Friday, November 26, 2010

The longview

[I found this draft post in my list, which I started, God, months ago. Hell, may as well post it]

Earlier today I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Pendragon, which states:

"...campaigns often carry over across generations, with players retiring their character and taking the role of that character's heir. This is quite different from most role-playing games, where one set of characters is played fairly intensively, and there is typically little consideration made of what happens to their family or descendants. The influence of this idea can be seen in the Ars Magica RPG, which also encourages stories taking years or decades to unfold..."

Which got me thinking - Should there be more games that focus on the long view? I can think of number of computer games that do - Populous, Black & White, Settlers et al. Games where the main premise is to develop a tribe into an empire, through technological and cultural change and compete against other similar tribes.

So why aren't there many RPGs with a similar focus? Pendragon follows a quest through generations, and Ars Magica develops the PCs Covenant, why don't we see games that do the same?

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