That's fine and dandy--if you insist that the literary or dramatic paradigm guide your games. While I agree that it can be done, it's not my cup of tea.
Before somebody goes off on an irrational tangent trying to "prove" how "superior" the literary paradigm is, allow me to indulge in a little speculative philology:
"Not my cup of tea" probably comes from a time when hosts would routinely offer something like tea to their guests. Being good hosts, they would also inquire as to how their guests would like their tea, be it plain, with some sugar, with milk, with sugar and milk, with cinnamon, etc. The host (or his servant) would retire to an appropriate location where the tea was already steeping and prepare the appropriate cups. The host (or servant) would then bring out the already prepared cups of tea and present them to the guests. If a cup were presented to the wrong person, someone who had asked for milk getting a cup with no milk, an appropriate response would be "No, thank you, that's not my cup of tea." It was no commentary on the superiority nor inferiority of a particular way to make tea, merely a statement of personal taste.
I have played under a literary paradigm, and I agree that it can be entertaining, but it's just not my cup of tea.
> You may discover that you don't need to write additional rules, as long
> you *visualize* the processes involved in the scene. With your theatre
> background, I'm surprised that you have found difficulty interpreting
> HERO WARS contests. Think it through as if you were blocking scenes in a
> play, and focus on *describing the outcomes* of character actions against
> the context of the setting, rather than *modeling the processes*.
Some people enjoy process. Whether or not one understands or accepts this fact, some people enjoy process even more than outcome.
> just isn't very rivetting in itself. It's necessary to connect
> these to game-world situations and actions -- the only question is:
> how, exactly?
>
> The first thing is to get your players to do their bit; they ought
> to be describing the actions they attempt, not just staking SPs.
> (Or even, just describing them, and letting the GM assign SPs to suit.)
The fact that one can make something work does not mean that this is the particular way I would prefer something to work. I reserve final judgement until HW is published, but it looks like I'll be buying HW stuff to plunder for my RQ campaign.
> For me, playing RuneQuest is all about having a good pseudo-realistic
> system that allows players (through their characters) to explore
> existence and adventure in Glorantha
> So, it is Glorantha that I like as such (rather than RQ) its rich
> mythology and history and geography, and overall weirdness and
> opportunity for adventure
But I like both--in fact, the juxtaposition of what is "supposed to happen" mythically against the limits of something that tries to appear "realistic" can be, in and of itself, entertaining. It also keeps the mythic elements from becoming commonplace--it helps the bizarre stay bizarre.
But my wife and I are getting to the point where we've started giving Hercules and Xena the MST3K treatment...
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #221
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