how doth the little crocodile

[incandescens]

It is a source of great joy to me to know that next week and the week after are both four-day weeks, owing to the vagaries of Easter holidays.

In the meantime, weekend. And new Doctor Who tomorrow. I must take care to have a bland piece of knitting to hand that won't require too much attention and won't need careful stitch-counting, since I very much hope to be distracted from it.

It's interesting watching other friends discuss what they think is appropriate rewarding in a rpg. From watching lj-rpgs, I'd say that important reward-elements for that audience are (a) deeper immersion, (b) interesting plot twists, (c) interaction with specific other characters, (d) exploration of the chosen character (or invented character's) motivations and details and actions under stress, (e) cool story. So how does one give those?

(Rhetorical question, mostly.)

I'm yet more convinced that the sort of player who is not currently served by the market is one who'd buy an artbook, and who'd buy a character detail book, and who'd buy lots of character merchandise, and who'd possibly buy a book of series plot detail/background and discussions of where it's going, but who isn't particularly interested in statistics, mechanics, or system. A problem is that, judging by Guardians of Order, such books don't necessarily sell very well to the system-buying audience. So how does one sell them to the audience who would buy them? Not sure.

---

How Doth the Little Crocodile

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

-- Lewis Carroll

Comments

[incandescens]

I agree, regarding the high quality spotlight time. (And look at how eager everyone is to be the Tempted Victim, the Persecuted Hostage, the Sole Defender, and other dramatic high-voltage high-character high-spotlight spots.)

Your comment regarding features also makes perfect sense.

The question is, how to use this . . .

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

Oo, I think maybe a key could be something like your list of dramatic high-voltage character spots. Trouble is, not everyone can be the persecuted hostage ... someone has to be the sarcastic debonair hostage taker, so what do you do if no player wants to play that role, knowing that players prefer RP with PCs than with NPCs?

Actually this was something else I learned from MUSHing -- the most brilliant experiences I had were when it just happened that the roles people wanted to take dovetailed neatly into each other. (eg. the wizened old vampire who wants to teach the young runs into the rebellious young vampire who wants to learn, etc etc). And you could never really force that, it was mostly random.

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

I think I'm moving towards suggesting pregen characters, funnily enough.

[incandescens]

Which dovetails with the number of lj-rpgs out there where people are playing the "feature characters" from specific series, in a way.