If you enjoy some of the theoretical stuff I post around this neck of the woods, you’ll probably enjoy this stuff, too.
With that being said, however, I pretty strongly disagree with some of his advice. An addendum I’d like to point out: Players making a choice without having relevant information is only a problem if they don’t have the ability to gain that information. The choice to not get that information is a meaningful choice. (Or the failure to do so is a meaningful consequence.)
So any time he recommends giving players access to information that their characters don’t actually have access to, you can just imagine me shaking my head sadly. That technique is killing player agency just as dead as the quantum ogre is.
This is the awesome trailer for a bizarre, time-bending video game that’s currently seeking sponsors on Kickstarter. It’s got less than a day to go, but I recommend checking it out.
I am you from the future. There is No Time To Explain. Follow m– AAAUAUUGHHH!!!! Be part of an indie game with a sense of humor.
The game world also needs to behave as you’d expect it to. “Consistency is the single most important factor in creating a real sense of place,” says Josh Foreman, an experienced designer at ArenaNet who works on the Guild Wars games. “The style can be anything from photo-real to abstract to impressionism, as long as there is an internal logic to what the player perceives.” This means that in-game characters, objects, and other aspects of the world should behave like their real-world counterparts.
Interesting to read this in the context of dissociated mechanics in paper ‘n pencil roleplaying games.
