> The difference is turning out interesting abilities.
> Any muppet can crack out 40 or 50 D&D or RuneQuest
> style skill and attribute names in 100 words. Your
> writing skill has been challenged if you can squeeze
> many more interesting abilities from a narrative
> than you can get from the list method.
The munchkin method gives you 100 abilities from 100 words, surely? Cutting down to only 20-40 is what happens when you get interesting.
> The list method has got some advantages over the
> narrative method as it's easier to include an
> evocative name for an ability which might not sit
> comfortably in a narrative.
Good point, and not one I'd thought of before.
For example, fitting
> abilities like
> - "Have you any idea who you're talking to?"
> and:
> - "I are strong! Rar!"
>
> would be difficult (not impossible lest someone
> feels obliged to show me)
(put pen down all disappointed.) You've met me before, haven't you? :)
> So the next time you think of writing
> "intellectually
> superior" have a crack at sticking "you wouldn't
> understand, would you?" instead.
Nice! Catchphrases, effectively.
> One final point: Jane said that writing the
> narrative
> (or writing the list) wasn't roleplaying, it was a
> completely different game. This is a bit of a shame,
> 'cause it tends to be better if it's part of the
> same
> game. It's the first part of being your character.
Sadly, no. The points limitations mean it's turned into sums and strategy. Which is still a fun game, but a different one. You start off trying to use the rules to simply describe the person you want to be, then discover that you can't. You're not allowed to hate the man who killed your father all that strongly. Not if you want any points left over to love and feel protective towards your mother, anyway, and forget about any "can do" sort of abilities to do anything about either relationship. OK, maybe those could be grown in play, but the hate has to start high for the story to make sense. And the rules won't let you, so you start looking for how to stretch them, to make those points go further. Which has FA to do with roleplaying.
> If
> the players are treating character creation as
> something apart from the main game, then don't spend
> a
> long time creating a character. Ask them what their
> three (or four) keywords are and start playing,
> filling in abilities as you go.
This does work very well. You probably don't know the character very well until you start playing them, so filling things in later makes a great deal of sense.
> Again this is all probably completely different in
> PBeM as the communication medium is a bit different.
Not hugely, I suspect. We perhaps get more time to mull over things and do sums without feeling we're holding everyone up.
Powered by hypermail