Comment on “All Right, With Feeling”

Oh oh: however misguided, one thing the idea I posted does get right is the player being inspired by something, and then working to make it a (game) reality. Sort of like the real art process in miniature.

A possible flaw: to enjoy picking pieces of art and trying to come up with gamified versions of them requires a player who is already artistically inclined.

A counterpoint: is it so bad to ask that a player who wants to play an artist put in a little legwork to form a personal sense of artistic style? At first blush it seems wrong. There's no such stricture for other classes: a player not inclined to be violent in real life can derive terrific joy from playing a fighter or assassin.

But this is a game. By participating in pretend situations which are analogous to, but not entirely like, the real world, the player can actually gain some sense of how both the pretend situations and their real-world equivalents operate, thereby becoming a more ... enlightened person. You know what I mean, right? This is one of the things you believe, right?

So maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing after all if part of bard play was to cultivate, within the game framework, one's own artistic taste. Just as the fighter's play can, within the game's framework, cultivate an understanding of how to manage and deploy soldiers and other limited resources (logistics).

Eh?