The sun is shining on our world and it should for billions of years more, rainclouds or not.
If you saw the link in the appendix to the last post, you can probably guess that I think Dr Bargle's recent post makes an argument important to early gaming. Truth is, I think he may be right. On the essential point: that the pathetic has an often overlooked value.
A question. Why strive for, say, credible probabilities for weapon damage, or worry about associated mechanics, if the character or faction you play, and the party of adventurers or army as a whole, represents incredible probabilities or is by nature disassociated?
Who are these people anyway? How did they get that skill, or that weapon, how did they find themselves in that situation? How do they support themselves? Whether they steal gold or invade worlds, the question remains: if they buy food and drink at the last homely house or carry it out from the provisioner, or if their empire provides the rations and the laser rifles, where other than through these individuals do these things come from?
A question. Why strive for, say, credible probabilities for weapon damage, or worry about associated mechanics, if the character or faction you play, and the party of adventurers or army as a whole, represents incredible probabilities or is by nature disassociated?
Who are these people anyway? How did they get that skill, or that weapon, how did they find themselves in that situation? How do they support themselves? Whether they steal gold or invade worlds, the question remains: if they buy food and drink at the last homely house or carry it out from the provisioner, or if their empire provides the rations and the laser rifles, where other than through these individuals do these things come from?
How many people must there be active in a near-subsistence society to produce enough surplus for adventurers to survive beyond the farm, how many to prepare it, transport it, help store it safely? How much tithe or tax must flow in from the subject worlds to fund a galactic conflict, and how many millions - or trillions - must work in the factories or on the ships to keep that infrastructure moving? From cradle to grave, there would exist social, economic and political structures - feudalism say - to keep the source of survival in motion, a system to ensure there's nowhere to go, no way out but escape. Escape.
But why does an escapee from the grind, or even the privilege, have any particular skill beyond that needed to escape? And how much good will that do them on the fringes or beyond? Some may make it. A few may thrive, as best they can. But what are the odds they all end up together, and so complementary in their range of impressive abilities?
Why not just throw the rules out the window and assume they make all the key rolls?
Yes it's fantasy, or it claims to be, but again: why be consistent in your weapon ranges if not in your demographics? If your fantasy world is anything like the 'real' world - and let's face it, it's likely almost identical, i.e. hardly fantasy at all beyond the (space) elves etc. and the handwaving - then why are your adventurers not shivering around a dying fire, worrying what might crawl in from the dark if the other guy nods off from exhaustion after the trek, wiping their snot on unwashed, crusted sleeves as parasites eradicated in civilised areas grow in their bodies? Why are they not losing control of their bowels as that daemon manifests, as they splash through the blood of their friends fumbling with a torch? Why is their world so sanitised? Anthropomorphic maybe, but they're not like us.
Why not just throw the rules out the window and assume they make all the key rolls?
Yes it's fantasy, or it claims to be, but again: why be consistent in your weapon ranges if not in your demographics? If your fantasy world is anything like the 'real' world - and let's face it, it's likely almost identical, i.e. hardly fantasy at all beyond the (space) elves etc. and the handwaving - then why are your adventurers not shivering around a dying fire, worrying what might crawl in from the dark if the other guy nods off from exhaustion after the trek, wiping their snot on unwashed, crusted sleeves as parasites eradicated in civilised areas grow in their bodies? Why are they not losing control of their bowels as that daemon manifests, as they splash through the blood of their friends fumbling with a torch? Why is their world so sanitised? Anthropomorphic maybe, but they're not like us.
What do we want with this approach? What do the soft edges and expensive sheen do?
Did your parents design you using a point-buy system, or pick you from a $30 supplement of ridiculous anachronisms and contrived cod-heroic poses? (Do those things insult your intelligence?) Today, in the era in which these games are written, illustrated and collected, sometimes played, we can, do and maybe will choose plastic surgery, pick up some bionics, maybe even clone ourselves or engineer our offspring.
Did your parents design you using a point-buy system, or pick you from a $30 supplement of ridiculous anachronisms and contrived cod-heroic poses? (Do those things insult your intelligence?) Today, in the era in which these games are written, illustrated and collected, sometimes played, we can, do and maybe will choose plastic surgery, pick up some bionics, maybe even clone ourselves or engineer our offspring.
But we still have to do that based on a roll made at birth, the base life chances we had, brute good luck or bad. It may be escapist, but if so, what are we escaping? And why?
Seriously now: why on earth should we escape? What is fantasy for and why do we need it? What does the game offer us beyond a pastime, a dream to wake up from? What does it have to offer to help us to exist more happily outside in a more real world?
Feeling good about my fictional character won't help me not need to escape. But feeling bad about my character might help me want not to escape. It might well help me better understand my place - for example, just how pathetic a carbon-based bag of water stuck on a trillion-a-penny rock really is, trapped in a web of obligations running from the real to the unreal - unreal obligations - and believing or not believing in deliverance. If that's how you look at it of course. I don't. Can it help me to accept it? Can it help me resist?
Accept? Resist? It's a pathetic choice. How can it possibly it come to that in any world?
Do YOU accept? If you resist, you'll enter a whole new world, one of real pain. Probably.
And not least from those who accept - y-yes they do - and worry the pain may spill over.
So when that torch finally does go out, and there you are alone in the dark at the end, tired and weak and quite possibly surrounded by many other of the dangerous creatures in your world doomed to die - but in their case not yet - the question is: will YOU mind?
Accept? Resist? It's a pathetic choice. How can it possibly it come to that in any world?
Do YOU accept? If you resist, you'll enter a whole new world, one of real pain. Probably.
And not least from those who accept - y-yes they do - and worry the pain may spill over.
So when that torch finally does go out, and there you are alone in the dark at the end, tired and weak and quite possibly surrounded by many other of the dangerous creatures in your world doomed to die - but in their case not yet - the question is: will YOU mind?
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