Authors Rob Donoghue
7 days
30 days
All time
Recent
Popular
This is a good thread, and I am not criticizing it in saying my experience is a bit different, in large part because I'm aware my experience is the anomalous one. :)
That said, there are reasons for this: some are good, some aren't, and by their nature they point to alternatives
The two most critical points of this are as follows:
* This problem mirrors fiction
* There is a structural information load issue at work
Let's dive in.
Fictional protagonists are usually reactive. Antagonists (villains!) drive events and push for change, and protagonists stop them. This is not universally true, but it's so common as so be expected. It's one of the reasons playing villains is fun for reasons other than EEEVIL.
One of the easiest ways to address this in play is with a nominal villains/actual heroes model, which is to say, games of rebels and revolutionaries. This is a popular, very playable model that works in many games.
But it's not quite enough.
If that was all there was to it, then every star wars game would be an example of player driven agendas. But, in practice, Star Wars games tend to be as reactive as anything else, even though the agenda is nominally proactive. Why is that?
That said, there are reasons for this: some are good, some aren't, and by their nature they point to alternatives
I had a bit of a realization about tabletop RPGs recently, and I wanna float it by all ya'll in an overly long thread, because I think it's an interesting problem that stretches to both the culture and design within TTRPGs.
— Ruby Soleil-Raine (@IronsparkSyris) January 26, 2021
Player characters are way too reactive.
The two most critical points of this are as follows:
* This problem mirrors fiction
* There is a structural information load issue at work
Let's dive in.
Fictional protagonists are usually reactive. Antagonists (villains!) drive events and push for change, and protagonists stop them. This is not universally true, but it's so common as so be expected. It's one of the reasons playing villains is fun for reasons other than EEEVIL.
One of the easiest ways to address this in play is with a nominal villains/actual heroes model, which is to say, games of rebels and revolutionaries. This is a popular, very playable model that works in many games.
But it's not quite enough.
If that was all there was to it, then every star wars game would be an example of player driven agendas. But, in practice, Star Wars games tend to be as reactive as anything else, even though the agenda is nominally proactive. Why is that?