tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6963408603037048958.post936124382180489991..comments2024-03-02T00:34:38.701-08:00Comments on The Keep on the Gaming Lands: Games are IdiomsMike Mearlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18338840534913321057noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6963408603037048958.post-50175142510176742452011-05-21T22:29:10.399-07:002011-05-21T22:29:10.399-07:00"How players describe play" is interesti..."How players describe play" is interesting and probably merits a dissertation or two -- D&D is closer to Mass Effect than Carcassonne, but I think of "memorable moments" from D&D and ME, and they often aren't the same sorts of moments.<br /><br />What does that difference mean, in terms of design? Sorry, Mike, people apparently don't want to let you make D&D an even better game, but I look at the "tale telling" aspect of the Savage Worlds Hellfrost and Deadlands settings and see something I like -- when the party gets back to town, there is a retelling of the party's deeds, and these deeds and tall tales are so often exactly the things the <i>players themselves</i> remember and say about their own play experiences.<br /><br />It would be great to have a way to do something with that, since it seems like a real "thing", a useful and meaningful byproduct of the play experience. Hmm. For some people, the tale they tell is of record damage one round; for others, it's the fight in which they almost died (or saved someone from death); for other still, it's the social/RP stuff like the one in your post. Seems challenging to have a fair and unified mechanism for productively feeding memories of play back into play. Maybe someday!Not_A_Wordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04699015450721141211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6963408603037048958.post-53470755556239705902011-02-17T05:57:11.305-08:002011-02-17T05:57:11.305-08:00well said bankuei :)well said bankuei :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6963408603037048958.post-46018818966241600252010-10-29T10:56:08.274-07:002010-10-29T10:56:08.274-07:00The two things I think a lot about for that, are t...The two things I think a lot about for that, are the meaning and the medium.<br /><br />The meaning is the context of why some things are more important than others for a game; why capturing a queen is a bigger deal than a pawn in Chess. Without the meaning, "Rolling a 20" has no context.<br /><br />The medium, literally, is where the game is "happening". In all games but rpgs, there's a physical component to look at to gauge the state of the game. While RPGs have a lot of those (character sheets, minis, etc.), those aren't really where the game is happening - it's all in the imagination.<br /><br />So, in order to engage with the medium, someone has to sit there and imagine with the group, otherwise, they'll miss what the game is about.<br /><br />Or, as you're saying, the idiom is invisible to them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com