>How do you get beyond a steady diet of action
>cliches while keeping it fun?
I'm a bit leery of commenting on this, since everyone seems to be thinking in terms of rules, new GMing techniques and various mystic mumbo-jumbo (like "storytelling")... :-)
But hasn't anyone considered: roleplaying? Now, this takes some defining, of course, especially if one bears in mind the fabled differences between Americans and Europeans in their understanding of these issues. :-) But to put the idea of roleplaying that I and my gaming friends have into a nutshell, it's conversation. See, what we enjoy doing is creating personalities that are interesting (slightly insane) while still psychologically believable (stereotyped), and then watching them interact. Of course, we also like to throw in the odd melee now and again, who doesn't? But the main thrill of RPGs is being able to hold those wonderfully twisted discussions that you so seldom have in real life. So why Glorantha? Isn't it obvious?!? Glorantha is the most twisted gaming world in existence. The way magic and myth infuse every strata of existence/society makes it a delight to roleplay even the lowliest peasant. And I should perhaps point out that we're mainly into 'low-level' gaming. The Hero Wars don't strike us as a very interesting event to be caught up in... But playing a character who has delusions of becoming a Hero, while he's really stuck on the farm for life, _is_ fun. So how do we translate this to scenarios? Well, scenarios are mainly an excuse to get the party together and get them on the track to meeting some fun people. The scenarios we've actually _written_down_ (and that some of you have read) do tend to get into other issues, probably because they were originally convention tournaments, and there you get the urge to show off... They also contain a lot of 'blank' time (travelling etc.) that the players are expected to fill with inter-party roleplaying - because naturally the PCs have to be as interesting as the NPCs to get this sort of game to work, it can't be all the GMs show you know. Have I been blathering long enough now? I think it's time to let everyone tell me which parts they didn't understand.
Jim Chapin, frex, has the objection:
>My more serious point is that moral exhortations that RPGs ought to have
>less violence and more of other things usually don't go anywhere. If you
>think that such scenarios can be written and played successfully, then
>more power to you: demonstrate it!
Well, I just sent you one of our scenarios. :-)
It and the rest of them _will_ be available from my web page as soon as... uh, soon _after_ I get it up and running, which should be, let's see... oh, any day now. The sysop willing...
((( Jonas Schiott ))) Revolution ((( Ide- och l=E4rdomshistoria ))) is the opium ((( Goteborg ))) of the intellectuals ------------------------------
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