Competition and Role-playing
Serious competition around an idea of simple winning is problematic. Players want to have their success determined in a non-arbitrary way: not by anyone’s subjective decisions. So victory is then logically tracked, made dependent on mechanics. This reasoning cascades from the final victory conditions to every other aspect of the game, leaving something that is primarily about strategy, little about role-playing. Even where joins are suggested by the game text, they will — very logically — be ignored, because they are tangential to the real goal of the game. I see but two solutions.
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Nov 24, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: play, structures | 0 Comments
Role-Playing Structures II
In my previous essay, I introduced what I see as the two major “structures” of role-playing, mechanisms and imaginings. Here I’ll explore them further: their components, their interaction, and their use.
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Nov 03, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: analysis, indie, nouns_verbs, play, structures | 0 Comments
Role-playing Structures
I’ve often struggled with the definition of games. What is it that makes role-playing role-playing? How is it different from board-gaming or wargaming? These terms may be useful but the boundaries they set are fairly arbitrary, and they could be abandoned.
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Sep 20, 2009 | Filed in design
| Tagged: analysis, indie, play, structures | 0 Comments
Narrativism and Direction
Playing Timothy Kleinert’s The Mountain Witch recently has made me think about Narrativist-supporting designs, including my own. I enjoyed playing tMW a lot, but there were several intertwined issues that initially created barriers to really getting into it, all relating to player power and direction.
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Jan 29, 2006 | Filed in design
| Tagged: play, story | 0 Comments
