Game Design: Playercentric vs. Worldcentric

 

I have a few minutes between moments of work, here, so I thought I'd bang out some thoughts.  I responded to a comment with this idea, but I wanted to develop it in its own post. 

People are polarizing roleplaying ideas along the wrong lines: roleplay vs. hack and slash, rules heavy vs. rules light... there was a time when people polarized between reality and fantasy, but that was wrong, too.  As a minor-league rhetorician, I have to ask, what are the assumptions we are making about this hobby?  In other words, what is it that we are taking for granted without asking about?

Is anyone asking why we focus on players so much?  I don't mean players as opposed to Game Masters (player vs. DM mentality was another misplaced polarization).  I mean intentionally placing the players as stars of the world rather than highlighting the world and letting characters run around in it. 

It sounds crazy, right?  Aren't we supposed to make the players the center of the action?  After all, without them there would be no game.  But there is a problem.  Everyone wants to be in on the act, including the Game Master.  He (or she, I guess) wants that complex story to get noticed and appreciated, just as much as the players want to get noticed.  The story unfolds, not unlike a video game plot, where the players have a choice here, a choice there, they 'roleplay', meaning they act in a way that is consistent with a personality quirk rather than learn and grow, but otherwise they make very few decisions.

Like I said in my comment, what happened to the objective world that could be explored?  Out beyond the walls of the homes and institutions where we place so much importance on ourselves, the world cares little for us and keeps spinning, spinning.  Is meaning in our lives thrust upon us by the universe, or is it forged by our own actions and determination?  When nature cares little for us, slapping our coasts with devastating waves or tearing the ground out from underneath us, how do we make our lives our own?  Why do we rely so much on our destinies being played out for us, while we sit as passive, complacent consumers, taking what's marketed to us rather than forging our own tools and clearing our own paths?

So I encourage people to close their eyes and put themselves into a setting.  Feel the dank walls of the dungeon around you, smell the sweetness in the air from the moss and lichen and the rich smoking wood of the burning torch.  Remember that the walls are close, too close, and that you're underground.  Even if you don't get killed outright here, there is still the chance of a rock slide blocking the entrance or a pit trap dropping you into the infinite reaches of caverns below.  There is never any guarantee that you'll return alive, no matter how well-equipped you are or how powerful.  Around you is the isolating darkness of the unknown, and only the brave or ignorant take these exploratory excursions lightly.  Even the sarcastic quips of the party's thief is an effort to push away the lingering anxiety that comes from being reminded of one's own mortality in the face of a dangerous and quiet hallway of stone and earth...