| From: | "Mark L. Neidengard" <mneideng@****.CALTECH.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: My take on things |
| Date: | Fri, 20 Oct 1995 13:16:24 -0700 |
deserves to make the transition to itribe. As follows:
According to Thomas W. Craig:
>
> Ok, here in the last few weeks several people have been saying "I wish Vinnie
> was back. He would improve things." Well, I doubt he would make any
> difference; because what I see is a group of people more interested in the
> rules, rather than ROLE-PLAYING. ShadowTK is BASED off of Shadowrun, and is
> NOT a Shadowrun campaign. TK came into existance to allow each and every one
> of us to ROLE-PLAY our characters, not to have our ROLE-PLAYING stifled by
> the RULES. Now a part of the reasoning behind this occurred in November of
> last year, and will be used as an example.
I believe I'm one of the people who has harped on some rules on occasion. My
primary concern is this: because ShadowTK draws in people from widely varying
role-playing backgrounds, knowing the groundrules on how the world works is
crucial to ensuring that ShadowTK is coherent. The incident I'm thinking of,
namely the stuff with Disbeliever, may not even be central to any of the
plots being transacted, but once you establish precedent and allow the first
being of this kind in the door, others may follow. In other words,
role-playing is the ultimate goal, but to _facilitate_ role-playing and to
prevent conflicts between the players over what is "allowable", we need some
sort of stadards to work from, i.e. the FASA canon. We need to be sure we
are talking about the same things in order for us to tell part of each other's
stories.
If my rules-layering was somewhat strident, I suppose it was because the
character was posited and then explained after the fact. If someone had asked
"Does anyone have problems if I introduce X?" then the whole issue can be
discussed in a (hopefully) rational manner. But once things are already
rolling, they can be a lot more difficult to handle objectively. The current
plot involving Maxim seeking nuclear arms is an example of a very promising
concept that is unlikely to have suffered from at least an initial review;
kudos to its author for his recent message. =) In passing I would say that
whoever M. Johnson knows inside Ares must be in an unbelievably good position,
since nobody can afford to use anything but the highest security for nuclear
storage. But, we assume that Ares got caught with its pants down, and go from
there =) Just like we assume that Disbeliever is either a complete phony, or
else has some good reason for his condition. What constitutes a good reason
is why we have this group.
--
/!\/!ark /!\!eidengard, CS Major, VLSI. http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~mneideng
"Fairy of sleep, controller of illusions" Operator/Jack-of-all-Trades, CACR
"Control the person for my own purpose." "Don't mess with the Dark
Elves!"
-Pirotess, _Record_of_Lodoss_War_ Shadowrunner and Anime Addict
