[Starblade Echoes] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think this entry, of the many space-ranger ones, provides an opportunity to make a pretty harsh point - that composition and content have to integrated. I've said many times that Exploration is composed of Character, Setting, Situation, System, and Color ... what does that mean? It means that they don't stand in a little row on a shelf, but rather interact with one another in a specific way, or else Exploration doesn't happen. In this case, the problem is that character and setting simply do not feed into the situations ... they're just sitting there in them.

Now, the system stuff is pretty solid, if a bit robotic-looking, because you have resolution, scene construction, damage tracking, some form of reward. And the composition arises from highly Narrativist-associated choices, right? Trollbabe, The Pool, and PTA are all right there. So why is this pretty much a poster child for Not Narrativist (or not much of anything, unless maybe default-Sim)?

Because you have just enough content to make it not work. One of the interesting things about Universalis and The Pool is that they have no setting or character inherent in their rules, but they do have rules for Situation ... forcing everyone to come up with Characters and Settings that jazz them. Whereas in something like Dogs or Shadow of Yesterday or My Life with Master, the Characters and Setting feed straight into Situation, which itself may or may not have formal structure.

But here, we have space rangers fighting the Ningar ... thud, no Premise. There is absolutely nothing present about space-rangers fighting Ningar beyond a (dubious) visceral surge upon reading that a single human has been imbued with the power of a star. The situations - the mission plus the human-interest - have an inorganic quality, they don't arise out of anything, and the space rangers just have to go there and be in them.

It all goes back to the terms: if Fight and Cosmos are going to be your central concepts, then they have to be inherent in an interesting, human conflict. You've chosen for them to mean "combat in space," ... which unfortunately has no actual real-world meaning. Combat in space in fiction is merely naval or aerial combat with special effects, and for any of that to be interesting, it has to be either a tactical exercise or a backdrop for soap opera (in the good sense of the term, meaning "actual human story"). Good anime role-playing clearly must shoot toward one or the other like a bullet train, or else it becomes an exercise in reiterating and reminding one another of the familiar Color.

The specific point for this game is that you're so close. You have some potential for the Superman conundrum - how do overwhelming personal power, good hearts (caring about individuals), and service to society interact? One of the points that makes Superman work (when it does; writers are often unable to measure up to it) is that the conundrum is answered in the affirmative. Supes really does make it work (on occasion), and frankly, that's a tall order for us even to appreciate, let alone live up to. Get that into the game, perhaps with such simple setting-tweaks as the bad-ass player-characters are natives of a given planet or system they protect (just off the top of my head, perhaps too derivative as a simple Supes-reversal), and I think you'll be onto something.

But only after you get that going will it be possible to evaluate the system, which at the moment - despite its use of functional elements from other games - doesn't seem to me as if it works, mainly due to its imprisonment in an underwhelming SIS, but perhaps also due to internal features. Again, I won't be able to evaluate that in its present context.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

Hi Ron,

Yeah, one of the things I saw I had left missing after my 24 hours were up was that I kinda wanted the focus not so much on "us vs. the monsters", as much as the monsters as a pressure to be added to the people vs. people conflicts.  Sort of like a space Dogs, with the Ningar serving as open demons who actually do come through on their promises of power.  And- the other thing being that even looking at my source inspiration- Rom, the series only got way more focus after he develops recurring relationships, etc.-which fits right in with your Superman link.

Chris