| |
Site Navigation
Main
News
Forums
Games
Games Database
Top 100
Release List
Support Files
Features
Reviews
Previews
Interviews
Editorials
Diaries
Misc
Download
Gallery
Music
Screenshots
Videos
Miscellaneous
Staff Members
Privacy Statement
|
|
Over at the Archaean site, they have released a new article by designer Thiago "Darien Kane" Moraes, their Associate Producer and World Designer. The article, titled "The Contextual Roleplaying Conundrum", is a broad-minded analysis of an odd irony in RPG systems, the piece unravels the basics of roleplaying, arriving at an unexpected conclusion of an unexpected paradox. Here's a bit from that article:
Because anthropology is a dear science to us, the preliminary cultural scene of Archaean quickly evolves into an interconnected organism of open-ended ethos. With that, the roleplaying panorama changes as well, and the values that once ushered individual characters are now present and flourishing in small/massive tribes/civilizations.
But where does that leave freedom, and the smallest element of a guild-ridden world -- the player‘s entity? One of the oldest conventions of roleplaying fulfillment is affiliation to a kindred body -- the sense of belonging, the allies, not to mention the services and perks gained by cultivating cultural bonds. But with that comes compromise, an obligation to conform to the codes of a chosen group or society. Roleplaying takes on an environmental tone, as the player must, sometimes, deny its personal instincts or else be flagged as a lousy roleplayer. This is where cultures stop being choices... and start being chains. |
|
|
Archaean Designer Diary
