QuoteMany choices players make in RPGs are Hollow, Obvious, Uninformed, or otherwise Inconsequential to reaching any sort of "Win" conditions for the game.

(Most RPGs side-step the "how you win" part of the game, or offload it to the players "make up your own games!"  Confusion about how you "win" can in turn leads to all sorts of dysfunction if players think the goal is something different from the other people at the table.)

This is true, which is why it's a good idea to talk explicitly about goals if you are playing a game that doesn't come with it's own explicit win condition there, right out front.  Unfortunately even when there is a win condition given sometimes the people involved will ignore it and make up their own anyway. So for really broad stuff like RPGs sometimes it's a good idea to do a double check even when there is a semi-obvious win condition like 'get all the loot you can' or such.

Of course you don't need a win condition for choices to have meaning. And the form a 'challenge' can take is very, very wide.

Quote from: SettembriniI wish there were as many Aasimov-fish-readers as there are Lovecraft exegets...:rolleyes:

Asimov? Fish? What?

Firstly, what? Secondly... what? Thirdly... seriously, what?

Quote from: beejazzAsimov? Fish? What?

Firstly, what? Secondly... what? Thirdly... seriously, what?

http://www.timecube.com/

Quote from: blakkiehttp://www.timecube.com/

Same questions?

Exactly. :deflated:  It makes no friggin sense. EDIT: Unless you consult the 'German Dipshit' dictionary.

Quote from: blakkiehttp://www.timecube.com/

wow, just wow.

Oh, and I think the descriptiveness/vagueness issue is a pretty lame thing to bring up. Lovecraft was very descriptive, if not necessarily visually so.

The Mi-Go in Whisperer in Darkness? They took one of the main characters' brains and put it in a jar. Then they wore his face and hands and pretended to be him, using a mechanical voice of some sort. True it doesn't say this outright as its happening, but that's a matter of pacing rather than of some general principle that leaving things obscure is inherently better. The point was to let the realization that all kinds of horrible fucked-up shit be the climax of the piece. So yeah, the obfuscation itself serves the purpose of putting the grotesque and macabre on a pedestal.

Or how about the shoggoth that so wasn't described as chasing the protagonists out of the cave, trampling (is that still the word for it when it's done by an amorphous mass of flesh with a mutable anatomy?) penguins and shrieking "tekeleli" or whatever it was. Very vivid description if not particularly visual. I think there was the mention of some eyes and mouths and rolling and such, so maybe there was even a bit of visual detail there.

The anatomies (among other things) of various alien species was made quite apparent in Shadow Out of Time. One of the few times Lovecraft got into the nitty-gritty of the physical details of his monsters. Not effective? Yes and no on that one... the monsters explicitly described aren't actually there and don't do anything scary.

Innsmouth? A good bit of what was (supposed to be) scary was the protagonist's transformation. Described in a good bit of detail.


Anyway, what I'm trying to get across is that Lovecraft's particular descriptive idiom was defined not as scarce or common description, but as well paced and well deployed description. You get hints at the very beginning, which put very macabre happenings towards the end into perspective. Or the reverse, where you get very sick things happening that you wouldn't guess right away through the whole of the story, and putting it into context in retrospect at the climax. Also, a lack of visual description doesn't change that the things that actually happened that were so horrible were pretty explicitly stated or very heavy-handedly implied. You're going to lose the visual scarcity by illustrating at all.

Quote from: Callouswow, just wow.

I'm a bit surprised, I thought pretty much everyone that's spent time on the Internet had run into Gene Ray's little gem of a website. He's the proto Internet nutjob.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecube

Quote from: blakkieI'm a bit surprised, I thought pretty much everyone that's spent time on the Internet had run into Gene Ray's little gem of a website. He's the proto Internet nutjob.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecube

Oh, I've seen it before. It just continues to be shocking, regardless of how familiar a person is with it. Kinda like tub girl. I didn't link it for a reason, btw. Don't look it up.

Umm, you do realize that Lovecraft literally wrote the book on the importance of vagaries in horror?  It's one of his most famous non-fiction essays.  And one of my personal favorite ways to describe good horror.

Quote from: J ArcaneUmm, you do realize that Lovecraft literally wrote the book on the importance of vagaries in horror?  It's one of his most famous non-fiction essays.  And one of my personal favorite ways to describe good horror.

I get that he knew when and what not to describe. But he also knew when and what *to* describe.

Anyone can call any old thing "eldritch" rather than give it a face. Doesn't make my dishwasher scary if I call it "arcane." But if I find out suddenly that my dishwasher has been parading around in a friend of mine's skin and even fooled me? That's one scary fucking dishwasher.

Again, the suspense here (in case you didn't get it I'm again referring to Whisperer in Darkness and am dropping the dishwasher thing) builds with the correspondence by letter. Vagaries are in the right place. It's not something where some dude in the wood suddenly is fighting with glowing fungus arthropods that attacked his farm. It's something where an undefined thing is in the woods, causing problems. Then you find out stuff about it. Then all of a sudden, the writer of the letters is all "oh, yeah... we talked it out... these guys are actually pretty awesome... you should totally come over and chat with me about them in person." After we've built the suspense, there's a little more building, but now actual things are happening. Dude sends a little spider robot with somebody's brain in it crawling across the floor, IIRC. The ending puts in context that it's probably actually the pen-pal's brain in the canister, but we don't know that yet. Then (again descriptive) we also have the "cold" excuse for the mechanical voice and the blankets. And finally we have the big reveal. By the end of the story? You know what happened. All of it. The suspense was a matter of pacing the info, not withholding it.


I don't know though. Just my take on reading the stuff.

Quote from: blakkieI'm a bit surprised, I thought pretty much everyone that's spent time on the Internet had run into Gene Ray's little gem of a website. He's the proto Internet nutjob.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecube

No, but I do thank you for the link.  It opened my eyes to a whole new way to see the world.  (and run screaming from people who see it that way...)

Quote from: StuartInteresting.  

I don't play a lot of videogames right now, and the wikipedia entry is about the sum total of what I'm citing from Chris and agreeing with.  I can't really comment on his other writing or his "story game"... because I haven't read much of it.

Basically my comment boils down to this:
What meaningful choices are the players making in the game, what is the challenge involved in those choices, and how does it affect winning the game?

If there are no meaningful choices, no challenge involved in those choices, or they have no bearing on whether or not you "win" / "lose" / "have more fun" / "have less fun" / "succeed" / "fail" then it's not really a "game" in the way I'm talking about.

Many choices players make in RPGs are Hollow, Obvious, Uninformed, or otherwise Inconsequential to reaching any sort of "Win" conditions for the game.  

(Most RPGs side-step the "how you win" part of the game, or offload it to the players "make up your own games!"  Confusion about how you "win" can in turn leads to all sorts of dysfunction if players think the goal is something different from the other people at the table.)

I think such rambling applies quite aptly to a number of genres, but rather misses the point of the subversive element of Mythos-inspired roleplay.

Quote from: J ArcaneI think such rambling applies quite aptly to a number of genres, but rather misses the point of the subversive element of Mythos-inspired roleplay.

This was in response to Sett's comment here.

Quote from: J ArcaneUmm, you do realize that Lovecraft literally wrote the book on the importance of vagaries in horror?  It's one of his most famous non-fiction essays.  And one of my personal favorite ways to describe good horror.

Do you have a link to that?