Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilbetron
Any reason you keeping putting "gamelike" into quotes when referring to RPGs, also known to some Role-Playing *Games*? It's like saying you're reading a "book-like" History Text, or watching Star Wars and saying it's very "Movie-like". You even said in the above quote "'game'-like games". I guess maybe you're like a vegetarian reviewing a burger joint and talking about the "meaty" hamburgers.
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Thank you for pointing this out. It does look odd in retrospect, and I apologize.
In some languages, there are different words for "playing" (as in messing about free-form or playing with dolls) vs "gaming" (as in chess). In English, however, the noun "game" is used for both these forms of play, just like the word book, in all languages I know, is used for both fiction and non-fiction.
In several parts of northern Europe there's a style of role-
playing emphasized over role-play
gaming.
Trail of Cthulhu has a resource-management aspect to it that feels a bit like some bidding board games I've played. During my playtest I thought this distracted from the in-game fictional events several times, which doesn't have to be bad but I thought I should note it so people can make a choice based on their own perception of their preferences.
I like some "game-like" games (defined for the sake of this post as rule-based, abstract skill tests) and I like messing about, "play-like" playing (dftsotpa ad-hoc interaction with maybe some "fudged" die rolls) in weird worlds or with curious characters. Doing
both at the same time was unusual for me at the time I wrote the review since I don't have a DnD background.
Trail of Cthulhu uses an abstract game of resource management skill to resolve some conflicts. That's fine, but unusual enough to be noted, and enough like a board game to be subject to critique about balance, play, choices and so on.
It's like saying a history text reads like fiction, or emphasizing the movie-about-movies feel of great pastiche films like
Star Wars or
Kill Bill.
To connect back to the vegetarian analogy, it's like wanting to separate "meaty" in the sense of thick, energy rich food vs "meaty" in the sense of being made out of muscle. It's a classic mistake to think that mere quotes would be enough to separate between the two definitions, and I apologize for falling into that trap.
Thank you for your feedback, and, again, my apologies.