Author: Sergio Mascarenhas (---.74.159)
Date: 06-21-2004 05:08
It was a good series and a needed one. It's excellent to have people like you trying to look at rpgs in an intelctually stimulating way. There may be no conclusions but the discussion was very valuable in itself.
A comment on the high-structure hypotesis. I see a possible (if difficult) application in rpgs that attempt to play tragedy (in the classical sense), something that we don't see often. I'm thinking here about Greek tragedy or the Bhagawad Gita. In both cases the end is very much pre-determined. What's left to the characters is to live the pathos of their part in the wider scheme of things. Since it is not the events that's at stake but the personal involvement in those events, it seems to fit into your hypotesis very nicely. Now, a different question is whether it would fit any of your thesis about what makes rpgs what they are.
I am still not convinced by the low-strucure hypotesis, though. I think one of the problems is that if fails to distinghish between what's the object of structure. In rpgs there are two possible targets for high/low structure: system and setting. One can have a high-structure setting with low-structure system (most so-called 'systemless' rpgs), and we can have a low-structure setting with a high-structure system (dungeon bashing with D&D, for instance).
This is a point I'll handle in my revived column that is going to happen next month. In any case, I look forward for Push. Who knows, it can provide fuel to my own column.
Sergio
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