At 07:18 AM 9/26/2003 -0500, Kenneth Gauckwrote:



> > That aside, perspective can obscure actual guidelines making for

> > a confused, meandering text. An introductory text followed by

> > objective prose allows for both in-character, POV stuff for role-

> > playing purposes and an organized document.

>

>Meandering is just bad writing. Confusing likewise. Obscuring actual

>guidelines is actually kind of the point.



That may be true, but in many cases in-character prose lends itself to

meandering and confusion. In fan produced material its often an oxymoronic

method of going about writing gaming material. In character text has a

time and place IMO. "Greatly speaking much rulishness has come upon the

landly! Take heed--and read--that you might find, descriptionwise, the

facts among the fiddle faddle!" I prefer a simple expository text for the

majority of a document unless there`s some point in obscuring things.



I can only tell you that when I`ve come upon campaign material that relied

over-heavily upon a first person perspective I`ve found it a rather

heavy-handed device that grows tiresome pretty quickly. Amongst D&D

products probably Planescape is the most obvious example of in-character

prose, but those texts actually dip in and out of character, using the

vocabulary occasionally to maintain theme. However, those texts drop out

of that voice when it makes sense to do so, and in something as expository

as a PS text I think that`s pretty quick. The "goofy" aspects of the PS

texts are just as likely to come about due to the vagaries of the

in-character text, so as a scheme for writing those documents I think a

little more objectivity is sensible.



Gary