Re: "scripting" contests

• In hw-rules_at_y..., "Milos Rasic" <mrasic_at_p...> wrote:

> I agree that chance is required. Dice is on of the most random
things
> you can get. It remains true that nothing is really random in
material
> world, but randomness of something can be determined by how similar
the
> frequencies of getting specific result are for each possible result.

According to quantum theory, practicaly _everything_ in the material world is based on pure randomnes. Way off topic, of course.

> Human mind can never be random enough, if it can be random at all.

Never be random enough for what, precisely? Never random enough to be entertaining? Never random enough to be surprising?

> Dice-based roleplaying always generates new stories. Diceless
Rping, on
> the contrary, is based only on what our minds can imagine, and our
> imaginations are already based on imaginations of the others.
Simply,
> one person is too much influenced by the works he/she read,saw or
heard
> to be totally original.

So a group of people that don't roll dice are intrinsicaly incapable of coming up with anythign orriginal or new. Is that what you are saying?

If so, how come individual people on their own are perfectly capable of coming up with orriginal and surprising stories all the time. Did J.R.R Tolkien roll dice to see who won the fights in The Lord of the Rings? Is it a worse book because he didn't?

Finaly, diced mechanics can only produce results imagined by the designer of the game system. As a result, they are even less orriginal and creative than an imagine unencumbered by limited numbers of levels of success.

Hero Wars avoids this to some extent by allowing the GM and players to decide what the outcome of the dice means much more than many RPGs do. Nevertheless, dice are not required in order to produce outcomes that could not be predicted in advance by the GM or players in the game, and outcomes that are often highly entertaining to boot.

Simon Hibbs             Received on Thu 31 Jan 2002 - 06:23:54 EET