I generally try not to break my Monday/Thursday post schedule all that often, but I want to talk about this, and my schedule for July is full-up.
Thursday I had a really long and highly abstract theoretical discussion of different mediums for roleplaying. Real briefly, I want to point out where the application lies here, and possibly explain why it’s not explicit in the original post.
The problem with trying to design games for mediums other than face-to-face is that we are so deeply immersed in thoughts about face-to-face communication that it is difficult to see how other mediums differ. Face-to-face mechanics tend to be significantly denser because they are utilized in a rich medium. You can afford complex mechanics because they still don’t take that much time (or at least they take less time than they would elsewhere).
Another thing is that we simply do not consider how to utilize aspects of communication that we don’t tend to deal with. Consider that Code of Unaris utilizes precisely one mechanic (the one that makes the game so good) that leverages the medium it is designed for: Hacking works as well as it does because online chat has such a high level of permanency. It doesn’t work nearly as well as a formalized mechanic in face-to-face play.
The question that arises from this is: what do mechanics look like that leverage permanency and delineation? I don’t have an answer to this question. In fact, until about a month ago I didn’t even realize that this was the question to be asking. But it is.
If we are going to design for other mediums, rather than consider how to make it as much like tabletop play as possible we must consider a number of aspects of play that are so constant in tabletop play that we simply didn’t notice them before.
What are these games going to look like? I don’t know, but I know I’m excited to find out.
Thomas