If I raise this thread from the dead automatically, Google will use it
to clutter Bradd's mailbox, so here's the relevant bits of the original
post:
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Bradd W. Szonye wrote:
> even in more robust games, it's not such a great
> idea, because all game abstractions have limits and assumptions that are
> easily broken if you try hard enough. ...
> Dude, you're trying to push a rope.
Actually, while my question was abstruse and I posted in a forum where
some people, like Bradd, are hostile, I did receive an adequate answer
from a helpful correspondent. I post the relevant info here so that
when I have lost the email, Google will have the answered question
where I expect to find it.
It's amazing how difficult questions work. Just ask, wait for the
unhelpful folks to tell you it's futile, wait a bit longer, and then
get the answer. Turnaround time in this case was a few months.
<Fallen Tower p.124>
Prime Effects can shape or channel Resonance directly. ... Prime ***
can ... transfer the Resonance of a static Pattern to another target
.... Prime **** can transfer the Resonance of a Life Pattern to another
target ... Prime ***** can expel Resonance from a Life Pattern without
transferring it to a new Pattern ....
</Fallen Tower p.124>
So the game designers wrote rules that covered exactly the sort of
Resonance-manipulation required for draining the sociopathic resonance
out of Wraith's Shadows and putting it elsewhere or even annihiliating
it. However, the Resonance rules, as one might expect for White Wolf,
are not a system of numerical calculations but a disjointed and
unsystematic way to conceal Storyteller fiat behind a facade of
numbers. They could tell the same stories without the numbers, because
the numbers are assigned at the whim of the Storyteller. The numbers
are just there to lure unsuspecting Gamists and Simulationists into a
black hole of Narrativism.
I note in passing that it is just as well my old group did not read The
Fallen Tower, since at least four of our members would have waxed wroth
upon reading the horrifically oversimplifed rules for nuclear devices.
* * * *
Some, IIRC Stephenls, have opined that Fallen Tower's Resonance rules
satisfy their criteria of good game design. My criteria don't match
the criteria of whoever likes Fallen Tower's rules.
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