The Blog of Roon

Says Li,

And speaking of the Grand Ellipse, I’ve got players teaming up on me now. Alisa and Dorothea are in the process of trying to “untangle Li’s totally twisted mind.” All I can say to that is that many have tried…

We’ll get you, my pretty, and your little lackey Vroomfondel too. I did figure out the wager terms, didn’t I? Even if I still don’t know who’s got the other side of the bet.

There’s a complicated dance that goes on between GM and players. Li gets copies of all messages exchanged between Ellipsoids, just as a tabletop GM is able to listen in on in-character conversations during the game. It would be possible for Li to yank the rug out from under us, changing her plans on the basis of our conversation.

And in fact she probably will. And should. (And has, drat it.)

Sound like cheating? Yes, but mostly no. Yes, because the people Li is playing aren’t listening in (at least, they’d better not be, not for this particular conversation!), and shouldn’t act on the basis of what we say that they can’t have heard. No, because NPCs are supposed to be intelligent beings in their own right, and they should be able to follow our logic and even outthink us now and again. No, because if our thoughts and actions don’t change the game-world around us, there’s hardly any point to thinking and doing, is there? No, because sometimes the players come up with better justifications for what’s going on than the GM did—after all, there are many players and only one GM!

So I fully expect that the conversation Alisa/Margaret and I/Shirley are having right now will change things. The trick is staying one step ahead of Li’s sharper-than-obsidian-razors mind… coming up with such watertight theories that she can’t twist off in new directions…

This particular conversation (still ongoing) is a blast to do, by the way. Alisa is a fine writer; the style she has adopted happens to blend almost seamlessly with my more-or-less pastiche. (“Hysteria.” Drat. I should have used the word “hysteria.” How could I have missed that? Li, can I edit my stuff—for style, not content—before you post it?) It isn’t NaNoWriMo-calibre stuff (at least, mine isn’t), but I like it anyway.

Waiting with bated breath for the next email from Alisa…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 20th, 2002 at 9:04 am and is filed under Grand Ellipse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.