[Wil]

Originally Posted by jefgodesky

That's part of the process we're in now--turning it more into what the world is, rather than what it isn't, making it more about the myth than the philosophy. Version 0.2 just tries to get the ideas down; in 0.3, we're focusing on presenting them well, and following them through in the mechanics. I think you're right, as it is, it is preachy. One of our top priorities right now is to tone that down.

Thanks for taking it into consideration. I am only one reader, so definitely run things by the designer as well as any playtesters. Playtest groups that aren't in your immediate circle of friends (or even social circles) are probably good - my philosophy is that, even though they have the best intentions, friends lie more often than not when something you do sucks

Thanks for the suggestion about the Maya calendar--we'll keep that in consideration.

It might be kind of tricky, other games like Shadowrun have already touched on that sort of thing. It just kind of stuck out because it was mentioned and then kind of fell by the wayside in the text.

[qupteI suppose you could run the game about picking berries like you said, but removing physical combat really just changes the kinds of conflicts that appear most often. In our playtest, one scenario we ran involved a draught, and the characters needed to discover why the water spirits were so alienated, and then put it right. Another one involved a tribe that dug up some old nuclear warheads.[/quote]

Well, in a thread not related to our discussion someone put it very succinctly:

This is why I find those 'agenda' based games boring. As long as you follow the specific doctrine presented as 'good' in the game, you'll always win, because to present the other point of view as successful implies that it has at least some merit. People with agendas beyond creating an RPG with dramatic conflicts don't like to do this, and most of the time I can spot them instantly.

To me that speaks to several things. You say that all of the weapons are ad-hoc, created on the spot and discarded. What happens when someone finds a modern hunting knife, made of virtually indestructible alloy. It is objectively better than anything the hunter could knap out on their own. Your instinct might just be to work something into the game system that penalizes the character for keeping it (evil spirits, taint, social ramifications). When you do that, you're falling into trap I quoted above. Instead, the dramatic repercussions may be very compelling if the knife is kept.

Really, any post-apocalyptic game where the apocalypse is relatively nondestructive suffers from this with regards to everything from kitchen utensils to clothes to resource gathering - there's just too much from the modern world that will stick around and be useful for some period of time.

That's funny, because that's how every real-world civilization has collapsed. It never happens the way you hear about in most post-apocalyptic fiction. We're trying to make a realistic post-apocalyptic scenario, which is what makes it so important to get across the etic perspective, how a sustainable culture thinks of itself. Doing that without getting preachy, that's the challenge we're really focusing on now.

Well, that's a matter for people more erudite on civilization collapse than I. Personally to me the most intriguing thing is creating a compelling "future anthropology". Maybe just doing that, using all of the source material extensively quoted in the beta now but without pushing it to the forefront, the cultures and post-apocalypse civilization will stand on its own without the "preachiness"