremendously detailed, in-game-causal combat system. My call is that we are looking at Narrativist-Simulationist hybrid design, with the latter in a distinctly subordinate/supportive role. This is a scary and difficult thing to do. The first game to try it was RuneQuest. Realism, so-called, was supposed to be the foundation for heroic, mythic tale-creation. However, without metagame mechanics or any other mechanisms regarding protagonism, the realism-Sim took over, and RuneQuest became, essentially, a wargame at the individual level. The BRP (RuneQuest) system is right up there with AD&D and Champions in terms of its historical influence on other games, and no game design attempted to "power Narrativism with Simulationist combat" from the ground up again. I can even see dating the false dichotomy of "roll vs. role playing" back to this very moment in RPG history. One functional solution to the problem, as illustrated for just about every Narrativist game out there, is to move combat mechanics very far into the metagame realm: Sorcerer, Castle Falkenstein, The Dying Earth, Zero, Orkworld, Hero Wars, and The Pool take that road to various distances, and it works. Until recently, I would have said these and similar designs presented the only functional solution from a Narrativism-first perspective. However, The Riddle of Steel is like a guy waving his hand in the back of the room -"Scuse me, scuse me, what about that first road? I'm not ready to jettison that idea yet." It's as if someone stepped into The Chaosium in 1977, and said, "Hey, you know, if you don't put some kind of player-modulated personality mechanic in there, this game is going to be all about killing monsters and collecting Clacks." This didn't happen in 1977, and that's why RuneQuest play was often indeed all about those things. But it's happened now ...It seems to me that the core idea of this thread is looking for ways to articulate a certain sort of RPG play, in which Clacks are part of the fiction - they're there in the background - but play is not predominantly about collecting them. So we're looking for ways to explain what is involved in foregrounding other ways of engaging with the fiction. Mechanics are part of this - as the reviewer I've quoted explains - but the ethos adopted by the game participants can also make a difference.<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/10/" target="_blank">A review of some more fantasy heartbreakers</a>:The key assumption throughout all these games is that if a gaming experience is to be intelligent (and all Fantasy Heartbreakers make this claim), then the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy."It seems to me an important concern of this thread, related to the core idea I've described just above, and perhaps especially the bit about ethos, is that players can do more in RPGing than simply provide the Id of play. For those RPGers who are not familiar with that, how do we explain what that involves?</blockquote>

Verification