Would you pay $7.50 to see an undeterrable protagonist?

[Christopher Kubasik]

[I cross-posted this post with Redwalkers last post to Alan.  His term "procedural" is exactly what I mean by "Guys at Work"]

Hi Redwalker,

I respect where you're coming from.  

And I think you've nailed the divide between your concerns and the concerns of Ron, Chris or myself.

Essentially, you're describing Guys At Work.  They've got a job to do.  How well can they do it?  The ideal, if I may, might be a documentary showing guys making their choices, doing their job well -- or as best they can.  However, dramatic narrative depends on something else.  Not that Hollywood doesn't provide plenty of examples of "flat" characters.

I'd offer that my friend's critique of "The Crow" was, "No, I didn't like it much.  It was like a guy with a laundry list," might be exactly why you *did* like it.  (I like it to, because I'm a sucker for cool and strange movie visuals -- not because of the character.)

Now, I'm strange in that I have very clear views.  I know what I like, and I know what I like to make.  But I know human beings are very varied.  And there's no way I'm going to tell you you're wrong in your taste.  But I will be clear: the construction I'm talking about seems to be the dramatic work that engages audiences fully, keeps them, for reasons they may not always understand, talking to their friends about a play or movie they have to see.  Spectacle, like in The Crow, can help replace the need for Character Choices, but -- well, there it is.

As for Gladiator.  Next time you get to see, I offer this: really watch how long it takes for Maxiumus to get shaken into action.  After the death of his wife and son, he *doesn't* want to fight at first.  It takes a looooooong time for him to become proactive.   He's almost got to be jabbed into it, *responding* to attacks to wake him back up into life.   And the terrific scenes with Oliver Reed -- the man's almost like Obi Wan luring Luke to go on an adventure with him in the hut scene in Star Wars.

Yes.  When we look *backward* it all seems inevitable.  But if you watch scene by scene, especially in the first half, you'll see he's taking one small step after another to get "back" into action.  

As for Medea... Again, I think your critique depends on far, far too much hindsite.  Medea has no plans to kill her sons at the start of the play.  She has no plan to poison the princess when the play opens.  Having hacked her brother's body to pieces to help Jason escape, we know she's, um, intense, and capable of dark deeds.  But the deeds that trasnpire aren't "written" in stone.  At the start of the play she's negotiating Jason to build a life together.  Her tactics as this fails are responses, rising in horrible nature, to his intractible behavior.  She's *not* about "just" hatred.  She's a woman who loves this man so much she'll betray her family for him -- and slowly comes to hate him through the course of the play, with rising tragedy for all involved.

All of which is a way of saying if *you* see "Man on Fire," you'll probably sit there in the first half thinking, "What the fuck, can we get on with it!" and love the second half!

Christopher

[Alan]

H Redwalker,

You've hinted that you prefer a simulationist approach to role-playing and things you've mentioned support this.  There's no need to explain that: simulationist play is just another kind of role-playing.  

However, this thread got started after some discussion about Sorcerer in another thread.  Many of us have been pointing out character choices in the example movies you've chosen, largely for the purpose of emphasizing how they might work in Sorcerer.  Because Sorcerer is about making choices, not having scripted decisions, or choices determined by pre-set personality traits.

If you would like to play with mechanics like pre-set personality traits (which support simulationist play very well), then you should know that Sorcerer supports simulationist play very poorly.

Now, you could try narrativist play just to get a feel for a different approach, but you won't actually experience it unless you do allow yourself to explore a new approach for a while.  That means giving up things like pre-set personality mechanics, etc.

You have to make a decision about that.  If you decide you'd just be happier playing an inhuman killer in a simulationist way, then you'd be better off just choosing a game designed to support such play.   I think there are some - maybe someone could suggest a couple good ones: Obsidon, FATAL, WoD?

[DannyK]

The idea of the "procedural" in RPG's is very interesting.  It immediately made me think of Call of Cthulhu , where you know full well your character is going to encounter the uncanny and probably go mad or die or both.  

It's a very powerful model for gaming, but I can see that it really is approaching the game in a very, very different way than Sorcerer.[/quote]

[redwalker]

Now, you could try narrativist play just to get a feel for a different approach, but you won't actually experience it unless you do allow yourself to explore a new approach for a while.  That means giving up things like pre-set personality mechanics, etc.

You have to make a decision about that.  If you decide you'd just be happier playing an inhuman killer in a simulationist way, then you'd be better off just choosing a game designed to support such play.

Well, I don't think I could *referee* a Sorcerer game unless I got some players who were better at Narrative than I was.  In which event I would rather hand one of them the rulebooks and be a player.

Currently, I'm trying to make sure I have some concept of what Sorcerer is supposed to be, so that when I pitch it to prospective players, I can be more confident that I'm pitching the right thing.

By the way, some folks had suggested that I look at "dual Humanity."

 I had been searching the threads on this board, trying to find a thread that explained it.

I swung by the gaming store and looked at the "dual Humanity" section of the third supplement again.  That new mechanic solves a lot of problems.

That being said -- yes, dual Humanity would solve a lot of the problems I had posted earlier.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi DannyK,

Since this topic is near and dear to my heart, I'm going to tweak your reference to CoC a bit.

Yes, it can be played as a supernatural version of Law & Order.  But it can be played straight Nar as well.

In  my favorite game I played years ago, my guy was Bill, an uneducated dock worker who caught a glimpe of his little daughter taken away by something...  uncanny ... one night, and devoted himself, against his wife's pleadigs, to find out what happened.

Yes.  He went mad.  He had to find out.  But the knowledge that he was getting deeper and deeper into something that he knew more and more could bring no good to him only offered up more and more choice.  There were plenty of scenes -- plenty of standing at the entrance to a dark tunnel, plenty of books he could choose to open or not, plenty of times he could have just walked away -- that were rich in choice.  And the hovering moment in that decision is what made the game compelling for me.

Look what we've got here:  a) Connections (daughter, wife), and b) choice (does Bill pursue the truth at the expense of all he's ever known to be true).  A Narrativist, premise driven play.

Now.  One can also set up the Group o' Investigators.  They're "job" is to go find stuff out.  They know the risks, do cost benefit analysis of opening the tome on the spot.  They're Guys at Work.  We can be playing it to bring up the "bits" from Lovecraft (and knowing we're succeeding because we're doing this well); we can play to get out of the session with as much HP and San as possible left; we can go all Delta Green and use our frickin' best Black Hawk Down tacticts to torch the mother fuckers and go home to a six pack.

Each of these are valid goals for the right group.  The rules might or might not support each style of play better than another, but that's another issue.

What matters is the game can be turned to different needs.  And one of these needs might be procedural ("We do our job, we do it well"), the other premise rich ("Okay, if I stop now, I never find out what happened to my daughter -- can I live with that.")

Christopher

[Brand_Robins]

To go into this in a double barreled way...

The Crow. I recently had a chance to watch The Crow with my fiancée, who had never seen the movie before. For the first half of the movie she was bored and annoyed, finding the violence meaningless and repetitive, the protagonist without redeeming merit. We almost stopped watching the movie twice. (Interestingly, it was the cop that kept her watching the movie – she wanted to find out what he'd done to get busted down in rank.) Then, right after the shoot out in Draven's loft, her attitude changed. Once the laundry list of folks to be killed was done, once wasn't on a linear mission, and especially once he had to choose between going to rest with his lost love or saving the little girl, my fiancée suddenly started to care about the movie.  

I liked the movie the whole way through, but my fiancée isn't the only one I know who had that reaction – I've several friends who've said, "Lovely visuals, but the only time I cared about the character was when he was sitting on the grave waiting to die and Draven took the little girl."

Now, I was always a big Crow fan and a big fan of some other dark comics from the angsty 90's type of guy, so it will be no surprise to anyone that I eventually ended up playing a very Crow type character. He was a warrior from another timeline with a great sense of noblesse oblige whose crusade for the common people had cost him his family, his fortune, his wife, and his world – as he chased the sorcerer who brought down his realm into our world and killed him there at the start of his 'superhero' career. (Yes, I ripped off Dark Ages Spawn. Shut up.)

So the game starts, and my character immediately falls to the big softie principle – he's hard, he's angsty, but he cares about the "common" people and will do anything to protect them. He gets drawn, in the first couple game sessions, into a new romance with a girl that looks very much like his lost wife, a war with the mafia over protection rackets, and one of the other PCs – a supercop trying his best to stay clean. Things move along, and a lot of it is laundry list, I find mafia goons, I beat them, they give me info, I go to the next mafia goons and beat them, rinse, repeat. I had fun, it was good, and it let me and the cop PC have some real intense moments where he did have to make choices.

Then one game everything changed. I finally had gone up to the top of the list, was sneaking into the Don's house with every intention of killing him as dead as I'd killed his cappos. I come into his room, where he's sitting at a desk, and put my sword against his throat. From behind me comes the voice of the girl – the one who looked exactly like my dead wife, whom I'd now been dating for almost a year in IC time – telling me to put down the sword as she cocks back the hammer of a gun. The Don, it turns out, is her father. Then the PC cop comes into the room, late to the party, and pulls his gun. I'm distracted by the girl and the Don pulls out his gun too.

So there my hard-ass laundry list running PC is, with the Don he hates at the tip of his sword, two and a half-guns pointed at him, looking at the woman he loves and whom reminds him of the wife so brutally stolen from him, and he says "Dana, it doesn't have to be this way."

She replies, "All my choices have already been made sugar." I know if I try to kill her dad, she'll kill me – then the cop will kill her. Know it for fact. I could kill her, and maybe get the Don too before the Cop gets me. I could put down my sword and walk out. I could, I could, I could....

By this time the tension was so thick in my chest that I felt like I was going to smother. It was that wonderful, intense, dramatic rush you get when you're reading a book and the moment of ultimate truth comes. There were a hundred choices, none of them good, and every one of them would define for ever after who my character was.

Do you know what I chose?

If so, could you tell me? Cause right then the game ended for the night, and because of some sudden idiocy IRL, we never got to play again. I never got to see my character make that choice, never got to figure out what he was going to do. To this day I and all the other players (at least those still talking to each other) remember that moment as something special – something that was really interesting, that really had everyone around the table watching my character with the kind of intensity people in RPGs rarely even watch their own character with.

It wasn't because my character was special, or bad-ass, or original. He wasn't really any of those things – it was because he was on the verge of making an impossible choice, a real choice, and proving what kind of hero he was. Be it RPGs or movies, I think that one universal is one of the issues that is going to separate the men from the boys.

So yea, we get a lot of movies, and RPGs, without the dramatic characters making the dramatic choices. That's because in the course of human events things are going to be done poorly, or be done for different reasons, or be done to different tastes. But in the end all of my favorite protagonists are those that have to make the choice, a choice of connections and real consequences.

And BTW, that's why I didn't like Gladiator – I never felt Maximus really make that choice. Which, I suppose, shows that there is a lot of variation in where individuals will think interesting choices are, and are not, made.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Excellent Post Brand.

And you know, when you got to the part where your guy turned and saw the gun in the girl's hand.... Well, I leaned in, without even thinking about it, heart, I realized, going faster...

These are the golden moments of dramatic narrative.

Now, here's the trick.  We often focus on the Climactic decisions (Will your guy kill the Don, will Luke trust the Force)...  But the real vein of gold is struck, for Nar RPG or solid dramatic narrative, is to have these choices sprinkled throughout the tale, rising toward the really, really big choice where there's no turning back and The Decision that ends all decisions is made.

By the way, I sympathize with your feelings about Gladiator.  I didn't like it the first time I saw it.  But then it made a gazillion dollars.  And then I realized every time I drove past the Arclight cinema the audience was 50% female or more.  Then, when I mentioned this to a friend who HATED the movie, he said, "Of course.  Crowe suffers like a woman."  I thought, I gotta check this out again.  

So I watched it, and there was this light bulb moment when the Emperor and Maxiumus are talking, and somehow stoic philospohy comes up (or the Emperor was Marcus Areilius, or something, right???) and I thought... You know, you don't often get references to Stoic philosophy in a $60 million action movie --

And I realized Maxiumus' choice is to CONTINUE.  He keeps going, even though he's lost his wife, his son, his home.  All he wants to do is be with her, and he's got an obligation to take care because -- well, he didn't die.   He wants to be dead, he wants to join his wife, he's alwasy pullled by images of her in that field... But his obligation as a living man IS TO KEEP LIVING -- no matter what terrors come next.  Should he die, great.  But remember for the first half of the movie after his family is killed the emperor isn't even an option on the horizon.  The real choice is to continue living, to endure, stoicly.  And only after he's proven he's got enough life left to be an excellent gladiator does he discover he's got a shot at going to Rome and confronting the emperor.  

Astoundingly then (and I don't expect everyone to buy this), the connection to his wife is the reason *not* to keep fighting.  She is the lure away from battle, life and vengeance.  It is his role and obligation as a stoic and responsible man that makes him keep fighting until he confronts the emperor.  Only after he's fought until his last breath, a last breath that needs to be taken, not surrendered, has he earned the right to die.  

And by continuing to fight to the end, by meeting this obligation of living on in a wearying, ignoble life, he finds he's able  to help another mother, another son.

I think if you turn the expectation of the "motivation" around you'll see he has lots of choices.  And made really strong ones.  He is an "anti-martyr" -- a man who chooses life in order to die by his principles.

Christopher

[Brand_Robins]

But the real vein of gold is struck, for Nar RPG or solid dramatic narrative, is to have these choices sprinkled throughout the tale, rising toward the really, really big choice where there's no turning back and The Decision that ends all decisions is made.

Yea, I know -- but I'm still working on that. After years of Illusionist play I have the final big bang down (it's all illusion until that moment -- because I was never quite smart enough to scene frame to that moment until I read Sorcerer), but getting the building choices, the stairway to heaven or hell, in play is still a bit hit or miss for me. I think years of thinking of RPGs in terms of the finished story (looking back on the movie) rather than the tension of the moment (pausing the movie in the middle and trying to guess/understand what the protagonist will do next) has lead me to a lot of unexamined behaviors and habits that I'm still trying to excise.

Really, it shouldn't be that hard -- I can write a novel that way -- but come to game and I'll fubar it 75% of the time.

Ah well, I suppose practice makes perfect.

By the way, I sympathize with your feelings about Gladiator.  I didn't like it the first time I saw it.... And I realized Maxiumus' choice is to CONTINUE.  He keeps going, even though he's lost his wife, his son, his home.

Good analysis. I shall have to go rewatch the movie now. Still, I doubt I'll have so deep a reaction to it as I've never been much impressed by Stoic philosophy, being much an epicurean at heart. Really, if I can't read Zeno without giggling I don't think I'll have the same reaction to the movie that most people do.

Ahem, back to topic, another movie I think could yield good results for this discussion is Frailty. In that movie we really do have an implacable, unhesitating protagonist – or do we? While the guy that ends up being the real deal certainly doesn't seem to have a lot of hesitation we don't actually see the movie through his eyes. We see it through the character that doubts, that hurts, that falls and makes the terrible, hard choices. It is, in the end, the different choices that the two brothers make that forms the stuff of the movie, because we only see that the main character really did make a choice when we see what choices his brother made. I would submit that if the movie was filmed without its narrative angels and tricks, it would have been much less compelling. Told from one characters POV start to finish it would have seemed to be about the unhesitating hero. Told as it was the experience was harrowing.

Of course, at that point the question becomes can you do that in an RPG. I don't think you could with traditional models, but with enough of a troupe driven game and joint narration, with careful scene framing, I think it might be doable.

Every character has a moment of choice, lots of them generally, the question is simply how to put the emphasis on those moments and off the passing ones that do not matter.

[redwalker]

Then, right after the shoot out in Draven's loft, her attitude changed. Once the laundry list of folks to be killed was done, once wasn't on a linear mission, and especially once he had to choose between going to rest with his lost love or saving the little girl, my fiancée suddenly started to care about the movie.  

I liked the movie the whole way through, but my fiancée isn't the only one I know who had that reaction – I've several friends who've said, "Lovely visuals, but the only time I cared about the character was when he was sitting on the grave waiting to die and Draven took the little girl."
...
So yea, we get a lot of movies, and RPGs, without the dramatic characters making the dramatic choices. That's because in the course of human events things are going to be done poorly, or be done for different reasons, or be done to different tastes. But in the end all of my favorite protagonists are those that have to make the choice, a choice of connections and real consequences.

And BTW, that's why I didn't like Gladiator – I never felt Maximus really make that choice. Which, I suppose, shows that there is a lot of variation in where individuals will think interesting choices are, and are not, made.

That was a really interesting post, for various reasons -- it deserves several replies.

First off, I think "Top Dollar" was the bad guy and "Draven" was the hero's last name, but I could be wrong.

Of course, it's totally OCD of me to pick such a tiny nit.  Yes, I wash my hands seventeen times a day.  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is like that.

My main interest, however, is in the notion of "choice" considered from a Simulationist viewpoint.

"Choice" could be modelled game-theoretically but in most games it is not.  There are no utility curves charted in the rulebook for player love affairs to determine what the consequences would be for various actions.

"Choice" in real life is not usuallly dramatic.  I normally choose not to smoke because good health is an important value -- more important than smoking.  If I break my normal pattern and smoke a cigarette, it will have a very small effect unless it leads to habit formation.  If I choose to smoke a cyanide cigarette, thinking it contains only tobacco, that choice will have lethal consequences and so will be dramatic.

So a simulationist can regard every single choice as a statement of priorities.  When I choose diet cola over sugared cola I am affirming my "sugar-is-evil" belief.  When I choose filtered water over diet cola I am affirming my "nutrasweet-is-evil" belief.  When I choose diet cola over filtered water I am affirming my "caffeine is more important than nutrasweet" belief.

In real life, people often make dramatic, heroic choices and get killed and forgotten.  That is why we make heroic stories, to keep inspiring ourselves to actions which will require sacrifice.

In real life, people often hesitate to choose and so live unheroically -- opportunities are lost. In real life, people are often bad at making unfamiliar decisions.

All of which leads me to say that your game story really was dramtic, heroic, and tension-filled.  Will the hero choose quickly, decisively, with instinctive wisdom?  Will the hero be effective at making decisions?

Of course, in your story, you were choosing game-actions in a game-within-a-game.  The outward game was the role-play;  the inward game was a classic game-theoretical problem in warfare.  Congrats to whoever got that situation into play.

Let me see if I understand the choices:  Kill the boss and his daughter would kill you, whereupon the cop would kill the daughter.

But if you were to kill the daughter, the cop would kill you, if I'm reading your post correctly.  Is that what you meant?  If the cop would have killed you for killing the daughter in self-defense, he had a very interesting set of priorities.  I'd like to know more.

You didn't mention the ever-popular human shield option.  (My long-term role-playing buddies love the use of human shields.)  If you could use the father as a human shield against the daughter, the situation might have been defused in the short run -- of course nothing would be solved in the long run -- it would still be a sacrifice of romance for combat.  No woman likes it when you pull the old human-shield trick when she's trying to threaten your life.  Even flowers and chocolates can't mend that.

So you covered the kill-boss and kill-daughter options.  What about killing the cop?  That probably was rather out of character.

I've rambled too long.  Thanks for the post, though, it was great.

[redwalker]

The real choice is to continue living, to endure, stoicly.  And only after he's proven he's got enough life left to be an excellent gladiator does he discover he's got a shot at going to Rome and confronting the emperor.  

Astoundingly then (and I don't expect everyone to buy this), the connection to his wife is the reason *not* to keep fighting.  She is the lure away from battle, life and vengeance.  It is his role and obligation as a stoic and responsible man that makes him keep fighting until he confronts the emperor.  Only after he's fought until his last breath, a last breath that needs to be taken, not surrendered, has he earned the right to die.  

And by continuing to fight to the end, by meeting this obligation of living on in a wearying, ignoble life, he finds he's able  to help another mother, another son.

I think if you turn the expectation of the "motivation" around you'll see he has lots of choices.  And made really strong ones.  He is an "anti-martyr" -- a man who chooses life in order to die by his principles.

Christopher

I'm really glad that I'm not the only one who interprets the movie that way.

Maximus keeps going because he is not allowed to die for his own convenience.

The choices are strong, but they don't require cleverness -- they just require sufficient clarity.  Choosing the right deductions for your taxes is mere rationality.  Choosing the right spiritual path requires spirit.

[Alan]

I think you missed Christopher's point.  But rather than trying to hit his excellent point again, I'll say something in my own way:

Maximus keeps going because he is not allowed to die for his own convenience.

So who's not allowing him to die?  Who has that much control that they could stop a determined man from committing suicide to join his dead family?

Only his choices, made individual, each time, lead to his survival.  And the reasons for those choices are the screenwriter's assertion of theme.

[tetsujin28]

(snip)

Err...meaning no disrespect, but what? I honestly don't understand your whole argument. If the players (and you) are enjoying the game, what's the point?

[redwalker]

(snip)

Err...meaning no disrespect, but what? I honestly don't understand your whole argument. If the players (and you) are enjoying the game, what's the point?

It's not an argument so much as a description.  This grew out of a thread about Humanity.  I was initially trying to figure out how to run Sorcerer.  I've given up on that:  if I am involved in a game, I'm going to get someone else to run it -- it's beyond my abilities.

I'm contrasting two kinds of values -- the value of social relationships outside the individual, and the value of inspirations from inside the individual.

I tend to like heroes who are driven by inner values, conviction, inspiration, etc. more than heroes who are driven by outward social attachments.

Suppose you make a Sorcerer character who has a very strict code of ethics.  He calls up a few demons and they work as expected.  Then he gets in a jam and gets bound to a demon whose Need he is unwilling to satisfy due to his inner code.  So he doesn't satisfy the Need and suffers the consequences -- probably dying or going to 0 Humanity.

Another sorcerer with more flexible ethics in the same situation would find a way to bend his ethics, sacrifice his principles, and satiate the demon until he could get out of a jam.  That's what I call deterrable behavior.

Or again, suppose you have a strict Sorcerer who contacts a demon that notifies him of an unacceptable Need.  He refuses to summon and bind it.  Meanwhile, the ref makes the situation unsurvivable without the demon and the sorcerer dies/goes out of the game upholding his previous ethics.  That might make a decent story, but it would be a short campaign -- and frankly, since the guy is doomed, he might as well play out his tragedy in a single session.

The opposite would be a Sorcerer who keeps grabbing for more demons, no matter what their Needs are.  He stays in the game, and keeps handing the ref dramatic hooks to drive the story -- but would you be interested in watching such a story?

[redwalker]

I think you missed Christopher's point.  But rather than trying to hit his excellent point again, I'll say something in my own way:

Maximus keeps going because he is not allowed to die for his own convenience.

So who's not allowing him to die?  Who has that much control that they could stop a determined man from committing suicide to join his dead family?

Only his choices, made individual, each time, lead to his survival.  And the reasons for those choices are the screenwriter's assertion of theme.

Short answer:
If you believe in the individual personality, you would say the Maximus'  conscience does not allow him to die.  

Long answer:
I've taken too much of everyone's time already.  To indulge in the philosophical ramifications of Maximus' conscience would be worse than excessive.

[Christopher Kubasik]

[Hi.  I cross-posted this with red's responses.  Sorry for speaking out of turn if it comes off that way.]

Hi tetsujin28,

Hmmmm.

Let's see.  I'm not sure if you replied after only reading red's first post, or after reading the whole thread... So I'm not sure what your point is.

I'll offer this:  

Red was looking over the rules for Sorcerer.  He found passages in the rules that stated the typical "lone wolf, no connections, I'm interesting cause I kill well" PC really wouldn't work well using the Sorcerer rules.

He wanted clarification on this.  He's thinking about playing the game, and he wants to understand better what the author of Sorcerer meant.  (Specific passages quoted in the first post.)

It's axiomatic around here that certain rules work better for certain styles of play.  Red's hip to that, and so he wanted to get a better handle on how the Sorcerer rules are going to play, and how best to use them.  Because, I believe, he hasn't played with, and at least doesn't prefer, the kinds of PCs Ron Edwards advocates using for the Sorcerer rules.

He gave examples of the kinds of heroes from movies he likes, using them to counter Ron's requirements for a solid Sorcerer (and Sorcerer & Sword) character.

Then a lot of us chimed in with a great deal of, "Ah, but if you look at this way, then there were these emotional choices and emotional connections for the characters...."

So... The point is that he's checking out a new game.  The games rules require a certain kind of PC to play really well.  He's under the impression (correct, I believe), that if he uses the Sorcerer rules without getting a handle on these kinds of PCs, he and his players won't have fun.

Thus, he's hanging around here, tossing the discussion back and forth, testing new points of view, holding his ground where he thinks he should hold his ground, and seeing what there is to learn about this new game he's bought that he's intrigued with but hasn't wrapped his head around you.  (Though I believe his head is fairly wrapped around a lot of it now, and may have discovered that what Sorcerer offers isn't what he wants.  But I'm not sure about that.  Either way, all is cool.)

The overall point is that there are many different ways to have fun in RPGS.  Different players bring their own agendas (with what they think is fun -- for example, using the rules for swift, tactical victories, or creating, as a priority, heartfelt scenes of strong emotional decision).  And different rules sets bring their own agendas (for example, by rewarding tactical behavior on the part of the players, or gearing the rules, like Sorcerer, to the establishing and closing of strong, interpersonal narrative tensions.)  

By being aware of these different agendas, and then bringing together rules promote and players enjoy the same kinds of agendas (as much as is possible -- which leaves lots of leeway), people get the most fun out of playing as is possible.

Like if you loved playing baseball, and your best friend loved playing chess and hated baseball.  You might sit down a play a game with him every once in a while.  But you would probably eventually stop badgering him about joining in a loud, roucous social activity out in the sun when every time he joined such a game he looked utterly miserable.  Two valid games.  Two valid enjoyments.  And sometimes they just don't overlap.

So, Red is working to make sure he and his players will enjoy whatever game they choose to play -- a game chosen with eyes wide open, to provide the kind of fun they enjoy the most.

Christopher

PS  Since I don't know where you're coming from all this (your post was somewhat abrupt), I'm not sure if you're point of view is, "Any rules work as long as the players are having fun."  I'll just point out again that around here that's considered a somewhat dubious point of view.  If you'd like to discuss that specific matter, just start another thread, and I'm sure a lot of folks will happily discuss it with you.