Wow.
Nick P will absolutely LOVE this show. It has big robots, space battles, more badass loners than you can shake a stick at... honestly, it was like having Nick's subconscious poured into my brain via my eyeballs.
Most impressive of all is that the series has a pretty cool story and nifty characters. Sure, the three Samurai that have been introduced so far are all badass loners - but they are all different BALORs. Very nifty.
Games
So in the aftermath of Megaroleplaying weekend, a lot of people have be extolling the virtues of the game Primetime Adventures. All this caused me to dig out the old thing to give it another look over and the realisation that I'm still not very satisfied with it. I had a chat with Mash about gaming and mentioned how sometimes it feels like I'm talking to brick walls when I try to explain why I'm not satisfied.
At the core of my issue with the game lies the ideas of consistency and group. Like many indie games, PTA strikes me as a game that will rock if you play with a group who kind of groks the idea behind it - and will fail abysmally with a group who doesn't.
So I get a little aggressive when I see all the effusive "this game will do anything well" kind of rhetoric that flies around about it. It's good, but it doesn't do everything well. I, personally, found it to not be reliable at producing a strong narrative nor being able to provide a decent framework to build the narrative up.
It can do this, but as I mentioned, this is highly reliant on having the right sort of GM and/or group to pull it off. Now I will admit, I base this off the first edtion. I get the impression that the second edition of the game is a bit fuller and may do a better job of setting up the framework necessary.
Narrative is all about cause and effect, and very few games address this. We tend to follow it intuitively - but PTA's structure seems to almost break from this.
Again, I need to read over it more. I guess I just feel a little aggressive at the over-enthusiastic commentary of a game that was successful because of who ran it and played in it rather than anything innately good about the game. The system provides a good foundation for those skilled people to do what they love to do - but if I was to take it along to a different group of players the results would not be repeatable.
Which is making me sound more and more like a scientist... which leads me to...
Study
I'm slowly picking up Statistics. I'm being a bit naughty today and skipping my research methods lecture (going to study my ass off to make up for it.) But I am finding myself becoming ever more scientific in my thinking. It's weird. I am getting better at writing factual information and I'm expecting more solid evidence for claims than even Philosophy got me doing.
Of course, who knows how long taht will last? :)
Anyhoop... enough ranting and babbling from me. I'm going to get back to study now.
Laters!
Love and Huggles
Conan
Currently Reading: Primetime Adventures
Currently Playing: Fireborn - Rememberance; Unknown Armies - To Go; Mage: The Awakening - Threshold
Mood: Bouncy and Positive
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