/ooc
I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about one aspect of roleplaying which does not get talk about that much, but I think is kind of important.
There is a trade-off in all forms of storytelling between simulation and showmanship. Simulation, the ability represent reality, matters because we want our stories to ring true, to make sense and be believable.
But we also need the story to be entertaining and to do so we often have to chip away at the strict sense of realism. So you introduce the odd coincidence in the plot, you give the heroes a lucky break that allows them to beat the odds or even, what the hell, throw in some really fun stuff like fast cars, fast women and giant, rampaging robots.
This applies to roleplaying too. And I would like to use an event recently run by the Nanomage Liberation Front to illustrate this point.
A few months ago, The Nanomage Liberation Front ran a little story involving about an appeal for blood donations for a sick little boy called Timmy. Here is the >> link << if you missed this story. It was a very successful roleplaying story in my opinion, one which got people talking.
Now, of course, this was all a scam. There was no Timmy, the NLF needed solitus blood develop an anti-toxic, or something to that effect. But more to the point, everyone knew it was an obvious scam. And it is precisely because it was so transparently a scam that people got curious, took notice and ultimately got involved.
My contention is that had the NLF taken a more subtle, a more realistic, approach to collecting samples of solitus blood, the story would not have generation a fraction of the interest and player interaction it did. This was a case where showmanship took precedence over simulation to good effect.
The same applies to players. When confronted with something like the NLF backing a blood drive for little Timmy, you have to ask yourself, do you do what makes most sense and keep well clear, or do you do what is most fun, volunteer to give blood and see what happens? These are deeply personal choices, decision, but it's worth considering that stories would be very dull if the protagonists always acted wisely.