Mr. Tickler's bi-daily anti-'storytelling' slam.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 00:31:33 +0100 (BST)


Brian says:
> Now, rules that go overboard in trying for *realism*, as opposed to
> simple fairness, do stifle (RQ3 fatigue rules would be a good example
> of this).

If the RQ3 fatigue rules in any respect approach 'realism', I'm a Dutchman. Likely a fatiqued one, at that.

Redundant comments that about the importance of randomness, rules, and such stuff ignored, until some account is taken of the small detail that 'storytelling' games like HW _have both_.

> Whose *story* would this be that you're referring to...the GM's story?

> Guess what? What the players imagine themselves is
> always better then any narrative one could spout off, assuming you're
> playing with reasonably intelligent players...

You imply, deliberately or otherwise, that the GM is the sole creator of the 'narrative', and that the players are merely the passive consumers of same. Yes, I know people do play games which verge in style towards same, but that's hardly the point of the 'storytelling' mechanisms of games like HW, where the _whole point_ is to induce players to come up with their bits of the 'narrative', and rather than as in Brian's game imagining it to themselves, with a quiet smile of unassuming satisafction on their faces, _sharing it when the rest of the group_. Not a complex or a particularly subversive notion, I'd have thought, and one which HW may or may not succeed in facilitating, but let's not get sidetracked into some entirely blind alley over what's meant by 'storytelling'.

Cheers,
Alex "van" Ferguson.


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