[ED&D] CA transience?

[Caldis]

I think a similar approach needs to be adopted for a historical or totally fictitious settings to become the real subjects of action and intention.  You don't play a grunt in an RTS, you play some sort of decision-maker, and without that shift the setting can only be backdrop.  But the dungeon crawl is completely opposed to that goal, its a different game altogether about small unit tactics.

I think you can make them work together or at least act as two games running concurrently.  You need a societal development type game that handles the building of the society and the players integration into it.  They can act as clergy, political leaders, merchants, etc.  When they head off to do dungeon crawls they work on that type of game you just need a way to integrate that action back into the greater societal development game.  The d20 levelling system would actually work fairly well with this idea.

[David Berg]

It is an extremely valid point that jumping into missions that have you crawling into dark holes deep in the woods is not an activity well-suited to exploring the social and cultural features of a setting.

On the other hand, dark holes deep in the woods give the GM a limited environment, and thus a managable amount of prep.  The more predictable the PCs' choices are, the more the GM has a hope of quality-checking the area for consistency etc.

Small unit tactics are the technique that my friends and I have the most practice with, in terms of, "Okay, whats going to be fun to do in this fantasy world?" 

Allowing the PCs to basically Step On Up and change the world is also a great way to get them paying attention to it.  However, that's exactly the wrong kind of attention -- "I'm making the gameworld my bitch" is very different than "I'm paying very close attention to the gameworld so it doesn't kill me".  Lendrhald is not just any old detailed world, it's a detailed world which is more likely to kill you than roll over for you.  The intent here is to provoke a feeling of being ignorant and powerless within the world, just a regular peasant like everyone else, and then going out and Encountering Stuff from that fragile perspective.  PCs have no supernatural abilities, they are just trying to get by doing dangerous tasks because they are out of other options.  Through play, they can hope to become more empowered, to the point where they can hack up two Orcs singlehandedly or uncover some information that may be of some value to the humans in a particular conflict with Evil.

That is the game as currently conceived, and although I admit that some element may eventually need to be sacrificed to achieve optimal playability, I'm not sold on one yet.

Our M.O. on world creation thus far (in a game-designer way, not during play) has been about what Caldis suggested -- only as complex as realism demands, and with an eye toward generating challenges.  The problem is that we'd like to have recognizably familiar human medieval culture, so certain complexities are unavoidable and the challenges can't be so pervasive that they markedly distort society.

Sticking all play in a particularly challenge-filled bubble is an interesting option.  "This game takes place in and around the city of Narse" would make tracking economics and power shifts much more feasible.  Letting the PCs attain some influence over, say, one local politician is certainly more compatible with the game's aesthetic than giving the influence over the Emperor.

Paul, to answer your question, an illusion of consistency is fine, but that illusion has to be impregnable -- if players ever find an inconsistency, that is bad.

"Make only problems, threats, resources and rewards" sounds like solid advice.  Unfortunately, the flow chart doesn't appear when I click on the "show" link...

Callan, not sure if I follow you on "exploration as a feature".  Are you saying that Gamists will just use color, setting, etc. as one more thing to strategize over?  So, e.g., color will only be explored if doing so helps you win?

[David Berg]

I am going to be away for a week, so don't interpret lack of response as disinterest.

I am not sure whether this thread is done or not.  It sounds as if the newer arrivals might have ideas that could be productively fleshed out; if so, go for it.  My previous post was not meant to be dismissive, I'm just short on time right now.

Any more links re: TRAP would be appreciated as well.

Thanks,
-David

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everyone,

I think it's time for people to start new threads based on specific sub-topics that have arisen in this one.

For those who are relatively new to the Forge, we've done this a lot over the last seven years, and I've taken to calling it "spawning." It always works better than generating one of those 10-page humpbacked threads which includes multiple topics and several pairs of one-on-one conversations, and which wears everyone out.

Here's how it works. (1) Everyone stops posting to this thread. (2) Begin a new thread which links back to this one, with its own topic, and your own experiences of play which illustrate your experience or perspective on that topic. You can summarize the posts in this thread which prompted it, if you want.

The net result is a family of threads which can be referenced as a whole and which becomes a powerful archive for later discussions.

So, that's what we'll do. To be absolutely clear, please keep discussing the topic (or rather, a specific topic that's arisen from it), but not in this thread. No more posting to this thread. Make new ones.

Best, Ron