2011 Jun 10 8:37 AM

Fun play situations

I playtested A Stranger Storm, the starter module included in LotFP: Grindhouse Edition. During play, I wrote myself this note: “it’s not that the premise is so original (it’s not), but that the ideas make for fun play situations. Start adventure design with a situation and work backwards?”

In retrospect, that’s close but not precisely on point. James’ most recent post exposes the core lesson — giving players meaningful choices leads to fun play situations.

LotFP does a better job than most rule books of encouraging design with meaningful choices, so painting it as didactic nihilism… well, you can’t preach both meaningful choice and nihilism. What’s the alternative, really? A game based on predestination? Isn’t that the sort of pre-scripted story-based play we’ve been trying to escape?

1 comment:

Carter Soles, June 10, 2011 at 10:25 AM

Well said!

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