Bag of Questions and a Dilemma

[Jack Spencer Jr]

My impression, in terms of video games: Wing Commander promotes Gamist play, Dragon's Lair promotes Narrativist play and Prince of Persia promotes Simulationist play.

Actually, all three are Gamist. Discussing video games in terms of RPG is problematic at best. The story in a video game like, say, Final Fantasy is not Narrativist. The player has no control over the story being made, which is the big clue that narrativist play is going on. A game like this is more similar to illusionism or even blatant railroading.

Discrete set of play-based character qualities of high procedural relation.  Scale combat, reclaim spatial and capture timing.  Integrate characters as plot agents.  Human-centric, non-otherly focus.

????
Heh. touche. I'll get back to this when my thesaurus is out of the shop ;-)

About that non-otherly, it's why T2 doesn't work for me and why 12 Monkeys satisfies: both center around time travel, but the former devolves into inconsequential flare while the latter closes a circle of theme and achieves significance through sacrifice.

Much like T1. Sounds like a Narrativist goal to me, but this'll take time to hash out.

[Emily Care]

Well, this thread gets my vote for "Best Intro for Newbies."

Good questions, and good answers, all. Bravo.

---EC