Seven Color Meta-System

Jan 05, 2006 19:04

The Seven-Color Metasystem ( Read more... )

game, systems

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Comments 10

earthdragon January 6 2006, 00:12:38 UTC
Paranoia is anti-green, then again, its also anti-grey and anti-white. Although it depends a bit on how you play it.

D&D is grey, anti-green ( at least as low level dongeon crawlers). Your opposition is effectivly of your coolness, and its a matter of how well you use the system to succed.

Shadowrun on the other hand is grey, green (with red and black in the background). You are individually cool, but outgunned enough that you need both ability and planning to succed.

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starheptagon January 6 2006, 02:28:04 UTC
The descriptions of grey and red sound opposed to each other to me. Can you think of a world which is pro-both?

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jadasc January 6 2006, 03:31:49 UTC
My instinct says something like hard espionage. Do the research, learn the rules, then put your plan into motion.

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zebediah January 6 2006, 05:52:37 UTC
That's very close to what I think of as a classic example: the military.

Goal: we need our people on that hill.

Solution: we have lots of people, trained in all the proticol and proceedure of how to hold ground, complete with supply lines and defensible perimiters. (grey)

We find out where the other guy's people are, if we need to. (grey)

We whipe the other guy's people off the hill and put our people on it, not necessarily in that order. (red)

In some sense, "don't pussyfoot around" is the Red motto. This is fully compatable with "have all the prepwork predone" and "know what you're getting into," especially if there's a similar set of prepwork that can support a wide range of very direct actions.

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philiptan January 6 2006, 06:00:20 UTC
In terms of actual games, the original Rainbow Six PC game was well-known for introducing careful planning to an action genre.

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philiptan January 6 2006, 03:15:29 UTC
Interesting, because I always thought the games I write tend towards blue, but in your scheme they would be better described as many polkadotted shades of white.

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zebediah January 6 2006, 05:59:35 UTC
You do lean pretty heavily on both white and blue: emotionally gripping characters who are trying to do the "right thing." In things like PSI and...shoot, what was the name of the noir game of yours that was filmed? The white and blue can come into conflict, as your driving emotions may push you into doing bad things, or "doing the right thing" involves some heart-wrenching soul-searching. Also, archetypes -- having to sing italian opera in order to call a mafia hit is so, so blue. It just has the nice emotional heft to it, it feels...right, in a way that has nothing to do with morals.

The seduction mechanic in the noir game (trade witty lines until one of you fumbles, the other wins the seduction) was a lovely dose of green polkadots. Coolness triumphs, in an amusing way!

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philiptan January 6 2006, 07:29:18 UTC
The game was "A New Deal," which was so broken...

From the point of view of what I find personally entertaining, blue is what I'm most attracted to, but my writing always tends more towards white and polkadots. Any green was (thankfully) hammered into me by the Guild. I think having colors come into conflict is a powerful force for more interesting gameplay, as long as players are expecting that sort of mix.

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jadasc January 6 2006, 14:12:31 UTC
1. Is it possible to apply the "polka-dot" idea to other emotional responses than laughter? If what's most likely to make the (reader/GM/players) wince or cry or, heaven forfend, get aroused is what tends to happen, is that still polka-dot, or does it become striped or checkered or something?

2. It's interesting to look for shades and striations. The World of Darkness is primarily black... but Vampire has striations of white, while Changeling is streaked with blue and Werewolf is run through with red.

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hrmm... sanityfaerie January 7 2006, 07:45:06 UTC
this is sorta my understanding. Please correct if I am wrong ( ... )

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