Saturday, August 27, 2005
A Dream
So I've officially put the final nail in the geek coffin - I had a dream about roleplaying last night. Like, a dream where, in the dream, I was roleplaying. It was pretty awesome.
Anyway, the details aren't too important, and kinda personal, but there was a moment in the dream where I was thinking "dude, this is totally going to go into an Actual Play post". Now, it wasn't actual play, as it wasn't actual, but I still think its interesting.
Okay, getting to the point now. At one point another player turned to me and said something along the lines of:
"So, you've been describing your character as being an uncertain person for the whole game, but anytime we actually do something, he's totally cool and collected and always knows what to do. Which I've been fine with, until the last scene. Now, I really think he should have been uncertain in that conflict."
To which I replied:
"Well, thats what Conflict Resolution is for. If we're both fine with whats going on, we can just run with it. When something happens that you think isn't cool, but I'm good with it, well then thats when the mechanics come into play."
It's interesting to me on a couple of levels. First, about the whole character-ownership thing ("I thought you're character should have done X." "Well, then reach for them dice!"). Second, thats a pretty good distillation of how I see conflict resolution. Third, I had just read Polaris and the Forge thread about that GenCon DitV game thats everyones talkin' about, and I think those both had a lot to do with it.
I wonder if there's some system goodness to squeeze out of that dream. That would be pretty cool.
Anyway, the details aren't too important, and kinda personal, but there was a moment in the dream where I was thinking "dude, this is totally going to go into an Actual Play post". Now, it wasn't actual play, as it wasn't actual, but I still think its interesting.
Okay, getting to the point now. At one point another player turned to me and said something along the lines of:
"So, you've been describing your character as being an uncertain person for the whole game, but anytime we actually do something, he's totally cool and collected and always knows what to do. Which I've been fine with, until the last scene. Now, I really think he should have been uncertain in that conflict."
To which I replied:
"Well, thats what Conflict Resolution is for. If we're both fine with whats going on, we can just run with it. When something happens that you think isn't cool, but I'm good with it, well then thats when the mechanics come into play."
It's interesting to me on a couple of levels. First, about the whole character-ownership thing ("I thought you're character should have done X." "Well, then reach for them dice!"). Second, thats a pretty good distillation of how I see conflict resolution. Third, I had just read Polaris and the Forge thread about that GenCon DitV game thats everyones talkin' about, and I think those both had a lot to do with it.
I wonder if there's some system goodness to squeeze out of that dream. That would be pretty cool.
Wanna buy a game? 