January 4, 2008
A gloss to Storytelling Games as a Creative Medium
Translating dice-roll data into a story is more an act of composition than translation, which is not to say that translation is a simple matter. George Steiner, in After Babel, has argued that translation is not only difficult , but well nigh impossible. The translation that Hindmarch describes is closer to a young Ronald Reagan‘s play-by-play radio broadcasts of baseball games he couldn’t actually see.
Translating dice-roll data into a story is more an act of composition than translation, which is not to say that translation is a simple matter. George Steiner, in After Babel, has argued that translation is not only difficult , but well nigh impossible. The translation that Hindmarch describes is closer to a young Ronald Reagan‘s play-by-play radio broadcasts of baseball games he couldn’t actually see. According to legend, Reagan quite successfully simulated the commentary of an on-field announcer by reading the plays from a ticker tape machine.