Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7768652" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Although I may not be following the article correctly, I could see how a &quot;new school&quot; story-based game might be incompatible with the concept of loss. It does hinge on a fairly narrow interpretation of the two camps, though.Basically, &quot;old school&quot; is actually role-playing. The player is the character, as they say. Ignore everything about Gygax and war-gaming (for the sake of this argument). You are thinking like your character, and experiencing the world from their perspective. If the character loses something, then it is like the player losing that thing, because that's your perspective.To contrast, &quot;new school&quot; is actually story-telling. The player is not the character; the player exists fully within the real world, and is (collaboratively) telling a story about the character. If something happens to the character, then it's no skin off your nose, because you're safely ensconced in the real world. There's nothing that can happen within the game world that can affect you, because you are not your character. And in that case, real loss (for the player, rather than the character) would be impossible.Another way to look at it is from the concept of investment, though. One thing that I think Gygax would agree with is the idea that, when your character dies, you're losing all of the time and energy you've put into the character for them to get that far. Even if the character is just a game piece, and you're going for the high score, you have to invest a lot of time and energy into getting that score; and when the character is removed from play, all of the work up to that point becomes meaningless. Or even if it's just that your cool sword gets disjuncted, all of your work toward acquiring it is negated.And I don't want to speak for story-gamers, but I'll give them credit that they can also be invested in their character and the story. They should still (hypothetically) be able to lose their investiture of time and energy, if the story moves in a direction they don't like.So I think that just goes back to a disagreement about the basic definition of &quot;loss&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7768652, member: 6775031"] Although I may not be following the article correctly, I could see how a "new school" story-based game might be incompatible with the concept of loss. It does hinge on a fairly narrow interpretation of the two camps, though. Basically, "old school" is actually role-playing. The player is the character, as they say. Ignore everything about Gygax and war-gaming (for the sake of this argument). You are thinking like your character, and experiencing the world from their perspective. If the character loses something, then it is like the player losing that thing, because that's your perspective. To contrast, "new school" is actually story-telling. The player is not the character; the player exists fully within the real world, and is (collaboratively) telling a story about the character. If something happens to the character, then it's no skin off your nose, because you're safely ensconced in the real world. There's nothing that can happen within the game world that can affect you, because you are not your character. And in that case, real loss (for the player, rather than the character) would be impossible. Another way to look at it is from the concept of investment, though. One thing that I think Gygax would agree with is the idea that, when your character dies, you're losing all of the time and energy you've put into the character for them to get that far. Even if the character is just a game piece, and you're going for the high score, you have to invest a lot of time and energy into getting that score; and when the character is removed from play, all of the work up to that point becomes meaningless. Or even if it's just that your cool sword gets disjuncted, all of your work toward acquiring it is negated. And I don't want to speak for story-gamers, but I'll give them credit that they can also be invested in their character and the story. They should still (hypothetically) be able to lose their investiture of time and energy, if the story moves in a direction they don't like. So I think that just goes back to a disagreement about the basic definition of "loss". [/QUOTE]

Verification