On Sat, 10 Mar 2007, psychohist wrote:
> I would add, though, that it's perfectly possible to run games where
> the game world does not have a consistent internal logic. Back during
> the "strong genre" discussion, I concluded that there are certain
> fictional genres that were not amenable to a strict approach to game
> world internal consistency; some seemed to feel that reifying genre
> conventions in the game world would work, but I felt that it would
> result in a distinctly different feel than the genre called for.
Correct. The primary issue is whether the genre can survive treating
everyone, NPC and PC alike, equally or not. If it can, then the genre
conventions can be reified into the setting. If it can't, then it can
cause verisimilitude problems if looked at closely.
For example, the "red ****rt" convention in Star Trek is a story convention
that treats some characters as being more im****tant than others. Since it
makes distinctions between characters for story purposes, it would be
difficult to reify that into the setting. On the other hand, the anime
convention that trained fighters can jump 20 feet into the air could be
reified so long as everyone who is highly trained can do it in the genre.
So you can alter physics, healing, and just about anything else so long as
it becomes a part of the physics and biology of the setting. It's when
the rules don't make sense withing the setting, aren't something that the
characters are allowed to notice, and/or require a megagame awareness of
who the heroes are to work that they aren't really suitable for that sort
of game.
This goes back to the comment about the same rules applying to everyone.
That, and their ability to be aware of or notice the rules without that
breaking suspension of disbelief, that are key.
> It's still possible to run strong genre games, of course; it's just
> that a different approach is called for. "Simulation" in the sense of
> an internally consistent game world may be a good thing or a bad
> thing, depending on one's tastes.
Sure. But this message board always had a strong presence of players who
tried to play by closely identifying with their characters or even
thinking in character, and such play often desires or even needs a very
high level of verisimilitude to work. So you *can* run a game like Feng
Shui that treats PCs and mooks differently or allows PCs to have unlimited
ammo, but a close look at either of those things by a player or character
with an interest in verisimilitude is going to have problems.
John Morrow
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