[freeroleplay] Re: Character advancement as a game
- From: Ricardo Gladwell <president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: FRPGC <freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:46:25 +0000
On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 12:59, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> I've been looking at how much the character advancement system of an RPG
> game really is or should be tied to the specific game world. Suddenly it
> struck me that character advancement (buying skills, levelling up,
> choosing feats, etc) is really a game of its own, running in parallell to
> the narrative game, and is played by most by rules of that are quite
> different than the rules they apply to the latter.
I like your approach. The most immediate thing it brings to mind is a
sort of free-form, 'accelerated', one-on-one session with the GM and
player where the player 'roleplays' his life experience up to the
present and the GM assigns stats based upon what kind of story the
player dreams up for the character. By tightly controlling the character
creation process in this way, the GM can ensure that players choose
stats for their story-related importance, rather than just combat.
> I had not considered this could be seen as a cardinal sin before I read
> the indie-rpgs forums, where the consensus seemed to be an almost hateful
> distaste it and systems that wanted to balance advancement options for
> such gamers in mind. The strict separation of 'gamist' versus 'narrative'
> RPGs underlined this. However, I do not think that such an attitude is
> healthy for a game, at least not one meant for casual gamers ;)
I don't like to entirely dismiss out of hand what the 'indie' gamers on
The Forge think, but they do sometimes have some strange ideas. :)
Nevertheless, as many people hate power gamers as there are power gamers
out there. I would agree that many enjoy both aspects of power gaming
and roleplaying, so the issue is not as black-and-white as The Forge
would like to paint it.
--
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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