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Would you change a monster's hit points mid-fight?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6578684" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>That's an interesting theory of literature. It's not really congruent with my experience (your theory would predict that rereads are no fun at all, because you're no longer in the dark as to what they'll do or what will happen), and it's not at all clear that the analogy you're drawing between illusion of choice in an railroaded RPG and "the illusion that characters within the story have to make choices that are vital to the movement of the story" is a good one. The illusion of choice means that you appear to have power to influence the outcome, but in fact all outcomes are the same. (If you refuse to join the expedition you'll be shanghai'ed anyway.) You're apparently claiming that characters in a book have no choice, that if they chose differently the story would be rewritten to be the same anyway... to me it seems more likely that if Luke Skywalker, for example, had chosen to join Darth Vader in the Dark Side, the story would not have been rewritten to come out the same. It would have not been written <em>at all</em>, because George Lucas would have said, "That's a terrible movie. No one would watch it," and thrown away that draft. And yet in an RPG, the choice can be made, and the party deals with the consequences. A railroad will force it to come out the same as if Luke hadn't made the choice ("oops, just kidding, I guess the Dark Side isn't compatible with your midichlorians--guess we'll have to have a lightsaber fight now"). A non-railroad will accept Luke's choice and go from there ("you killed the Emperor and took over the Empire; Leia doesn't trust you any more but Han is fine with it; Han doesn't know that you murdered Chewie in a fit of rage").</p><p></p><p>You're claiming that a static medium like a book can present the same illusion of choice as a dynamic medium like an RPG. I don't buy it. "That's not true! That's <em>impossible!" </em>;-)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6578684, member: 6787650"] That's an interesting theory of literature. It's not really congruent with my experience (your theory would predict that rereads are no fun at all, because you're no longer in the dark as to what they'll do or what will happen), and it's not at all clear that the analogy you're drawing between illusion of choice in an railroaded RPG and "the illusion that characters within the story have to make choices that are vital to the movement of the story" is a good one. The illusion of choice means that you appear to have power to influence the outcome, but in fact all outcomes are the same. (If you refuse to join the expedition you'll be shanghai'ed anyway.) You're apparently claiming that characters in a book have no choice, that if they chose differently the story would be rewritten to be the same anyway... to me it seems more likely that if Luke Skywalker, for example, had chosen to join Darth Vader in the Dark Side, the story would not have been rewritten to come out the same. It would have not been written [I]at all[/I], because George Lucas would have said, "That's a terrible movie. No one would watch it," and thrown away that draft. And yet in an RPG, the choice can be made, and the party deals with the consequences. A railroad will force it to come out the same as if Luke hadn't made the choice ("oops, just kidding, I guess the Dark Side isn't compatible with your midichlorians--guess we'll have to have a lightsaber fight now"). A non-railroad will accept Luke's choice and go from there ("you killed the Emperor and took over the Empire; Leia doesn't trust you any more but Han is fine with it; Han doesn't know that you murdered Chewie in a fit of rage"). You're claiming that a static medium like a book can present the same illusion of choice as a dynamic medium like an RPG. I don't buy it. "That's not true! That's [I]impossible!" [/I];-) [/QUOTE]
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Would you change a monster's hit points mid-fight?
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