Author: Matthew George (---.psu.edu)
Date: 07-23-2004 16:04
I'm thinking of games like Mage or Nobilis, where in some sense the published mechanics are just a framework for rules the players and Storyteller create themselves. For example, Sphere descriptions in Mage are intentionally far more inclusive than the character's beliefs are -- it's Paradigm that provides a lot of the structure for possible actions. Even the paradigmatic limits that they impose can be bypassed with a willing Storyteller. (Scotty from Star Trek might be played a deranged Void Engineer trapped in a world of his own imagination -- clearly he's a master of multiple Spheres, but he doesn't need Life to use the transporter. Even if we consider Dr. McCoy as a focus for Life magic, how often did Bones run the transporter? Clearly mastery of Correspondence, Matter, and Forces is sufficient to transport a person in Scotty's paradigm.)
Obviously, it's theoretically possible to represent ALL of the game's rules, even the complex ones that exist only in the players' minds. But when game aspects can only be incompletely described in English, isn't it difficult to translate the complete mechanics into a formal mathematical langauge and analyze it that way?
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