Original Cin

I’ll post the story behind this pic sometime after I wake up “tomorrow.” The short version: It’s a screenshot of a tech demo for a game engine called “Love” that I found online.

Eliezer Yudkowsky writes “If You Demand Magic, Magic Won’t Help” on Overcoming Bias:

Born into a world of science, they [fantasy fiction readers] did not become scientists. What makes them think that, in a world of magic, they would act any differently?

If they don’t have the scientific attitude, that nothing is “mere” – the capacity to be interested in merely real things – how will magic help them? If they actually had magic, it would be merely real, and lose the charm of unattainability. They might be excited at first, but (like the lottery winners who, six months later, aren’t nearly as happy as they expected to be), the excitement would soon wear off. Probably as soon as they had to actually study spells.

This is not exactly the same as my “the world is strange” principle, but it is very similar. Alas, I can’t remember where I read that a sense of wonder about the world makes someone more likely to be successful.

I’ve been running a game of Exalted online for two of my friends, and the last session turned out very, very badly (e.g. boring). I already have lots of ideas on how to make the next one better, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to reflect on some things regarding my writing and storytelling.

Things are valuable when they’re scarce. I think this gives me a clue for why my own prose tends to sound overwrought and verbose when I read it. I have a confession to make: My name is Nic, and I am an adjective addict. I have difficulty disregarding irrelevant details, eschewing oddball colors, scents, and sounds, and eliminating background noise. Oops. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that “show, don’t tell” means to use verbs.

Moving on, what’s scarce in an RPG? Experience points are scarce, but they don’t have value outside of their fictional world. Character to beat up are a bit scarce, but the PCs could become marauding pirates and beat up lots of NPCs every session and I don’t feel that it would inherently make the campaign more or less interesting (it would give it a radically different flavor and plot).

I was told it needed some challenge, and I agree. But here’s where I really think I failed — the situation I created in the last session was very pedestrian – students talked to some people on campus, met a someone new at a nearby event. <sarscasm>Well, it’s not like people do that all the time!</sarcasm> Novel situations are scarce, perhaps not in RPGs, but definitely in real life. Throwing exotic characters in mundane situations sometimes creates an exotic situation, but you can’t depend on that to happen.

So, from now on, I’m going to try to create a new, unusual situation as the foundation for each session. I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but that’s my goal.