See the Trees For the Forest
Firstly, I cannot make head nor tail of Ron Edwards GNS Theory. I'm not even entirely sure its a theory. But saying that no rpg player is ever happy, and that we are in fact all miserable beings because we don't properly understand GNS and therefore cannot reconcile our differences as players? Excuse me? I enjoy myself when I'm playing, and did so before I met his pretty little "theory." My annotation for that turned out to be not so much of an annotation as a critique, so I have to do that again.
Ann wanted me to explain character creation to her, because I was talking about characters as if they were self-sustaining, sentient, autonomous, living beings. Which, we should all know, they really are. Mine is bashing me over the head with Tarja's album, demanding that I give her this new story, and that new picture. Anyway...
I have never heard anything so absurd or complicated as the words that were coming out of my mouth, as when I was explaining character creation. After playing for so long, the idea of attributes become ingrained. We came to also call them "capacity," not to try and rename it all, but to put an out-of-game understanding on it. Capacity because everything that you can do is based on those 6 numbers. Interesting that there's only 6, when you stop and think and they influence *everything.* Sure, hit points are more dependent on dice rolls, however your CON modifier still has something to do with it. STR says how well you damage, INT is your skill set, etc etc etc. Comes down to 6 randomly generated numbers. And then you choose class and race. Or race and class. How? To what constraints?
Also, in discussing GNS and the problems I had with it, we came to the idea that you can't ever really separate out OOC and IC moments. Because to be in-character... well, you're still defining what they want, right? They're not actually sentient creatures (although...) You have dictated what the correct characterisation is. When asked for a metagame example using classes, the best I could come up with on short notice (ie, right now), was "Well... a paladin who threatens someone with bodily harm because the player knows that the only way they'll respond. But the character wouldn't do it, it's not within their nature." I got the response of "But only because of metaknowledge of how the character would act." That floored me. This is just stuff I never considered before and I am having the time of my life.
It also, rather suddenly occured to me, that the drow, as a black matriarchal society, is a chaotic society. You could see it implied that a "proper society" would be run by males and would be lawful and everything would work. Leave the women in charge? It all goes to Pit and becomes a backstabbing, murderfest of intrigue. Which is exactly what drow society is. Cultural much? Maybe I can do that for Masters, because you could have a field day with that.
Ann wanted me to explain character creation to her, because I was talking about characters as if they were self-sustaining, sentient, autonomous, living beings. Which, we should all know, they really are. Mine is bashing me over the head with Tarja's album, demanding that I give her this new story, and that new picture. Anyway...
I have never heard anything so absurd or complicated as the words that were coming out of my mouth, as when I was explaining character creation. After playing for so long, the idea of attributes become ingrained. We came to also call them "capacity," not to try and rename it all, but to put an out-of-game understanding on it. Capacity because everything that you can do is based on those 6 numbers. Interesting that there's only 6, when you stop and think and they influence *everything.* Sure, hit points are more dependent on dice rolls, however your CON modifier still has something to do with it. STR says how well you damage, INT is your skill set, etc etc etc. Comes down to 6 randomly generated numbers. And then you choose class and race. Or race and class. How? To what constraints?
Also, in discussing GNS and the problems I had with it, we came to the idea that you can't ever really separate out OOC and IC moments. Because to be in-character... well, you're still defining what they want, right? They're not actually sentient creatures (although...) You have dictated what the correct characterisation is. When asked for a metagame example using classes, the best I could come up with on short notice (ie, right now), was "Well... a paladin who threatens someone with bodily harm because the player knows that the only way they'll respond. But the character wouldn't do it, it's not within their nature." I got the response of "But only because of metaknowledge of how the character would act." That floored me. This is just stuff I never considered before and I am having the time of my life.
It also, rather suddenly occured to me, that the drow, as a black matriarchal society, is a chaotic society. You could see it implied that a "proper society" would be run by males and would be lawful and everything would work. Leave the women in charge? It all goes to Pit and becomes a backstabbing, murderfest of intrigue. Which is exactly what drow society is. Cultural much? Maybe I can do that for Masters, because you could have a field day with that.