roleplaying games

[droqen]

it seems so obvious. i'm looking for a material that emerses the player back into their selves, into their life experiences, their imaginations . . . i've been reading a big fantasy novel series and many comics . . . i like setting . . . i like players taking responsibility for their own experience . . . i've been thinking about doing something on the web, although that doesn't directly connect people to each other there is definitely an aspect of it which involves connecting people to each other, the web being the great connector, and i've often thought about multiplayerness . . . and my last three favourite games were Grandline (not googlable), Roadwarden, and Slay the Princess . . .

it's obvious.

[droqen]

i suppose that roleplaying games are not a 'weak point,' but surely a weak point is available, somewhere.

the playground of the mind.

[droqen]

dwarf fortress' stories, EVE stories, Haven & Hearth stories, blaseball's stories . . . it is not the system that is in common here

[droqen]

pixel art's interpretability

[droqen]

"actually good online roleplaying experiences" . . . discord?

[droqen]

among us. mafia/werewolf variants played on tbt.

[droqen]

there can be no system higher than that of the players' collaboration.

[droqen]

but most of all, most of all, i believe the nail in the coffin is that i believe i truly understand the nature of the goal in "The good general is the lord of the people's lives, the guardian of the country's welfare." as well as "I imagine a new role for the architect, in which we take more seriously our responsibility for all form and space in the world . . . Just as doctors, as members of their profession, take the responsibility for the care of illness and disease --- and take this responsibility , in principle, for all the people on the Earth . . ."

. . . I think there is a real positive value that I see in enabling people to create a story together with the assistance of a system without reliance upon it

[droqen]

the festival! it comes a few times a year like flowers

such festivals! they die a few times a year like flowers

[droqen]

i had a minor crisis of faith. why roleplaying games, why stories and narratives, why social games, when Databug is so fun?

but Kat (or, Rose Brie via Kat) keeps me on track:

"artistic works that engage their empathy and their humanity"

Databug is fun and compelling. true. i like the way it sits in my brain.
but it is not worth connecting with someone over, it does not help me grow, it is not important to me...
it does not activate my body, the way a nice breeze would.

[droqen]

one person responsible for keeping the action moving, knowing what's to come next. perhaps having exit options.
e.g.
 - the current scene is two characters fighting with each other
 - available follow up scenes:
     - the two characters on an adventure together
     - one character trying to revive the other from death, the other trying to come back from the dead (or not?)
     - the two of them separated, individual scenes

you can use this knowledge of 'available scenes' to help you notice dramatic 'seams'. openings, which would allow you to cut to the next scene appropriately.

secret meta-storytelling motivations
 - players (not their characters) have goals that help them push the story along in the right directions
 - perhaps seeded from character generation; suppose i want my character to die, what if that is a secret 'piece of paper' that is distributed to another player in the scene? if i write "Character will die dramatically", it might generate a few potential prompts... not only to make it happen in a scene, but also to foreshadow it happening? to bring into question whether it will in fact happen? to inquire thematically as to why or whether it will happen? the goal is . . . a feeling of things magically coming to pass, without speaking of them

[droqen]

". . . is all of this really necessary?" he wondered aloud, his voice the clicking of a keyboard. "i have been playing among us a while, and it has no higher meaning. none i can discern. i like space station 13. these games connect people to one another, to themselves . . . "

[droqen]

to play a role so well you need not make any interesting decisions at all. to play a role like you play yourself. i return like a refrain to the idea of a game as a series of interesting decisions... today i wonder, why in the world do they have to be interesting? maybe i am thinking about it all wrong? can the mindless obvious automatic decision be an interesting one?

~ backlink: wholeness of action

[droqen]

'self-playing game,' not in the sense that the game plays itself but in the sense that the player plays a role, and in this case, the role is the self.

[droqen]

the emotion of getting in touch with the self, as it pertains to relating to other people... seeing yourself clearly and in a positive light. i guess you could call this life-affirming. maybe self-affirming? i'm not sure