Hi Trotsky
Its just I notice Mike using American Football phrases, like 'being on the same page' and Forge phrases which mean something different to what we might imagine they mean if interpereted in every day language.
I have been reading some of the essays, and its good stuff by and large. There are 3 types of game agenda's (I might be out of date here, I'm only begining to immerse myself)
Now we may think that we recognise what these terms mean, and in some respects we would be right, but not exactly. And they are key to understanding the position.
I guess if you were to produce a questionaire and perform a psychometric study like say, Honey & Mumford, you could profile a player and his preferred style of play.
Its easy to imagine, and my personnal experience backs this up, that peopele of type 1 and people of type 2 would be least satisfied playing together.
'Forgites' have a preferred style of course, but I don't believe that they say any one style is intrinsically better than the other, just that;
Now, both can enjoy playing the other game, but they must be 'on the same page'. This term I believe (Mike will correct me) is from American Football where the team uses a 'Playbook'. Each player in American Football has an assignment, depending on the play. When they execute the play to perfection, they are said to be on the same page. IE, not mixing plays. Its a euphamism of course.
What I think this means is that people with different RPG agenda's can enjoy the same game, but only if the game presents 1 agenda. D&D manages this very well, because it is accepted and supported explicitly in the rules that you play a very specific way. Any house rules tend to support the same agenda in D&D, so less conflict of agenda is likely IMO.
With Heroquest, defined as a 'Narrativism' type game its more common for house rules to actually begin to cater for differing agendas. For example, a pure gamism narrator may start to introduce gamism elements, such as hit locations, hard limits on augments, etc. Heroquest is very far from a Gmism game so if you approach it with that agenda you can't help but be disapointed. I have seen this is sharp focus because one of my best friends just hates Heroquest. Becasue I have tried to accomodate his agenda, I can now see that all I have presented is a very inferior Gamism game.
This is what I think Mike is getting at: Present Heroquest with its strong narrativism agenda intact. Thats when its strongest, and you could argue that it follows thats when its best.
My most satisfying games have had a strong narrativism content, but by accident not design. What I intend to do is to introduce narrativism techniques in scenario design and see how we go. Heroquest is arguably the very best system to support such an agenda.
I think the thing that narrativism has over the gamism and simulationism, is that its (almost) impossible to derail the game, becasue the game becomes player-character-centric. I find this benefit invaluable and most satisfying.
Of course nobody is saying that other styles have their benefits too.
I am not sure if I am waffling, and I am just starting to get into this, so I don't know how much sense I am making. Mike and others may correct my inaccuracies.
Regards
Rob
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