Oggi mentre rileggevo alcuni vecchi post nel blog di Vincent Baker, ne ho (ri)trovato alcuni che descrivono problemi che si vedono bene ormai anche in italia...
Questo qui è il più vecchio post ancora consultabile nel blog di Vincent (non è del tutto esatto, ne ho trovati di più antichi giocando un po' con caches e archivi, ma questo è il più vecchio fra quelli messi nell'indice): Non ha un tito, ma un numero, e ha la data della fine di Dicembre 2004:
http://www.lumpley.com/archive/137.htmlCito solo l'inizio, il resto è da leggere:
I started posting at the Forge in August 2001. I was the 116th person to sign up. Now there are 3,854. I've written about 1200 posts there, almost one per day. Mine are less than 1% of the total. 300 pages of threads in the general forums, 30 threads per page, 2 to 100+ posts per thread. The Forge is on-topic enough that you can safely ignore only, oh, half of the threads, maybe two thirds. Let's round down and say that to own the Forge you have to read 20,000 posts. Let's be generous and say that reading the essays will substitute for 10,000 of them, so if you prefer: all the essays and 10,000 posts.
Now let's say that I want to discuss RPG design with a friend. My friend isn't a Forgie, but I say: "let's talk Technique. Nailing IIEE is fundamental to your group's apportionment of Credibility, which is the baseline of play. FitM is better than FatE in every circumstance I've examined (plus gives you many opportunities for in-the-moment Reward, there's really no downside). And if you go with Task Resolution instead of Conflict Resolution, lordy lordy! You're foisting Social Contract negotiation off onto the instincts of your eventual players, which is a massive setup for dysfunction. God forbid you have Task Resolution plus a GM; you might as well write 'my game sucks' on every page."
My friend says: "sure thing, Vincent. Lat0rz."
It's a stumper. How do I tell people that Task Resolution's dominance in design has been perpetrated by crap GMs to keep the people down, but Conflict Resolution will free your soul, when I have to start with "okay, so, first, the rules of an RPG are social rules that apply only to the actual human players, not to the made-up characters and things in the game..."?Questo è il post più vecchio nell'indice del blog di Lumpley, e risale a più di 7 anni fa: ma potrei averlo scritto io (o Domon, o Hasimir, o Khana, o Ezio, etc.) ieri.
Nel resto del post e nei commenti si descrivono le soluzioni, e Vincent già propone quella che si è rivelata la più efficace: far giocare la gente. Divulgazione tramite game design. E chi non vuole provare, lo dai per perso e amen.
(PS.: le cifre date da Vincent in quel vecchio post fanno un po' ridere: attualmente nel Forge Archive, che arriva solo fino al 2008, ci sono 275647 Post in 27717 thread scritti da 4283 Users... il forum mi informa che il tempo che ho passato a leggere quei thread attualmente ammonta a oltre 45 giorni, o meglio (visto che non ci sto giorni interi), circa 1.100 ore... ]
Comunque, quel primo post riguarda le difficoltà nel comunicare riguardo teoria e system... le difficoltà finiscono lì?
Ovviamente no... questo è un altro post del 2005. L'ho già citato un sacco di volte ma merita il citarlo ancora:
2005-07-05 : Setting and Source MaterialDove Vincent parla del rapporto fra i role-players e il setting...
The question at hand, remember, is: what is it that we actually need, how much of what, in order to have a playable setting?
The punchline is: most RPGs' setting material (along with all primary source fiction, like Firefly or The Lord of the Rings) is the end product of a creative process. What do we roleplayers need? We need the starting point of the creative process instead.
Because what we're doing? It's creative.(questo post del 2005 si collega benissimo con l'ultimo essay di Ron che parla appunto dell'uso del setting, andrebbero letti uno dopo 'altro...)
Comunque, OK, si finisce a parlare con persone che hanno strane idee sulla funzione delle regole nei gdr e strane idee su come usare i setting, e quindi, da
2005-12-01 : The World IS a Better PlaceYou get to character-as-avatar [from "shared imagined space"] by taking too literally the "space" metaphor. There is (or there used to be) a certain kind of physics-emulationist technical agenda whose adherants are (or were) very prone to this.
I say "shared imagined space" and they say (or said) "right! Your character is your representative in that space, and your game rules are its physics!" As though there were a space somewhere wherein your character was really walking around and doing things, bound by gravity and +1 to hit.
Makes me CRAZY.
But like I say, maybe all those people are gone now and the world's a better place.Il 2005 è l'anno in cui Avventure in Prima Serata e Cani nella Vigna decollano sul serio e sempre più gente li gioca, invece di stare a discutere e a fare resistenza nei forum.
E da subito, Ron vede già come le cose per cui si è discusso tanto, saranno considerate "ovvie banalità" in futuro, negli stessi forum...
And then Ron writes The youngsters". Here's a short piece:
" They'll wonder what all the camp beds and bunsen burners are for, and we won't even mention the emergency stores of ammunition we buried next to each former outpost. Some of those are just parks now, and the ammo will stay buried forever."
Some of those are JUST PARKS NOW, and the ammo will STAY BURIED FOREVER.(magari Ron sperava in qualcosa di meglio di storygames, ma insomma, bene o male l'aveva prevista...)
La teoria è comprensibile solo in questo spazio fra "sono assurdità e gioco già benissimo perchè sono un Bravo Master" e "sono cose ovvie, non vale la pena nemmeno pensarci". Più tempo ci passi in mezzo, più capisci. Se salti direttamente da uno all'altro, senza passare un sacco di tempo a giocare e a capire, sei un "esperto da forum" di quelli che danno aria ai denti e basta.
E, a cosa serve la teoria nel game design? Ecco cosa dice ancora Vincent, da
quiHow concious are you in applying all the theory to a new design? Where do you start, and what checks do you do along the way to make sure that what you're doing does what you want it to in play?
Extremely conscious. That's what the theorizing is for. If I weren't using it at every single stage in my design, I'd stop doing it.
I start with my mantra: fit character, fit opposition, no way out but through, escalate escalate escalate, crisis, climax, resolution.
About checks: there's a skill you learn, which is to visualize actual play of whatever procedure you're designing. You learn to approach your procedure impartially, visualizing how it'll actually play, not how you hope it'll actually play. Cultivate that skill. I don't know how to cultivate it except to practice: imagine how it'll go, try it, did it go how you imagined? Keep practicing until you're reliably able to predict what'll happen.
As I design I'm constantly imagining my non-gamer friends or my rules-hostile gamer friends. My first check is "could I explain to Meg what to do and why to do it?" If I don't imagine I could, I revise. Next is, "if I explain this to Meg, will she want to do it?" If I don't imagine she will, I revise. Only THEN do I bother to imagine how it'll actually play.
And of course real playtesting is the only way to know.
