Sunday, May 21, 2006

Weekly Review May 14th to May 20th

After last weeks revival of push and pull discussion, things have become more focused this week. At the same time, other theory is brought up in its wake.

Pull in the Middle?

Bradley "Brand" Robins advances the understanding of push and pull, codified last week by Moyra Turkington, by offering the concept of a "moment of crisis". This is the moment when something significant to the players becomes decided. Based on this idea, he identifies push as forcing a specific moment of crisis, while pull is soliciting a cooperative moment of crisis.

Vincent Baker has taken this idea to imply a strong relationship between push and pull, and the two resolution approaches of resolution at the end and resolution in the middle. Specifically, he parallels push with the idea of validating a players input as a complete whole, and pull with the idea of negotiating the input before it is fully introduced.

Setting Matters

Troy Costisick offers several reasons why setting is an important part of RPGs. Ultimately he suggests that settings which support the purpose of the game are almost as important as the system.

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