Re: HW & paradigm shift

From: Richard Develyn <Richard.Develyn_at_nwpeople.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 16:50:30 +0100


Shannon Appel writes:

<me>Throw a paradigm shift at me and I no longer understand how the <me>game's going to tick, especially in the long run.

>Every game has a paradigm shift from every other. The
>high-magic/heroic paradigm of AD&D is different from the
>high-magic/sheltered paradigm of Ars Magica is different from the
>low-magic/heroic paradigm of MERP is different from the
>mutation-as-magic/dark-and-gritty paradigm of Gamma World.

The paradigm I was referring to was not particularly to do with genre, high/low magic or general game mechanics, though this is related, of course.

Given that we're talking RPGs here, what I'm concerned with revolves around the interaction between PCs and world setting, in paticular:

  1. Providing a world setting which Players best enjoy imagining themselves within.
  2. Giving PCs the opportunity to "have adventures" and so aim for some "special status" (e.g. herodom).
  3. Maintaining this in the medium and long terms.

Now I believe a standard paradigm for solving these issues could be summed up thus:

  1. Run it like a special (magical) version of the Real World.
  2. Make the PCs somewhat privilidged in terms of opportunity and survivability.
  3. Get rid of anything that's boring or spoils the enjoyment.

This is what I use. I guess you could call it simulationist with a couple of clauses ((3) is, I'm sure, pretty universal to any paradigm).

Take away the "a special (magical) version of" bit in (1) and you've got yourself a very nice recipe for RW life. This is what makes this such a successful RPG paradigm, IMO, and why it's the easiest one to use.

One of the most commonly discussed "shifts" is to replace (1) and (2) with:

  1. Run it like a story.
  2. Make the PCs the protagonists of that story.

Now I only understand stories in terms of the RW. They are fantasies. They don't have to be believable to work. They don't have to involve _real_ people to work.

I can't imagine _being_ a character in a story. I would need to know:

  1. How does my experience of "life" within the story I inhabit differ from life in the RW?
  2. What sort of freedom of choice have I? What sort of challenges face me and what are the rewards?

If you take it a stage further, one approach is to almost remove the distinction between players and GM, emphasising instead collective story-telling.

This, to my mind, is not role playing. You're not _having_ adventures, you're _writing_ them.

Now I can imagine this working over a few sessions, but the _real_ test of a paradigm is how sustainable it is over a reasonable period of time (6 months or more). I think collective story-telling is sufficiently different to RPGs that it wouldn't sustain my interest in the long term. Sure, I like story-telling, but what I _really_ like is RPGs.

Of course, I don't actually know what the new HW paradigm is.

Other paradigm shifts I could mention: strict simulationist games, super-hero games, dungeon bashing games, really-weird-world or weird-PC-motivation games.

Richard
- -- 

Richard Develyn                                 Tel: (UK)-1732-743591
Principal Architect / Development Manager       Fax: (UK)-1732-743597
Network People International                    http://www.nwpeople.com

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