Hallo.
Ich habe wiederrufen. Ich habe numehr folgendes Post auf story-games.com hinterlassen und euch wollte ich das auch nicht vorenthalten.
Zum Verständnis: Die Big Three sind drei Fragen, die auf der Forge als Hilfe beim Spieldesign benutzt werden und mit The Power 19 auf neunzehn Fragen aufgeblasen wurden. (Was an sich schon wiedersinnig ist, weil sich diesen Katalog niemand merken kann.) Bei den Drei handelt es sich um:
1. What is your game about?
2. What do the players do?
3. What do the characters do?Clinton R. Nixon bezeichnete mich als "high as kite" aber damit kann ich leben.
Welcome.
You are here to see the end of my support of Forgian principles of design. Hereby I declare - through my very own arrogance - the Big Three dead.
These questions are the very centre of what has been taught at the Forge. Although it is true that some very important principles of RPGs have been first formulated at the Forge and presented to the larger public, the conclusions drawn from these principles are often biased. The Big Three tell us that it is important, what the characters do and what the players do. The first question is kind of fuzzy and usually hard to answer. Often the answer summarizes at least some parts of the answers to question two and three. We can therefore say that the actions of charcters and players are aspects or at least symptoms of what the game is about.
The problem with these questions is that one aspect which is very important in traditional design is completely ignored: The setting, the playground as Levi Kornelesen described it. Setting is usually considered an important aspect of RPGs. Often I hear, that people play RPGs because of the setting. Can they be wrong?
No, obiously they can't. At least not, if there is no inferior way of play. But, you might say: "Look at the Power 19. The setting is right there. Question 4. It is not that bad."
Well, let's read it again:
4. How does the setting reinforce what the game is about?
As you see, the phrasing differs significantly from questions two and three. The difference is that this formulation discourages one answer: "You see, my game is about that setting, really."
But this ignorance of one important part of RPGs is not only the problem with the Big Three. Although we can be sure that every game played by any gamer will contain characters' actions, players' actions and a setting not every RPG book contains all three and often some parts are changed by players. We therefore have to ask:
1. What do you imagine the players to do?
2. What do you imagine the characters to do?
3. How do you imagine the setting?
4. Which of these answers will you present in your game and which do you consider most important?
5. The inclusion of which techniques have you deducted from answers one to four?
6. Finally, how do you summarize, what your game is about?