Game title pages: how to get Techniques pages going

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

I think I've finally figured out a good way of gettin the techniques pages into shape. First, I made a list of some Social Contract and Techniques features for a given game. I went to one of the existing wiki pages for one of those features, added a page-link for the title of the game, and then filled in the list for the game.

I think it's important to consider Techniques at several levels, and I hope my organization of them will make it clear. I do not think that the page for a given game needs to correspond to a master techniques list, but merely to point out the ones that matter most to that game.

You can see how it turned out at theMy Life with Master page. I've only started to go now to the new links to make the pages, but I think it'll work out OK. You'll also see how I've beefed up and started to organize the general Techniques page, where ultimately all of them, or at least useful sub-categories to lead to new pages, can be listed. (NOT through a Categories link, please!)

So pick a game! Please try to use only games which you consider absolutely crucial for learning and understanding important techniques. I have a list of about a couple dozen, but I'm willing to consider a title that you think would be just right, so I won't include the list here.

Again, this is not Wikipedia and I don't think we need every imaginable mention of every technique of every game ever written to be fully cross-referenced. The point of including the games at all is to showcase stuff that a given game [[really really]] makes clear through its features. Also, stay with the point of the Wiki as a whole - to explain the techniques. For example, you'll notice that Paul's name isn't  a wiki page, which in Wikipedia it'd have to be. Here, linking to the game's site is all that needs to be done in that regard.

Questions, comments, suggestions? Please use this forum to present "techniques profiles" for games you think would help.

Best, Ron
edited to fix a format

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

I wouldn't call MLwM "whole scene" fortune resolution. It drifts to that out in the wild, but when I run it I do often have multiple minions and more than one conflict resolution in a scene.

Also, I think the Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity bonus dice are significant for driving the emotional context of the game.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

True. I sought a concise way to say "one roll per Minion per scene," but I have to find a better way to put it without blathering on past the page's purpose ... And the fact is that the roll is still limited to the conflict inside the scene, it's not about the whole scene in any way like it is in, for instance, Bacchanal or It Was a Mutual Decision.

Thanks! I am also coming to the conclusion that a lot of terms should be mere boldfaced specifications within bigger terms, without being wiki pages of their own. This process is helping me move the whole project away from the 2004 Glossary and more into a modern explanation, I hope.

Best, Ron

[Miskatonic]

Oh, this is a good idea! I like it.

[Moreno R.]

Could it be worthy of mention the way the setting is really established together with The Master at the beginning of the game, and the setting in the game manual is really a suggestion not tied to the rest of the game? (so that playing MLWM in another setting is not even an hack, it's simply a different choice of Master)

What I mean is that at the beginning of the game the group is really building the Setting, of which the Master is a part. They can build a Master that is a XIX century mad doctor in a old castle, or they can build a master that is a cruel and manipulative contemporary politician.

It's this worthy of mention, or it's a useless detail?

[Ron Edwards]

That's a good suggestion too. Really, the more suggestions that people make like this, the better the whole wiki gets, so go ahead and post what you think, anyone. I don't think any of the input will be useless at the level of discussion.

Larry, do you have any thoughts on other games to add? I was thinking about historically significant or well-known ones, such as the Avalon Hill Runequest, Amber, and Vampire, about ones I consider seminal to the indie revolution like Over the Edge, and about the "door-opening" independent games from 2001-2003 like (um, well) Sorcerer, The Pool, Universalis, probably Hero Wars, and InSpectres.

Best, Ron

[Miskatonic]

Ron, that seems like a pretty good list. I'm thinking maybe Everway, for having a novel approach to resolution mechanics, and Price Valiant, for being so far ahead of the curve at an early date, might be interesting. Prime Time Adventures seemed like a pretty big deal in our corner of the hobby, would that be a useful example? You've got a GM-ful game, Universalis, a couple more that explore different ways to dice GM-tasks might be cool. (I always think of Polaris.)

I'm curious what you're thinking for the traditional games. It seems like you need to have some of these well-known games as reference points. But aren't the techniques used in functional game play a bit idiosyncratic to individual play groups? The texts are basically lying liars about how to make the games work, people come up with divergent takes of what's really a rule and what's crap. You got informed knowledge of actual play cultures for these games, enough to make reasonably solid generalizations? (I suspect you do.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Larry,

Unfortunately, most of my expertise with play-cultures of those games is dated as hell. I could really bust out a procedural profile for several different and distinct ways to play Champions 3rd edition, with page numbers and piddly rules-details across a bunch of supplements, and with multiple criss-crossing references to GURPS texts at the time ... but it would take forever to write and I think it'd be a historical curiosity dated 1987 with very little benefit beyond that.

So it might be good to throw open the doors and let anyone come up with some handy text ideas for such a game, in its own thread in this forum. I guess Moreno or Paul could really nail AD&D2, after someone comes along and cleans up all the profanity and sarcasm from the first draft, right guys?

Not to say all old games are dysfunctional. How about Tunnels & Trolls? I could do that! And I bet there are few people who'd help make those pages really good, too.

Best, Ron