Quote from: Zachary The First...--"ROLLplaying instead of ROLEplaying" (evidently he spelled out the difference between the two)...

If that is an accurate quote I'd have to say this sounds like this has very little to do with whether or not he managed to type up a 20 to 30 page document and figure out how to run a printer.

I really can't say I've ever heard someone with a published game or module talk like that at all. But then I don't hang around many game writers.

Funny enough, I got a lot of advice when I was writing H&S--most of it good, some of it completely not the direction I was going. But I never said "No this is about ROLEPlaying not Rollplaying'.

One of my early playtesters ran off and did a High Fantasy adventure with fantasy characters (no "superpowers" just high end fantasy heroics). If I'd said something as lame as above about that, I'd missed out on some decent feedback. In fact honestly, H&S has a lot of "this is an idea, take it and run with it" or at least that was my intent--from including or not including death, to costumes to whatever. If someone wants to run a fantasy game with H&S, more power to them!

I write to create things I enjoy, and share them with others--but at the same time I want to create commercial products, so with that in mind I try and create things I enjoy, without making them all about "me", instead about giving people the tools to run with it wherever they want.


My fantasy game for example is vanilla fantasy--because I like that, because many other people do, and its something that can be done better (Yes D&D does D&D fantasy--but it doesn't really do vanilla western fantasy--things found in books like "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy", or Lord of the Rings..)

Fuck, it's always been my plan to release the system part of my game as open content of some variety.  

Way I see it, best way to success is to encourage people to go hog wild with your game.

Sure I may have some particular direction in mind with the setting, but hey, if you wanna turn around and use the system to run a game about one legged prostitutes fighting space monsters in 19th century France, be my guest.

It's your game, you bought it, have fun with it.

This all reminds me of two situations.

1) The En Garde! rules for fencing combat being adapted to social and political in-fighting in Vatican En Garde.  It's pretty much the opposite situation of the one described in the opening post, but I think that makes it particularly interesting. "You're not supposed to TALK it out! Use the listed weapon table!"  Balbinus might give us an idea of how this works out in play.

2) One of my favorite threads over on TBP from years back was a proposed game based on the works of the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen.  All social repartee.  No combat.  Some people were tearing their hair out at the notion that a game might not include combat rules, equating that with tacitly forbidding combat (which it was, like that's a bad thing ).  The point, of course, was that you could apply the rules to create combat situations, but at that point you're stepping beyond the bounds of a Brontë- or Austen-like game, and you're on your own.

Should En Garde! have included rules for head-to-head social interaction to qualify as a true RPG? (It did have minimal social/political rules for gaining rank and such.)  Should a Brontë/Austen game include combat rules to be a complete RPG?  Are "good" games required to satisfy all possible expectations from their many potential players?

!i!

Quote from: SilverlionBut I never said "No this is about ROLEPlaying not Rollplaying'.

Well I'm skipping over the other stuff, which doesn't ring true either with any of the few game writers I know, and hitting on that one because that not only is given as a quote but it is one of those things that is pretty high on my list of general "nonsense" flags. Unless the system was totally diceless (do you know if it was Zachary?) it'd rank as an automatic right over the top. Even if it was a diceless it seems extremely silly.

This is Rollplay.

I see commercials for this show every day, and it makes the "roleplay vs rollplay" arguments seem ever more childish.  I hope this show becomes really popular -- even though I don't like it at all.

Quote from: blakkieUnless the system was totally diceless (do you know if it was Zachary?) it'd rank as an automatic right over the top.

I don't know.  The guys who were there and I talked about it a little bit more tonight during the Rifts game, but I didn't think to ask about any other system details.