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pteryxOne type of prospective roleplayer I've occasionally run into in a D&D context, who is in my own experience generally not well-served by most examples of said game, is what I'd call "the fantasy tourist" — arguably the purest, most ideal form of pursuit of the Discovery/Exploration game aesthetic/type of fun as described in the MDA framework.
The fantasy tourist might well make a character who fits the setting, but then they tend to act more like an outsider to the setting than is called for. They not only aren't that interested in pursuing any goals the group has agreed upon, they aren't even interested in finding goals for the group to pursue. They don't have any interest in having any sort of story or narrative develop, either. Instead, they really just want to explore a fantasy environment, free of any pressure.
Fantasy tourists usually don't take knowledge skills, because they want to learn about the setting as they go. For that matter, they often treat the abilities they do have in just as exploratory a manner as the environment — sometimes just not reading the rules and wanting to just "see what happens", other times pushing the boundaries of what the rules say their abilities can do in interesting ways. Often it seems like they're playing a point-and-click adventure game, trying to interact with everything except the "correct" thing due to fear of missing out on some amusing or fascinating bit of local color.
Fantasy tourists aren't passive. They don't want to just have the lorebook read to them, the way some other players really just want to be read a story where they get to make up dialogue and roll attacks. Fantasy tourists often interact with their environments more than storytime players do, since they want to do so for its own sake rather than just trying to figure out the right button to push in order to advance the plot. Whereas storytime players want to be guided towards "the goal" and don't like being forced to make choices, fantasy tourists want to make choices without regard to any outside concern and don't like goals.
What strikes me about the fantasy tourist is that the player archetype doesn't seem to me like something that's inherently disruptive — just something that doesn't fit the goal-oriented nature of more typical adventure games, even exploration-heavy ones. Why shouldn't there be a game all about arriving in a new fantasy city, or similarly heavily-detailed locale, and just engaging in wide-eyed gawking and learning the local customs?
A game based around this seems like it should be centered around young people, who shouldn't know a whole lot about themselves or the world at large yet in the first place. That way, we don't have grizzled veteran bounty hunters or wise ascended holy matriarchs who don't know how the world works; it can all fit together in a way that makes sense instead.
Thanks to QuestingJC for helping to draw out some additional points concerning this thought.
The fantasy tourist might well make a character who fits the setting, but then they tend to act more like an outsider to the setting than is called for. They not only aren't that interested in pursuing any goals the group has agreed upon, they aren't even interested in finding goals for the group to pursue. They don't have any interest in having any sort of story or narrative develop, either. Instead, they really just want to explore a fantasy environment, free of any pressure.
Fantasy tourists usually don't take knowledge skills, because they want to learn about the setting as they go. For that matter, they often treat the abilities they do have in just as exploratory a manner as the environment — sometimes just not reading the rules and wanting to just "see what happens", other times pushing the boundaries of what the rules say their abilities can do in interesting ways. Often it seems like they're playing a point-and-click adventure game, trying to interact with everything except the "correct" thing due to fear of missing out on some amusing or fascinating bit of local color.
Fantasy tourists aren't passive. They don't want to just have the lorebook read to them, the way some other players really just want to be read a story where they get to make up dialogue and roll attacks. Fantasy tourists often interact with their environments more than storytime players do, since they want to do so for its own sake rather than just trying to figure out the right button to push in order to advance the plot. Whereas storytime players want to be guided towards "the goal" and don't like being forced to make choices, fantasy tourists want to make choices without regard to any outside concern and don't like goals.
What strikes me about the fantasy tourist is that the player archetype doesn't seem to me like something that's inherently disruptive — just something that doesn't fit the goal-oriented nature of more typical adventure games, even exploration-heavy ones. Why shouldn't there be a game all about arriving in a new fantasy city, or similarly heavily-detailed locale, and just engaging in wide-eyed gawking and learning the local customs?
A game based around this seems like it should be centered around young people, who shouldn't know a whole lot about themselves or the world at large yet in the first place. That way, we don't have grizzled veteran bounty hunters or wise ascended holy matriarchs who don't know how the world works; it can all fit together in a way that makes sense instead.
Thanks to QuestingJC for helping to draw out some additional points concerning this thought.
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Date: 2023-06-29 02:38 am (UTC)A good game layout for the tourist would be something like Sliders. I actually played in a Call of Cthulhu based Sliders game for a while about... 20 years ago now? Was a lot of fun until I ended up on a spit over a fire, put there by a mob of purple Smurfs.
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Date: 2023-06-29 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-29 04:37 am (UTC)I'm not sure which one is the majority, but I'm certain there's an audience for both.