Re: (TFT) Story

["Jay Carlisle" <selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com>]

What with no food for a week and these little pills form the Dentist, I'm feeling even more scattered that usual, so while I wait for a pot of coffee I'll take a break from Gibal and babel about this for awhile.

Industrial Disease, staticism, and anachronisms in TFT.

In considering issues of Story and how to coerce free-willed individuals into following a specific plot, several points of style were mentioned.
Normally I'd simply chalk it up too preference.
Just because I'm listening to Gram Parsons right now doesn't make it for everybody.
(Billboards and truckstops pass by the grievous angel, and now I know just what I have to do.)
However, I read some assumptions in a couple of those preferences that I find untenable in an RPG Campaign.

Industrial Disease, as I understand it, is a concept dealing with overproduction and the inefficient distribution of World resources Globally.
To apply this concept as a pejorative to a Campaign is odd too me.
One may argue that industriousness is a key trait of humanity.
If a gameworld is afflicted with Industrial Disease then that simply means the gameworld is ripe with play opportunities Politically and Economically.
There's plenty of things for a King to fix and a villain to take advantage of.

IMO a Campaign is a evolving gameworld.
Over the course of play Players are going about the business of growing their Figures, gathering experience and better equipment as they go along.
Why doesn't the gameworld get the same treatment?

When I hear Industrial Disease, it makes me think that there is a strong reaction against the idea of a changing or growing gameworld.
Why?
Well I presume that a large part of it is the time and effort that has been put into some of the Campaigns I hear about out there.
Of course the assumption there is that the gameworld is static or frozen in time.
Remember the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit from "Life, The Universe and Everything"?
That's about the only way to do it honestly that I can see.
Else if, the gameworld is the way it is because the GM says so. 

This would be fine if we were all using the same forms, but Campaigns are one of the most overlooked aspects of gaming.
In the same way that TFT is not TFT without tactical combat, a Campaign without an underlying structure isn't a Campaign.
If the equipment and money in a gameworld just pops outta thin air when the Players obtain it, and pops back out when they spend it on an item that also pops outta nowhere, then there is no economics.
If the Players victims appear outta nowhere and just fade away when dispatched without any notice from the gameworld then there is no War, only big Melees without any meaning what so ever except how many exp pts the Players can glean outta it.

Too me, a Campaign is a living thing.
A major point of a Campaign is keeping track of the details that aren't important in a string of arena combats.
Long term Actions and results are played out.
Things change.
More happens than just combat.

Now I love a good bloodbath as much as any other gamer, but rather than design a group of combats and finding ways of leading the players from a to b to c, I design worlds and make the "Story" about the Players finding a place in that world and defending it.
Players make their own bloodbaths w/o any encouragement from me.
I just figure that if the Players act on the gameworld with violence, the gameworld reacts in kind, i.e. a Player that lives by the sword is likely to die by the sword.
The gameworld continues to run, even if the Players Figure dies.
C'est la vie.

Call me Slartibartfast, but a Campaign requires a gameworld that is as dynamic and growable as the Figures that inhabit it.


Jay



"So why don't someone here just spike his drink,
why don't you do him in, in some old way
supposed to be a funeral
it's been a bad, bad day"
$1000 Wedding, Gram Parsons

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