Ryan returns from nearly a month off to talk about a topic he's very passionate about: Emergent Play (or Emergent Behavior in Play). That is play that emerges from the people engaging and interactive with the text, but isn't a direct result of the instructions of the text. He goes into some examples to illustrate the idea from different vantage points: the board game Diplomacy, Call of Cthulhu, Paul Tevis' A Penny For My Thoughts, his own Know Thyself, and Beast Hunters. While he only scratched the surface, he looks forward to returning to this topic again.
I listened to the podcast on my way to work this morning. Good stuff, Ryan!
You're right about the emergent properties of Beast Hunters, in the way that maneuvers tend to shake out. This is mostly the case with physical challenges in combat-form against one or a couple of enemies. Narration tends to include inflicting injuries and death even for maneuvers when your character is fighting off a few dozen mooks :)
This might be a case of underlying assumptions. I simply assumed that, given the fact that Strikes were separate from Maneuvers, people would save up the damaging narration for the Strikes. But it could be more explicit in the text, I figure. For me, with my background in chat-based "freeform" games, both the implied distribution of authority--you don't ever tell me how my character gets hurt, only what your character tries to do--and the resulting "shape" of the conflict--with lots of back and forth, only taking scratches here and there until a stunning move comes along--are second-nature for combats. And I tend to interpret hit point systems the same way; I wouldn't actually narrate each HP damage as wounds, for example. But I know lots of people do, and for them I probably should have included an "unrule" that talks about the way things flow a bit more.
Ben and Jake suggested I should make an anime version of Beast Hunters where you play fighty girls who gain animal attributes, like a tail or pointy ears, instead of tattoos. Maybe I should really look into that :)
Thank you, elmago79! I look forward to covering it in the future.
Christian, I think a Magical Girl-type Beast Hunters would rock on toast. There were other elements of emergent play that I found in my game with Rich, but I think the narration one was the most profound and noteworthy one.
I've actually been thinking about a magical girl type thing, or at the very least a more anime-oriented version. Jake and Ben were very enthusiastic about that, too, when we all got together a bit ago.
I might bounce some ideas off you in a while if you don't mind, given your experience now. :)