Re: Defined Plot Device OR Random Small Enc.

[Dan Lyke]

Morbus Iff wrote:
> But soaps are so fun, eh? The one thing that I think works with
> soaps is longevity. If you've been playing the game long enough,
> you know more about the sordid affairs of the characters more
> than the new players. I think this is crucial for any interactive
> world to work.

I think that a critical element of the soaps is that the random small
encounters don't appear to be. The whole promise of the X-Files (and
Babylon 5, and the mid-day soaps, I'm just using ones that I think
idrama subscribers will be more familiar with) is that all of these
elements do tie together eventually.

As an example of tying the supposedly trivial encounters together you
offer:
> One of the better movies which illustrates this point is THE GATE. I'm
> a big fan of horror movies, and this was one of those which had a lot
> of little innocent events which later turned into a whole:
[example snipped]

Beautiful. Not my favorite genre, but a perfect example of tight plot
coming together.

In response to my desire for such tight coupling, you wrote:
> Perhaps, in any sort of game creation, there must be two trains of
> people: the people who make the movement of the game, and the people
> who make the backdrop of the game. The movement is the more important,
> but the backdrop people flesh out the world in the minutest detail -
> making sure store windows change with new prices, the paper shows the
> new date each day, and there are enough tv channels and shows to flip
> through before you come full circle.

Hmmm... I think you're right. Perhaps a question that should be asked
here is "is it possible to pull together any random set of unconnected
occurrences into a story line?"

I guess there's really two questions: The first is "is it possible?",
the second "is it desireable?"

I think there are stories where a tightly fleshed out backdrop is
necessary. But I wonder about creating stories out of thin air.

And this is a moral dilemma, and I've no doubt that whatever
technologies I hellp to create in this mode will be usable for that
burpose.

But I'm still an old-fashioned believer in art as an expression of an
artist. I haven't bought into the postmodernist philosophies that art
is defined by the viewer. From that perspective I'm concerned that
I'll be creating the medium of the sit-com, mindless events which have
all the social content of heroin, but aren't illegal because unlike
drugs they can be used to fan consumerism.

Dan