CRPGs, SIS, and SOlo Play: Is it Role Playing?

[Blankshield]

What if the CRPG's database did know what a bottle was, just not that a bar was likely to have a bunch of them.  So you want to pick up a bottle and head for the door?  Tell it the bar is loaded with bottles!

OK, I know that's not how the games we're mostly thinking about work, but why not?  What if, as the player, you can create such world-building linkages?  That's not hard to imagine, code, or play.  There could be any number of mechanics devised to facilitate such inclusion -- all of them better and more meaningful if the game is in some way multi-player (even if indirectly and asychronously -- the DB/world is shared while instances of play are solitaire).  I like the idea of having a number of assurance or reification points that can be spent to add "reality weight" to a player-introduced fact and having them regenerate over time.

I like it too.  But it doesn't change the fact that it's always the player(s) as the only active participant.  The computer, quite simply, can't initiate or negotiate, it can only react and record.  And until someone develops an AI, it'll stay that way.

In the recent rash of System discussions, one thing that came out of the discussion was the proposal that the individual imagined space was really just being synchronized by System.  I think that's a superior vision, if not startlingly different.  Given that, and given some system for altering what the computer (as an agent of the author -- a real person) knows about the in-game reality, I think you do have an imagined space that is being constantly sychronized by whatever the System includes.  And this is exponentially more true if it's a multiplayer game -- in the traditional sense or even as described above.

The thing is that the computer doesn't "know" anything.  It is a tool being used by the player(s) to make sure that consistency in the imagined space is high.  "There are lots of bottles in bars" is added by a player, and the computer makes sure it stays in the imagined space.  The computer never adds anything, never initiates change, it simply records the state of the imagined space, under your suggestion.  It might as well be a scrapbook, except that it reduces Search & Handling time to nigh-zero.  So it's a very efficient scrapbook.
The computer-as-agent for the author doesn't work unless the author in some way has continued input into the process, otherwise it's a one-shot package fundamentally equivalent to a novel or a rulebook in terms of it's contriubution to the imagined space.

Computers today do not think in any meaningful way.  But already they create.  Artificial life algorithms can produce new and interesting bits of order from chaos.  And I have yet to read anything convincing to suggest that our brains are more than very, very complex computers.  Even if your brain is a clock, as James put it, it appears to be good enough for our purposes, so why assume that other computers won't get there?

I don't assume so; I expect they will.  But our brains are complex to at least a couple orders of magnitude beyond what computers are.  To say that computers as they currently exist, and as they are used in CRPG's, are an active participant is at best highly misleading, IMO.

Anyway, I suspect we are both getting derailed from the useful aspects of the discussion, and also into 'fundamental differences in paradigm' territory.
Do I think computers could be used as a tool to facilitate an SIS?  Yes.  Especially in the realm of consistency.
Do I think that computers in and of themselves contribute to that space?  No.  Possibly even Hell No - which is where I think the 'fundamental differences in paradigm' shows up.

James

[Christopher Weeks]

I'll keep this brief in deference to your worry about derailing.

The computer, quite simply, can't initiate or negotiate, it can only react and record.  And until someone develops an AI, it'll stay that way.
...
The computer never adds anything, never initiates change, it simply records the state of the imagined space, under your suggestion.  
...
To say that computers as they currently exist, and as they are used in CRPG's, are an active participant is at best highly misleading, IMO.

It may be that our difference is timing.  You're talking about computers and CRPGs of today (and yesterday) and I'm talking about today and tomorrow (but I don't mean hundreds of years from now...maybe five).

What happens when you tell a human GM that you're grabbing a bottle from the bar because bars have lots of bottles?  The GM checks that understanding of bars against his background knowledge for consistency and makes a tiny little note in his head that the bar is chockablock with readily improvised weapons and moves on.  I think a modern computer with modern knowledge-construction technology and access to internet databases -- particularly in a multi-player environment where it is possible to weigh the opinons of the players against one another, could do very much the same thing.  If said algorithm finds probable faults with the proposition that the bar bears bottles, it can kick it back, questioning the originator of the proposition.  Isn't thatt the essence of the negotiation that you're saying the computer cannot do?

The computer-as-agent for the author doesn't work unless the author in some way has continued input into the process, otherwise it's a one-shot package fundamentally equivalent to a novel or a rulebook in terms of it's contriubution to the imagined space.

First, I'd prefer the model in which the author does retain an input stream, as in all(/?) MMORPGs.  But even without that, if the thing built is significantly dynamic, I think it's substantially more fellow-player-like than a novel, even a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

Chris

[ErrathofKosh]

Truly, the player is the only active participant.  As so eloquently argued by Blankshield, the computer is only a method of recording and maintaining the imagined space.  However, there is still a GM and there is still a player.  Two possibilities exist:

The GM is the game designer who came up with a story and options for a player to run through.  It's not that the bottle does or doesn't exist at the bar, it's the fact that you can only approach the bar to talk to the bartender that is the limit.  You are railroaded into doing one or two or maybe three actions in each situation.  The designer uses the program as his system.  At best this is Illusionism, like "Choose Your own Adventure" books.

OR

The player is both GM and player.  What he decides to do is what he puts into the IS and he still uses the game as system.  This is harder to define as roleplaying, which is why I pointed out that Fable will confuse matters more.  It looks more like roleplaying, but now the game designer has left you many more choices and very little storyline to follow.  It becomes more like Sim, but less like Exploring a Shared Imagined Space.

IMO, the issue comes down to how many options are left open to you to explore.  The human GM is capable of dealing with a nearly infinite amount of player decisions. (Unless he is railroading or using Illusionism; see this other post .)  So, once a computer is able to allow you to pick up the bottle, smash it, kill people with it and flee town, you begin to blur the already fuzzy line between RPG and CRPG.  In Fable, the fact that you killed a townsperson will gain you ill repute and consquences in that town.  Computers are steadily gaining the ability to offer "choices;" soon there will be enough that unless you male a highly unusual decision, you won't be able to tell the difference between human and computer run games. (at least in substance)  IME, making a highly unusual decision usually violates the SIS anyway.

Ok, rambled enough!

Cheers
Jonathan

[M. J. Young]

The thing is that the computer doesn't "know" anything....The computer never adds anything, never initiates change, it simply records the state of the imagined space, under your suggestion.

You've said this in at least two posts. I think you're mistaken.

When I said that there were bottles on the bar, I didn't invent the idea of bottles. I reached into my database and remembered that there were these things called bottles that are often found on bars, and suggested that there should be one or more on this bar.

For comparison, when I opened the door and walked into this room, the computer reached into its database and remembered that there was supposed to be a thing called a bar beyond that door, which it then presented to me.

It added the bar to the shared imaginary space.

I'll note that the coder could have created the game such that none of the rooms were in initially fixed places. I could open a door and it would search through a list of available rooms and assign one randomly to that door. It could also be set up so that the bar is always the first door I open, no matter how many doors I pass to reach it, as easily as that the bar is the first door on the left and I need never enter it if I am aware of that. Thus it is clear that whatever the computer tells me is behind that door is something it has added to the shared imaginary space in the same way as I added the bottles. It's just more limited in what it can add, and when it can add it, than I am.

I'm sure everyone here has played in a game in which the referee slavishly followed the descriptive text of the published model. Who contributed to the shared imaginary space? It was indeed the referee who made the contribution; he drew 100% of his contribution from the designer's notes, but it was still he who participated in the shared imaginary space. If he doesn't see it in the text, it's not there. If the rules don't say how you can do that, then you can't. Just because the referee is limited in his ability doesn't mean that he's not participating in the role playing game. If his limitations put him on the same level as the computer, which is reading the designer's notes and following them slavishly, he's still a participant. I'm arguing that the computer might be considered a participant in the same sense, even though it is so limited. On that basis, I'd suggest that this is real roleplaying, with an artificial intelligence as one of the players. It may be a very stupid artificial intelligence, as intelligences go, but it is contributing to the shared imaginary space as it is able.

This is a completely different way of thinking about this area for me; but I think either CRPGs are not RPGs, or the computer is a player.

Let me look at it from a different end.

Some of us would say that Cops and Robbers is a role playing game. But when we played that, we didn't think of it that way. It's only looking back from where we are, with our understanding of system and shared imaginary space and LARP, that we see it as a primitive form of what we're doing. Yet given that role playing games exist, these more primitive versions are role playing games.

I don't know if that matters to this, but it may help.

I can foresee a day when a computer becomes an AI. When that happens (should the Lord tarry, as they say), it would be able to do everything that a human participant in a role playing game could do, as long as it's not LARP. What would it do as game referee? It would present setting and situation, interact with characters, and adjudicate results through system. There would be genuine and flexible negotiation of the contents of the shared imaginary space, which would now be shared between biological and electronic intelligence.

I don't think that will appear one morning. There will be a time when we realize it's there, but it will probably exist before we realize it. In fact, it probably exists now. The AI won't think the way we think; it will think the way computers think, just faster and with more information on which to draw. Thus it makes sense to recognize that what computers are doing right now in running computer role playing games is just a more limited form of what they will be doing later. Already they have internalized a model of the shared imaginary space, which they can understand and manipulate in their own terms while communicating it to us through a medium that makes sense to us (usually visual for us, mathematical for them). Already they are drawing on their own information database to contribute to the shared imaginary space that which is within their knowledge, and interacting with our contributions as they are able. Already they are playing.

Either they are already players in the game in an extremely limited fashion, or they never will be even when they become UIMs and leave our meager abilities in the dust.

On that basis, we can discuss CRPGs as real role playing games, I think.

--M. J. Young

[Blankshield]

Chris, M.J.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.  As I mentioned earlier, I think this is coming down to a paradigm difference - we flat out see computers differently.

For my money:
Until computers can come up with the algorithms independent of specific human input,
Until computers can create concepts that they do not have an algorithm or program pre-existing for, and
Until computers can retain and manipulate a memory indepent of human control or input,

they will not be capable of active participation in an RPG.  They will not be capable of thought or imagination.

A computer (or more specifically, what Chris is describing - an expert system) IMO flat out cannot be anything but a tool at present.  It can be a well-designed tool that closely mimics what another player at the table is capable of, but it is not that player.  It does not have imagination, by definition it cannot have an imagined space.

James

[contracycle]

Recently Ralph gave a good description on how SIS is really only ever IS. Short of mind melding techniques (his apt wording) it's never genuinely shared.

Thats very nearly 100% wrong IMO.  I nearly raised a thread to challenge this recent view of the SIS; deconstructing the SIS is counterpordiuctive on this context.

You cannot ever, ever, communicate your exact thought to another person.  Approximate words, approximate images, yes.  The SIS is not unusual in this regard; two people throwing a ball between themselves also have an SIS describing the process they are engaging in and the context in which it occurs.  Sure, this imaginary space is not fictional - its the location of a real person in the real world, the motion of the ball likewise.  bvu they must each make an individual model that is capable of predicting what the other do and the path of the ball in order to catch it.

I've done a lot of tech support over the phone; when you are dependant on another persons description of the thing you are working on, the imaginary space is very nearly tangible and very very important indeed.  If your IS's mismatch, you will give the wrong instructions; equally, users often don't realise which elements they are looking at are important and which trivial.

The SIS may not truly exist, but it can certainly collapse.  It is only that set of facts that is shared, a necessary subset of all facts, but the failure of the consensus is always catastrophic.

Really, without each other it couldn't have happened. What was made was a combination of our creative contributions.
....
But in the end it was collaborative. I couldn't have done it without their contributing it and it couldn't have happened if I didn't accept their contribution.

I take the point but is this meaningful?  I mean, equally it couldn't have happened without the silicon arsenide factories and the shipping consortia and whatnot.  To say that this was a collaborative effort is true but only insofar as virtually everything we do is a collaborative effort - not one of the pieces of clothing I am wearing today were made by me, for example,

It is correct to recognise this as a colloaborative effort, but only nominally so.  In real terms, it's still a one way medium.  They built for you a toy with a lot of bells and whistles - and seleceted them for effect - but you and the author are not meaningfully collaborating.

[Callan S.]

*I had to end up double posting one day, didn't I?*

[Callan S.]

Hmm.  I think that considering the computer in an RPG to be 'thinking' or an active participant is rather stretching the definition a bit.

I'm actually saying that the software has been submitted by another human being, to me as a user. Just as sound waves are submitted to me by someone sitting across the table, calling himself a GM.

It's a media change that's just dramatic enough to look like more than a media change.

The computer cannot, no more than can a game of solitaire, interact with you.  It can *react*, but it can never initiate, or feedback into the loop.  It's a clock.  You wind it up, it goes tick tick tick, then it stops.  It will never be anything that it isn't already when it comes off the shelf.

That isn't true, but I wont argue that angle here.

Instead, imagine I'm playing at the table top and in the course of my adventure I find a map of a goblin cave. The GM actually hands me a map on some paper that he made up.

I look at it and declare from what I see "This should show all the sentry positions on it'.

I first say this to the map. Nothing changes. I then even say this to the GM. He folds his arms and says nothing.

You see, this is his submission in it's entirety. That's it, accept it or don't. Now, does this seem like it isn't roleplay? I think weve all asked for more information during roleplay and not being given in. Negotiation is still entered into even if one sides input is just 'no'.

Okay, now say some gentleman writes some software and hands it to me. I either accept or I don't. In fact I often can decline to accept certain things in the game, doing so via various methods.

Going by the Lumpley priniciple (as I understand it), there is no System involved.  There is you, and there is a single Authority to which you refer - you refer to it a lot - but it can never negotiate, offer, or reject.  All it can do is be refered to.

The computer does not think (anthropomorphically or otherwise) "my notes don't mention a bottle" it states "Invalid command: Object bottle not recognized."  Nowadays it will do so much more smoothly, but it's still ultimately not a offer/counteroffer format - it's an error message.

I think there's a lot of good meat on the similarities between RPG's and CRPG's, and see no particular reason that CRPG's couldn't be discussed on the Forge - a lot of the design challenges from a publishing point of view are, I suspect, startlingly similar - but I think it is misleading to conflate the two.  Roleplaying is fundamentally a social interaction between people and computer gaming is fundamentally not.

James

The map doesn't think either. It doesn't even say 'Error, sentry posts not an identified object'. It doesn't matter what it does, really. What matters is its the submission of another human being. Stop thinking of the CRPG as a person substitute. Instead it's something that, like the goblin cave map, is material that is just a part of system. The system between you and the author(s) of the software.

Just like the GM folding his arms is an acceptable input to negotiation about getting more info from the map, so is the software author writing something with the intent of never ever speaking to you about it. It's all there in what he gave you...his negotiation is simple, use this or don't. Continually, as you play the game, your entering into this quite valid system.

Now, if you want to say roleplay is a lot sweeter when you have crap loads of complex negotiation, that is way true, IMO. But that's a matter of want, rather than need.

[Callan S.]

The SIS may not truly exist, but it can certainly collapse. It is only that set of facts that is shared, a necessary subset of all facts, but the failure of the consensus is always catastrophic.

No, it can't collapse as it doesn't exist. You can only become, to put it crudely, unhappy with a consensus your imagining to be there.

Really, the only thing you have is that the work you want to get done, is getting done. This doesn't mean consensus exists or that anything is shared between you. I'd go into more detail, but it's mostly a side point I was making (if you want to start a post on it, I'll respond there).

I take the point but is this meaningful? I mean, equally it couldn't have happened without the silicon arsenide factories and the shipping consortia and whatnot. To say that this was a collaborative effort is true but only insofar as virtually everything we do is a collaborative effort - not one of the pieces of clothing I am wearing today were made by me, for example,

Oh, c'mon! My GM couldn't be there without his parents getting together one night, or the truck driver this moring breaking in time when he stepped out on the road. If you want to bury the idea of there being a mutual contribution, I can just as easily do that for table top gaming.

It is correct to recognise this as a colloaborative effort, but only nominally so. In real terms, it's still a one way medium. They built for you a toy with a lot of bells and whistles - and seleceted them for effect - but you and the author are not meaningfully collaborating.

I think you'd better encompass what 'meaningful' means, because it's easy enough to mistake want/tradition for need.

[contracycle]

No, it can't collapse as it doesn't exist. You can only become, to put it crudely, unhappy with a consensus your imagining to be there.

Really, the only thing you have is that the work you want to get done, is getting done. This doesn't mean consensus exists or that anything is shared between you.

No, really no.  If I, for example, am walking you through opening your archive.pst file in Outlook over the phone, and our SIS diverges, you will be looking at a panel other than the one I think you are looking at, and I will not be able to instruct you until we re-establish a common SIS.

The SIS is not simply a thought experiment, it is not simply a metaphor, itnis a real and practical concern.  Very large numbers of people wrestle with the problems associated with divergent SIS's every day.

Oh, c'mon! My GM couldn't be there without his parents getting together one night, or the truck driver this moring breaking in time when he stepped out on the road. If you want to bury the idea of there being a mutual contribution, I can just as easily do that for table top gaming.

Yes indeed, if on this basis.  The point I was trying to make is that we need to distinguish between mutual collaboratin that is purposeful and irected and that which is merely incidental.  Collaboreative is a greaty, happy-feeling buzzword but I do not think an audience-actor relationshiop can be described as collaborative.

I think you'd better encompass what 'meaningful' means, because it's easy enough to mistake want/tradition for need.

For these purposes, I would say that they would be collaborative if the product could not have been produced without other people in those roles.  Any p[layer could have, and countless other players did, make much the decision you made.  Your presence there as you was of little import; your presence as a user of the tool produced this output as a normal product of its operation.  You are still audience, not collaborator, IMO.

[Blankshield]

Instead, imagine I'm playing at the table top and in the course of my adventure I find a map of a goblin cave. The GM actually hands me a map on some paper that he made up.

I look at it and declare from what I see "This should show all the sentry positions on it'.

I first say this to the map. Nothing changes. I then even say this to the GM. He folds his arms and says nothing.

You see, this is his submission in it's entirety. That's it, accept it or don't. Now, does this seem like it isn't roleplay? I think weve all asked for more information during roleplay and not being given in. Negotiation is still entered into even if one sides input is just 'no'.

Okay, now say some gentleman writes some software and hands it to me. I either accept or I don't. In fact I often can decline to accept certain things in the game, doing so via various methods.

These are different cases.  In the first case, it is a multi-step process, with continued negotiation.  In the second it is a transaction, not inherently different if you subsititute "novel" or "movie" or even "basket of fruit" in the place of the software.  I think Contracycle has very properly called it an author/audience relationship.

In the case of the map, if I am a 250 pound biker with a crowbar, I can say "put sentry positions down or I'm clubbing you to death.".  I can say that to the computer as well, but it *can't* change it's answer.  I suppose, in theory that I could say that to the author, but that would involve a certain amount of stalking.

I've snipped off the rest because I don't think it's a disagreement; I'm saying the computer isn't a person, you're saying the computer isn't a person.  The only difference in thought is already captured above: you think I'm roleplaying with the game designers, I think I'm audience for their work.

[JamesSterrett]

Some of this discussion is missing what is *possible* in computer games currently.  Which is not to say that it is always *done*.

There are two general ways to program a computer game:  scripted and emergent.  [These are the poles at the end of a spectrum.  No game is completely purely one or the other, but most lean heavily towards one or the other.  Most, frankly, move in the direction of scripted.]

In a scripted game [case example: Half-Life] the game authors set up every event nearly every step of the way.  Very little happens that they did not specifically intend and forsee.  Encounters occur because the player moves past triggers that cause them.  

There are two benefits to this method:  It's much easier to test, and the designers can ensure that the player is constantly running into Cool Stuff.  Thus Half-Life is an excellent example: the game runs on rails, with a single path in any given location, and a steady barrage of scripted encounters.  Players love Half Life because the railroad's path and the encounters upon it are highly inventive.


Emergent design attempts to replace scripting with simulation [Case examples:  Thief series; Deus Ex series, and (by repute - I haven't played them) the Grand Theft Auto series].  It's much harder to test, and it does not ensure that Cool Stuff is always happening.

However, it does make the computer a full (if still often stupid) participant in the game, because encounters and events happen that the designers did not forsee, and possibly could not have forseen.

Example from Thief:  The guards have patrol routes.  The player enters the area, and eventually makes a noise.  Since the player's path options in Thief are usually fairly open (especially compared to Half-Life) , the player's position at the time of making a revealing move is extremely random from the point of view of the designers.  Therefore, the guards are programmed not with set path responses to player-produced stimuli, but with behaviours - search patterns, alert classes, random chances of going for backup, etc.  The computer arbitrates the gameplay in a manner whose overall patterns were set, but whose specifics are up to the player and the computer.

Second, and this comes closer to the point about the bottle-in-a-bar, it is possible to program into the computer a set of uses for the various objects in the game.  I've never seen bottles as weapons as one of them (not least because the player always has better options).  However, the Thief & Deus Ex series games enhance their emergent nature by using tables of attributes for all the interactable objects in the game.  Wooden boxes and wooden chairs are in the category of Wooden; Wooden objects float on water, burn in fire, and are damaged by weapons fire.  If the player puts a wooden box in a fire, it burns.  Throw it into water, and it floats.  It doesn't matter *what* fire or *what* body of water.  It's simple for humans, unusual in computer games, but it is possible.


Moving away from scripted/emergent, and into creating narrativist play in computer games....

The other thing that's possible, although little done, is to try to get beyond the common and simplistic kill-them-all-and-kick-the-Foozle's-butt game structure, and into posing moral dilemmas or questions for the players.  The Fallout series is famed for this, but IMO the Deux Ex series does it better.

Light spoilers follow.....

If you're at least half-awake when playing Deus Ex, you'll find that the game is constantly posing you with questions about the nature and use of power.  Some of these are subtle and many will miss them; some are highly overt and missing them would be difficult.

The game ending brings this to its logical conclusion.  One of Deus Ex I's slogans was "Your mission is to save the world.  How you do it is up to you."  The endgame doesn't ask you this in terms of "kill the Big Bad with a hand cannon or a rocket launcher?"  It poses the question in terms of "you decide what "saving the world" actually *means* - and pursue that goal."  Put the player in a dilemma, have characters argue for and against each option, and let the player decide the ethics of the situation.

The Deus Ex games have put me in more moral dilemmas than any of the pen and paper games I've been in - which you may view as a flaw in my P-n-P experience - but when I've paused the game and walked away from it for 15 minutes to try to figure out what I want to do, because of the ethical dilemma it has posed --  if that isn't effective role-playing, what the heck is?


There's certainly more that can be done.  For all their virtues, Falout & Deus Ex still force the player along a fairly linear plotline, built kinda like a sausage: you get a great deal of freedom much of the time, but the plot will still go through set, predetermined gates that advance the main story.  On the other hand, there's people working to get around this.  Fable may succeed, though I confess I'm as often disappointed by Molyneux's genius as thrilled by it; and Warren Spector (Deus Ex) is still at work as well.


The final note - and I've lost the reference to this - is that I've read of a program built with the most basic postulates of geometry, an understanding of the rules of proofs, and programmed to find more theorems.  In the late 1990s (IIRC) this program was turned loose for a couple months.  By the end of that time, it had - without further human intervention - come up with a great many proofs, including a proof for a theorem that had been postulated by humans but never before proven.

Now, we can puff up our egos and claim it was programmed to do this.  True enough; it was.  On the other hand, nothing done by the initial programmers - other than the program's intent to find and solve theorems - led it to the particular new theorem it solved.  How different is this from attending classes in maths and geometry for a kid who is predisposed to find maths fascinating?  If the computer's new theorem is not an act of machine creativity, then why is it creative when a mathematician finds a new theorem?

[Christopher Weeks]

In the case of the map, if I am a 250 pound biker with a crowbar, I can say "put sentry positions down or I'm clubbing you to death.".  I can say that to the computer as well, but it *can't* change it's answer.

What if you're a 250 pound hacker?  :)

Chris (who remains unconvinced that the computer isn't a player)

[simon_hibbs]

If a CRPG isn't a roleplaying game, then neither is Tunnels and Trolls when played using the solo game books. I think it's obvious that T&T played with solo game books is roleplaying, so therefore CRPGs are roleplaying games.

There's definitely a shared immaginary space in CRPGs. If I and a friend of mine play Baldur's Gate or whatever, we can discuss the imaginary space of that game with very little scope for disagreement or confusion, it's an imaginary space we're both familiar with.

As for the contribution a computer makes, even old AD&D had a random dungeon generator, and many games have had random reaction tables. Many of the GM's tasks in running an RPG can be automated and published scenarios can leave little or no scope for GM interpretation during play. I've played games run streight from the game book with the GM actively avoiding any form of personal interpretation. This style of play is common in tournaments. Is this still roleplaying? Hell yes, so what's the problem with CRPGs?

Sure there are many things you can do in a tabletop RPG you may never be able to do in a CRPG, and vice versa, but fundamentaly they are similar activities.

I think there are differences between games in which the 'author' prepares the in-game situation thoroughly in advance and there is little lattitude for divergence from the pre-imagined game experience, and games that have a very open ended in-game situation which the players have a wide lattitude to influence. CRPGs are pretty rubbish at this last sort of game at the moment, as are some real-life GMs ;)


Simon Hibbs

[lumpley]

(I say things about the SIS question here.)

-Vincent