Doing Things Better #1: Entertaining your fellow-players

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I'm not expressing it well, then. What you're describing is a more detailed element of a larger picture I am describing. It's like getting into enormous detail on choosing a location. That's important, but it's a detail on a larger picture.

The point is that you are describing what you regard as necessary conditions. And some of them may be necessary conditions. But you went on to say that they are sufficient conditions; that is, that if you get me and four or five of my friends together, and we sit around and eat and drink and shoot the bull, that that's a perfectly good evening and fulfills all the essential functions of a gaming session. And I'm saying, and I'm pretty sure a couple of other people are saying, that no it doesn't.

Those things may be pleasant, and they may be desiderata, and they might even be essential (though I don't they all of them are); but if we don't actually game, or if we have a vague, poorly focused game because everyone is too busy chatting, or the game just isn't very good, then I won't have gotten what I came for and I'll be disappointed. And I may not come back.

Necessary is "you must have X or you won't have a good game." Sufficient is "if you have X you have a good game." Those are not synonyms.

And to go back to the original topic for a moment, the point is not simply to entertain your fellow players; it's to entertain your fellow players by playing the game. See the difference?

Bill Stoddard