[UA] no pity for Towns Without Pity

[Stuart Anderson]

Kintaro Oe wrote:

> >1. A rating system might help the highest quality material rise to the
> >top, so to speak. Ideally, entries would be listed in descending order
> >of rating. (Then again, it could also turn the site into a popularity
> >contest. Probably not with this groups, but I then again I wouldn't
> >think quality would be an issue with this group in the first place...)
>
> User defined ratings? An interesting idea, but it wouldn't completely solve
> the problem.
>
> >2. A fine lookin' sourcebook could be culled from the files of a
> >player-created database with remarkable ease... maybe even enough ease
> >to worm its way into the space between regularly scheduled releases ;)
>
> Thing is there, would likely be a great deal of legal issues surrounding
> that, I would imagine. That's why a lot of game companies are leery of
> email lists and fan-created material.

    I always appreciate the devil's advocate. But I don't really see the down
side to the database. My understanding is that you feel the database would
quickly be clogged with crap, making your browsing experience less enjoyable. My
personal feeling is that the crap clog wouldn't happen. Certainly not quickly. A
big section of this list are the regular contributors to the 'official' books,
and their material is the bulk of what you would be likely to see in the
database. UA isn't nearly as popular as the games you mentioned in your examples,
and is less likely ever to attract a huge dipwad following.
    Further, with an electronic database, it's even easier to skip over the stuff
you do feel is crap, and you don't pay for pages of an 'official' sourcebook that
you aren't going to use. If UA was the kind of game that cranked out lots of
interrelated sourcebooks, causing the 'canon' to be relied upon too heavily, I
could see your point about not wanting a lot of published stuff out there you
don't like. But UA has gone in exactly the opposite direction. Everyone's
campaign seems pretty unique. The variety and enormous scope of wildly divergent
ideas about the same topic don't seem to have hurt the game. And the sourcebooks
coming out at a reasonably slow rate seems to have encouraged the personalization
of the campaigns.
    Don't get me wrong--I want John & Greg to sell a bazillion books and become
wealthy South American lumber barons. I want them to open a chain of trailer
parks throughout the southwest built around old drive-in movie screens, offering
rent subsidies to game designers who are 'between gigs' so we could all hang out
together and watch Death Race 2000 from our porches as our bizarre children and
dogs played Stratego in the gently waning purple dusk. But all that being said--I
think UA's comparatively narrow acceptance has made it a stronger game, with a
more lively and intelligent following than it would've otherwise had.
    RPGs are like hot rods. No one ever drives one the way they bought it. So
crappy ideas may be discarded, or tweaked, or used to spark a completely
different idea, or may turn out to be a good idea in a different situation. Those
chrome 'feet' pedal covers look good in *someone's* car, I'm sure. I think a
setting database (and a character database, and others, as well) would be a
particularly good idea for UA. I might not use much there, and probably none
without a little picking and tweaking. But with enough entries, I know I would
find stuff that I think is cool that I would never have thought of myself. And I
just can't see a down side to that.
--Stu


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua