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From: buzzard@TheWorld.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Player Knowledge vs. PC Knowledge
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Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 11:38:31 GMT
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Emily Short <emshort@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Matthew Murray <hloif@plover.net> wrote:
>>         It makes more sense to me that the player and the PC are more or
>> less on the same page--if the PC is required to learn something--be it
>> through achieving new knowledge or remembering old knowledge--it should be
>> a discovery to both at the same time.
>
>As mentioned, this pretty much requires that whatever the
>challenges/puzzles are, they are new to the PC as well as to the player.
>Which restricts the field to amnesia games, travel-to-strange-new-world
>games, etc.

Hmm. Strongly disagree, I think. If the challenges/puzzles
are for the player and not for the PC, immersion will be
entirely ruined for me. (The phrase "your first link" in
SF's score is about as jarring to me as Varicella keeping
his "master plan" secret from me.)

And really, this is true in SF: the vast majority of the
puzzles do puzzle the PC. I think for narrative reasons
it makes sense for the PC to have secrets from the player,
or at least, I keep writing games where that's true (in
The Weapon people quickly figure it out, and it's kind of
a cheap thing to keep secret; in Heroes I think I did
a much better job, because the things the PCs slowly dole
out are things they don't *realize* are relevant, which
I think works better). But the puzzles are always puzzles
confronting the PC. This is the quintessence of the relation
of IF to role-playing, I think; in a (pen-and-paper) RPG,
the player always knows everything the PC knows, and the
challenges are always challanges for both. In adventures
we take some liberties with this, but I think we don't
want to go too far.

It's quite possible to mask "travel-to-strange-new-world";
whether it be a familiar home unfamiliarly arranged, or simply
unfortunately locked; or an encounter where a PC with weak
people-skills and strong mechanical skills and must try to
operate a familiar machine while dealing with the unfamiliar
situation of being closely watched by a character with
different goals.

At heart, too, I think this is why the word "adventure" still
tends to be applicable, because if the story has any challenges
then there will always be some sense of "strange new world", and
hence of adventure. Galatea's interviewer certainly had one.

SeanB
