Post originally by Jack Holcomb at 2003-07-09 07:41:18
Converted from Phorums BB System

Hmm. Examples? My experience with Everway has been completely different from yours, and I'm curious about what other games have done it better, in your opinion. The only ones that come to mind are games that Everway arguably *inspired* (Sorcerer, Nobilis), and maybe Amber, which hit the market before Everway--but Amber has pretty narrow design constraints next to Everway; it doesn't have the same flexibility. I guess you might mean that Planescape or Nexus is a better planehopping setting, and while I would disagree, I could see where you're coming from. Exalted, like Everway, focuses on mythic-level heroes and adventure, but it's design and flavor are both different enough from Everway to make meaningful comparison difficult.

So, with respect, what games do you have in mind? Are you judging on the basis of design, or play, or setting, or what?

I don't want to sign on with Dogbreath on any of this, because I think that he's working from that old, strange idea that some styles of play are more evolved than other styles of play. I wrote my dissertation (folkloristics) about gamers, and while these sorts of arguments are pervasive among us, they never seem to take us anywhere useful. Suffice it to say that gamers come with a wide variety of motivations, likes, and dislikes, and for some of them character-play is good, but others like their games to be *games* (with numbers and crunchiness), and still others don't care as much about individual character development as they do about the shape of the story being crafted. There are probably other options out there, too--like the guy who's up for anything so long as he gets to hang with his friends. None of these styles seems to reflect any greater or lesser maturity; you find all sorts of people playing all sorts of games. Ain't it great?

I think that Everway is pretty well adapted for gamers who want to focus on shaping a satisfying narrative over game-crunchiness and over character development. I've run it for about eight years now (!), and it's an inspiration to me in this regard. For character-oriented gaming, I'd rather go with something from WW or with Pendragon; for crunchiness, d20 seems to work, although I recently fell in love with Savage Worlds.

There are too many good games out there to have just one favorite!

Jack