Monday, December 25, 2006

Weekly Review Dec. 17th to Dec. 23rd

This week has seen a few new perspectives on previous developments.

Unobserving

Matt Snyder discusses the importance of hidden information to the functioning of stories. Specifically he describes how, while players may be aware of the full picture, the fitness of a character for a story often depends on what they do not or cannot know. This also suggests that a good situation in game is one where no party has full information.

Decide

Carl Cravens discusses the importance of player decisions in the context of RPGs. Specifically, he suggests that decisions can matter too much, as well as mattering too little. In the former, the analysis brought on by fear of failure can grind play to a halt. On the other, the irrelevance of the decisions makes play largely meaningless.

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