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Jun. 13th, 2012 10:51 amHere's an RPG theory thing I'd like to talk about: the way that fictional events can give currency w/o necessarily any mechanical weight.
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My thoughts are small and ill-formed.
So, like, let's say we play a game and as a result my (dwarf) character becomes adopted into an Elven royal house. I'm an Elf-friend now!
Maybe, in the mechanics of the game, being an Elf-friend is a thing (like I get bonuses for social rolls or I can use elf-magic). In which case, clearly, being an Elf-friend is currency.
But maybe that's not the case. Maybe the way that the Elf-friend thing comes up is that now my guy has an adopted elven family, or he has more weight in elven political discussions, or whatever. Just because it isn't mechanically implemented doesn't actually make it less currency.
That's pretty interesting.
In some systems, ones where the mechanics -> fiction processing is weak, it might actually be better for it to be non-mechanical currency.
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A comment from Jess H (responding to another comment that was fairly short.)
Why is subjectivity a mire? I love subjectivity. Also, subjective and/or non-mechanical don't have to mean structureless.
Here's a story.
Chris and I played a game of Shadowrun this way. During our extended character creation scenes, we decided that we'd roll a d10 to find out whether my primary character goblinized. We rolled an elf, which we thought was hysterical as my partner hates elves! But we went with it.
I decided my character had found an online support group about becoming an elf, as her family and local community were pretty awful about it. We ran a couple of scenes where she had bad experiences, and then we ran an "after action" scene where she was talking to people in her online community about it. We agreed to treat these scenes as ways to a) illustrate the different stances available and b) give the character an opportunity to form or break relationships with other characters who exemplified those stances.
The character's difficulties escalated and her relationship with this one older elf firmed up, so eventually my character asked if she could crash on her couch for a while. So this non-mechanical narrative element - namely the relationship she'd been investing in - suddenly offered an opportunity for new plots.
We decided that yes, this mentor character would agree; there are interesting ways that a no could go, but we were more interested in the yes. But we also looked back over what we knew about the mentor character narratively to identify one comic, one dramatic, and one tragic element we'd pursue in the next series of scenes. We chose a comic element of "She has no idea how to deal with a moody teenager," a dramatic element of "She is actually a Shadowrunner," and a tragic element of "She will betray or abandon my character." That told us what scenes we'd want to run and a bit about how those scenes might end. We tried to do scenes that involved two of those three elements, which was especially successful at heightening the emotional experience for us-the-players.
Lots of structure there, no explicit mechanics.
--
My thoughts are small and ill-formed.
So, like, let's say we play a game and as a result my (dwarf) character becomes adopted into an Elven royal house. I'm an Elf-friend now!
Maybe, in the mechanics of the game, being an Elf-friend is a thing (like I get bonuses for social rolls or I can use elf-magic). In which case, clearly, being an Elf-friend is currency.
But maybe that's not the case. Maybe the way that the Elf-friend thing comes up is that now my guy has an adopted elven family, or he has more weight in elven political discussions, or whatever. Just because it isn't mechanically implemented doesn't actually make it less currency.
That's pretty interesting.
In some systems, ones where the mechanics -> fiction processing is weak, it might actually be better for it to be non-mechanical currency.
--
A comment from Jess H (responding to another comment that was fairly short.)
Why is subjectivity a mire? I love subjectivity. Also, subjective and/or non-mechanical don't have to mean structureless.
Here's a story.
Chris and I played a game of Shadowrun this way. During our extended character creation scenes, we decided that we'd roll a d10 to find out whether my primary character goblinized. We rolled an elf, which we thought was hysterical as my partner hates elves! But we went with it.
I decided my character had found an online support group about becoming an elf, as her family and local community were pretty awful about it. We ran a couple of scenes where she had bad experiences, and then we ran an "after action" scene where she was talking to people in her online community about it. We agreed to treat these scenes as ways to a) illustrate the different stances available and b) give the character an opportunity to form or break relationships with other characters who exemplified those stances.
The character's difficulties escalated and her relationship with this one older elf firmed up, so eventually my character asked if she could crash on her couch for a while. So this non-mechanical narrative element - namely the relationship she'd been investing in - suddenly offered an opportunity for new plots.
We decided that yes, this mentor character would agree; there are interesting ways that a no could go, but we were more interested in the yes. But we also looked back over what we knew about the mentor character narratively to identify one comic, one dramatic, and one tragic element we'd pursue in the next series of scenes. We chose a comic element of "She has no idea how to deal with a moody teenager," a dramatic element of "She is actually a Shadowrunner," and a tragic element of "She will betray or abandon my character." That told us what scenes we'd want to run and a bit about how those scenes might end. We tried to do scenes that involved two of those three elements, which was especially successful at heightening the emotional experience for us-the-players.
Lots of structure there, no explicit mechanics.
