tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1678761812929125529.post8213446892633090215..comments2023-05-27T11:14:02.426-04:00Comments on Some Space to Think: The Curse of ClarityAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14216103531396452644noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1678761812929125529.post-61510733087048691742010-09-13T11:24:30.579-04:002010-09-13T11:24:30.579-04:00Funny auto-correct near the end of footnote 1...
...Funny auto-correct near the end of footnote 1...<br /><br />I think that, in addition to being a blind spot, it is something that is very difficult for us to articulate. I compare it to the Programming 101 exercise of writing up the algorithm to make a sandwich. "Spread the mayo on one slice" seems so easy, but there is a lot of information buried in that statement. And, for most of us, it is information that we learned implicitly, either by observing others or through trial and error. How much mayo? Which side of the bread? How do you get an even coat? What do you do with the mayo left on the knife?<br /><br />Similarly, most of us learned our GM techniques through years (*cough* decades *cough*) of play. We tried, errored, and corrected. We watched how other GMs worked and tried to emulate or avoid what we saw. We absorbed little pieces from hundreds of "GM advice" sections and articles.<br /><br />Boiling that down into sage advice for the next generation is hard. It's not just a matter of blind spots. It's a matter of finding vocabulary to explain things that are far, far easier to show. Pacing is an obvious example, here. It pretty much always boils down to "watch your players and feed them just a little more than they can comfortably handle." But, that's equivalent to the "how much mayo to use" issue. How do I know when they are comfortable? How much is a "little" more? How do I actually scale it up and down? And, what all is included in pacing? The fact that some of these are a matter of taste and shouldn't have absolute guidelines further works against that goal of clarity.<br /><br />I also think that you need to establish a baseline of what things you include and what things you leave for later. Similar to your cookbook analogy. Or, to bring it back to games, to chess guides. The rules of chess can be fairly easily explained in under a dozen pages. The finer points of playing chess <b><i>well</i></b> occupy entire bookshelves. I find that far too many GM advice sections in books spend a lot of time on how to play the RPG well, and not enough time on nailing down the basics. Mostly, I think, because the writer finds it more satisfying to put their personal opinions and theories on good gaming into the book instead of going over ground that has been done a thousand times before.Marshall Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15647111558095583028noreply@blogger.com