As mentioned previously, my purpose here is not to say “5E can do all of what these other games do” – it can’t, that’s why I’ve got to steal these mechanics for a game I agreed to run. My hope, actually, is that other people might try out these mechanics in their game, and then maybe see that these other games, despite being different from what they’re used to, are actually a lot of fun.
Read MoreThis has broader implications about how incentives are structured — the presence of a reward for not doing something versus the desired outcome of taking the action. To my mind, incentives can only delay such a thing, never actually forestall it for certain.
Read MoreMore than anything else – as several reviews I’ve written over the years indicate – I’m interested in tabletop role playing games. These games are fascinating for several reasons, but the one I want to focus on is an intuition that I’ve been working with for a while: Tabletop role-playing games – which don’t, in any but the most loose sense work anything like other games – are toy models of political economy, and I suspect that they could be used as models for alternative political-economic systems.
Read MoreWhat I’m trying to make clear is that game design, on the level of mechanics assembled to make the game produce a narrative through player interaction, already cribs a lot of its procedures from politics, including political economy. A means that a powerful tool could be built from these pieces.
Read MoreI don’t intend this piece to be a pure review of what other people have said; I have written a number of things on a variety of subjects, and there are a few ideas I wish to bring in. Chief among them are the concepts of the “Paradigm-Syntax” dyad (which can be connected to the GNS or the MDA sections) and that of “Complex Pleasures” (which connects to the Eight Kinds of Fun.) I also have the compulsory commentary on Nostalgia and Genre that readers of this blog will know is coming.
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