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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Preaching to the pews
Message-ID: <erkyrathE22u02.C8z@netcom.com>
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Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 04:04:50 GMT
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Avrom Faderman (avrom@Turing.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> But morals are different.  They're not relative to worlds--if the
> player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
> circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
> in circumstances Y.  If an author proposes to teach a player something
> with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
> game universe--it must be something about the world in general. 

Up to this point, I agree with you.

> And
> this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
> position of authority.

Ok, just as in static fiction...

> Conducting moral discourse as if it were an exchange between teacher
> and student, as opposed to two debaters of equal standing, is what I
> was calling "preachy."  This doesn't happen in (well written) static
> fiction, even when the author is clearly expressing his or her
> mind--the fiction can be taken as simply one argument in the debate.
> But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
> the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
> footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
> truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
> their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.

But then isn't the whole IF work just another argument in the debate? 
It's true that the author knows *the* solution, but this is exactly 
analogous to the way in which a static fiction author writes *the* 
solution, the thing that the the protagonist does and is rewarded by a 
happy ending.

In one case, the author is declaiming "X"; in the other case, the player
has to try things one at a time, with the author saying "Nope... nope... 
not that either... yes, *that's* right, it's X." These are equally 
one-sided.

I've certainly tried to hit ideas about morals about my own work. I 
haven't been accused of being preachy, possibly because I'm so 
obfuscatory that nobody can figure out what I'm preaching. :)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
