An ttrpg author chooses how much he’d like to control the players’
experience.
An ttrpg author chooses how much he’d like to control the players’ experience. Going from, roughly, suggesting an idea or two like “why not play cowboy inventors in the context of a mutant dark elves invasion ?” or “hey, let’s build a resolution mechanic around a pendulum” to writing extended instruction as how participants ought to behave, like a scripted play with minute casting and mise-en-scène prescriptions. However, how much the players submit to the game designer’s desires is their business and their business only. The game designer might wish the players to submit completely, he might whine that they can’t understand the experience unless they do (in other words: he thinks they are too dumb and/or uninformed to decide by themselves), but it’s the players who decide. The best thing the game designer can and probably should do is to entice us to submit.
It's like a cooking receipe, you don't have to folow the instruction nor the ingredient. You won't get what the designer inteded to share with you though, but who cares, it's your meal after all.
RépondreSupprimerBut then don't complain to the recipe author when your meal tastes like shit.
RépondreSupprimerMy point exactly Tim Franzke. But now cooks usually don't complain when they did not follow the recipe and the meal tasted like shit. Which is also a problem on the ttrpg scene :'(
RépondreSupprimerA friend draws my attention to cooks that do not follow the recipe, like the what they produce, but their guest don't enjoy it while being told the dish was prepared according to so-and-so's recipe.
RépondreSupprimerSo it sounds like some of this is a clear signaling problem? Like, if you're tossing half the system, at least tell people your running a "fate variant" instead of Fate?
RépondreSupprimerAt what point does house ruling become home brewing, and how do you make that clear?
Fan fiction has some answers here, and toolkit systems sometimes allow you some clear tags for what parts you're using or replacing.
Yep. That might help.
RépondreSupprimer