Old Larper thoughts yet again.

Two things Erim:

First, I don't think anyone is suggesting that any rules get changed or "nerfed" to allow players of wildly varying levels to play together.  The original article just talks about ways to design your game to avoid this problem from cropping up.  For those of you who weren't sure, KR has gone the "Give Everyone Superpowers" route, and it works fine.

And second, exactly how are LARPs and MMOs not social games?  I have been an avid WoW player from the day of release, been in several high end raiding guilds, and still maintain my membership (over 3 years now) in a "guild of friends", yet I have never, not one time seen, nor heard of, a player who played the entire game solo, never interacted with any other players for any reason (trade chat, guild chat, commons chat) and never interacted with any player-driven resources (like auction houses).  Even if you prefer to grind content by yourself, once you start chatting  to the zone, the gmae is now social.  Once you buy or sell something from the auction house, you are playing with others by proxy, and the game becomes social.  Now I am sure there are players who have done just that, but I am equally sure they didn't last very long, as there are other games out there more suited to what they are looking for (Morrowind/ Oblivion, I'm looking at you here).

LARPs are worse.  To solo a LARP you would need to show to the events, check in and get your tags, retreat to a isolated portion of the camp where no one will find you, arrange with the Storytellers to send you occasional single-player plot hooks that don't involve any NPCs or other PCs, get someone to sign your NPC duty card, unless you could arrange to NPC a hermit who sits in his cabin alone and refuses any company (or something similar) at every event.  Who in their right mind would do that?  Who would even want to?

The fact is that RPGs are social games at their core, even the simplest game of D&D involves one player and a DM.  If you don't have an audience, who are you "roleplaying" for?  Yourself?  I usually call that "daydreaming".

All Jeff is suggesting is that just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.  There is a lot to be said for the mature LARPer who recognizes what events he should be influencing and what ones are best left to others.

T

PS: Ahhh, OK I read the WoW article, and the author of said article is confusing "social gaming:" with "time spent playing in groups".  The two are not closely related at all, it is entirely possible to devour content solo while maintaining a very social game persona.  In fact, outside of raid groups, most of the MMOers I know prefer to play solo or in pairs, for a variety of reasons  that have no bearing on this discussion, so I will skip the explanation.

Edit: This IS Jenna... it keeps logging me in as Vince!

PS: Ahhh, OK I read the WoW article, and the author of said article is confusing "social gaming:" with "time spent playing in groups".  The two are not closely related at all, it is entirely possible to devour content solo while maintaining a very social game persona.  In fact, outside of raid groups, most of the MMOers I know prefer to play solo or in pairs, for a variety of reasons  that have no bearing on this discussion, so I will skip the explanation.

Eeeh.... I have to disagree with you about the "confusing" the two thing, only because I happen to be in a position to be especially knowledgable on the subject: a game development professional in the Social Games field. We make ourselves sick with discussions like this lol. I think you're the one confusing "gaming socially" with "Social Games". There's a difference between a game having strong social aspects and existing as a social experience as its main mode of play.

Sigh...So please explain to us the differance?

This thread has been taking in the wrong direction.
I guess I will have to start locking them for the people that miss the point.

Erin....?? How you went onto this road I have no idea. Thats not the point of my series of threads. They are to be read and help people understand how to be constructive and positive.

Terry gets it, Tom pretty much gets it, Sonya as well about 50% get it.

My point is this just read...think and then act and/or respond......read the whole thing for the love of god first.

xoxo

I wasn't actually trying to go off the road Jeff, sorry about that. The original blog post had inspired me to write something related on the Calimacil blog, and since people were keeping the conversation going, I thought it would be nice to include a link to my rebuttal. People sort of ran with it after that...

Consider it closed if you like.

*Note: yay! i logged in!

I wasn't actually trying to go off the road Jeff, sorry about that. The original blog post had inspired me to write something related on the Calimacil blog, and since people were keeping the conversation going, I thought it would be nice to include a link to my rebuttal. People sort of ran with it after that...

Consider it closed if you like.

*Note: yay! i logged in!

Do you read anything? Whats it like in your world? Balloons and cake?

Did somebody say cake?

If so its a dirty god forsaken lie.