Participationist Play One Shot

[komradebob]

The "GM is God" thread got me thinking about social contract and participationist style play. I'd recently encountered what I thought was a good example of how participationist style design could be enjoyable.

The following is a link to a column at rpg.net. It is a scenario written by Matt Turnbull for his column "Filling the Gap", as a one-shot, called Singular Space.

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/fillinthegap28oct04.html

I thought this was worthy of consideration because:
1) IMO, I think that participationist play is much more suitable to one-shots and short campaigns. Singular Space strikes me as being an almost textbook example of when and where a participationist mindset works well.

2) Without specifically couching his scenario design in terms of participationist play, Mr Turnbull makes some very interesting suggestions about specific social contract needs that relate to this scenario. This is a fairly linear scenario, with some info held back in the GM's hands. OTOH, there is another level of info that is key to the scenario, but that info is shared with all but one of the character players, essentially bringing in the bulk of the players as co-conspirators with the GM.

3) Tangentially ( is that an actual word?), the scenario also encourages a form of gamist play, albeit one that is not recognized in traditional xps, etc. Instead, the co-conspirators theoretically end up jockeying for influence over the "patsy" (terrible term, but not inaccurate). Only after the scenario ends do players assess which of them "won".

Anyway, thought folks might like to see this. I'm curious what you have to say.

k-bob