Looking for Advanced Role-Playing Content

Simon T. Vesper said:

I agree that RPGs feature acting, getting into character, playing pretend and so on. Are you saying this the destination? That the purpose of RPGs is to immerse ourselves in our characters and act the part, as though performing on a stage?

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No. RPGs have the same 'goal' as any other type of game. Since you're so fond of dictionary definitions: "game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement".

My approach is more 'advanced' because it results in a better game, i.e. it's more fun for everyone involved.
- One advantage of my approach is that the players cannot tell a random encounter from a planned encounter. This is good because players tend to react differently when they realize they're about to be confronted with random events. They automatically assume it's ultimately unimportant and try to resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- Another advantage is that there is never a break in the flow of the game. I don't have to stop and roll a dozen times on different tables. Players stay engaged.
- As I already pointed out, all encounters have the potential to be interesting and/or fit the location or situation. Encounters can easily turn into new story hooks or become an important part of the current story if the players take an interest.

(To be honest all this talking about 'advanced' makes me think of a scientology evangelist - not the best impression to give if you are really interested in continuing this discussion.)

Simon T. Vesper said:

I don't know how much more I can assist with clarifying the concept, but the definition I offered is not "creating or adding to processes independent of a goal." It is (for the third time): ahead or far or further along in progress, complexity, knowledge, skill. I also offered definitions for those four terms; and I acknowledged that the term "progress" is tricky because it requires a clear destination (or goal, or purpose). I haven't pushed for an answer to that question because I know that it will automatically exclude a significant number of games, systems and literature; and so I've offered it to the audience to define, so that someone can provide another example of an advanced RPG.

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Okay, now I think that I understand. Generic advancement was not something I could grasp, because it's hard to know whether any given game offers progression or regression until I knew what the start point and the end point were supposed to be. But you're leaving the goal up for grabs, for anyone who wants to make the argument. Great.

So, my joke answer is that the most advanced game is Palladium Rifts, which is still (technically) in its first edition. This is because Kevin Siembieda knows what his end goal for Rifts is, and it's already there. It doesn't need any mechanical improvements, because it is already the game that he wants it to be. There is no room for further advancement.

For my actual answer, I'm going to define my own goal. From my perspective, the ultimate goal of a role-playing game system is to let a player effectively pretend to be their character, without any rules that pull them out of character, or rules that make their character seem like an artificial construct rather than a real person who lives in that world. The hard part is that the rules need to define how the world works (or at least the part of the world that the characters are likely to interact with), in such a way that the player can understand how that world actually works, to the same degree that their character does (so that you can make the same decisions that your character would make). The even harder part is that the rules need to be playable at the table, without the entire world slowing down to a crawl whenever something exciting happens.

That last point is what prevents something like GURPS (or Phoenix Command) from being the most advanced. It's advanced along one parameter (telling us how the world works), but it's repressed along the other parameter (because it takes so long to resolve anything). And the thing is, those two parameters are more-or-less diametrically opposed, so whichever game I think is the most advanced (over-all) is going to be the one which strikes the best balance.

Simon T. Vesper said:

You're still a prick.

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Unacceptable. Do not call people names.

Morrus said:

Unacceptable. Do not call people names.

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Understood.

Being rude is unacceptable.

Accusing someone of being a sock puppet account is acceptable. Clearly, I misread the rules concerning "civility." Won't happen again.

Simon T. Vesper said:

Understood.

Being rude is unacceptable.

Accusing someone of being a sock puppet account is acceptable. Clearly, I misread the rules concerning "civility." Won't happen again.

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Sarcastic responses to moderation are not acceptable. Please do not post in this thread again. If you feel any posts have broken the rules, please use the report post button.

Well, I think the thread is dead.

On the 'sock puppet' front, I actually read several score pages of the blog, and my first impression as I was reading had been the 'Carl' was The Tao as well. But then a Carl was mentioned in one article, and though I'm not completely sure, I think our Carl/Simon is the guy mentioned by the blogger as the one that created the wiki for The Tao. In other words, he's the blogger's biggest fan and is closely associated with him and has devoted a considerable amount of time to promoting the blogger in social media. I suppose it is OK to be a big fan of a blogger.

Things for me didn't get weird until he cherry picked which of the articles he thought most characterized the "quality" and "clarity" of the "advanced" material he was looking for more examples of, because those articles to me didn't seem to have the qualities he attributed to them.

I can't imagine there is any productive conversation to have on this topic. Taste is a highly subjective matter, and it's very clear that the OP finds the blogger very much to his taste and there is no sense in trying to argue him out of his subjective preferences. It's equally clear that if those are his subjective preferences, that he's not going to find anyone else that writes with the same "quality", "clarity" and "advanced" characteristics because his preferences are really niche compared to say what Expeditious Retreat Press publishes on the same sort of material with works like "A Magical Medieval Society Western Europe". Even if what the blogger writes is the opposite of what most people write on the art of good GMing, doesn't mean it is wrong, per se. Since it is subjective, it's hard to say he's wrong about that because even if you don't think what the blogger writes would work at your table at all, or at many tables you are familiar with, presumably he's had years and years of putting this into practice for himself at his table and everyone had a good time. We'd be just be telling each other its badwrongfun.

Celebrim said:

I can't imagine there is any productive conversation to have on this topic.

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I was kind of hoping for a discussion about personal preferences on what the end-goal of RPG evolution should be, but yeah, I don't think that's going to happen eleven pages into a thread that got off to such a rocky start :-/

Saelorn said:

I was kind of hoping for a discussion about personal preferences on what the end-goal of RPG evolution should be, but yeah, I don't think that's going to happen eleven pages into a thread that got off to such a rocky start :-/

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I don't think it's fair to try to have this conversation here, but if you wanted to start a new thread on the aesthetics of play (that is, what about a game you or others find to be fun) and how we can match our preparation, rules, and procedures of play to those aesthetics of play I'd find that a very enjoyable conversation. In particular, one of the few things I feel confident I understand about the OP's preferred aesthetics of play is that he prioritizes what he calls "immersion". What I don't think the OP quite understands, is that immersion is an umbrella term for a whole raft of really varied aesthetics of play. For example, if a Live Action Role Player says that he dresses up in costume, and engages theatrical play and combat with mock weapons to achieve "immersion", he's not at all wrong, even if that direction of play and the rules that support it well is vastly different than the sort of high detailed simulation that the OP is imagining as the means to achieve "immersion".

But if you want to have a conversation, out of respect for the OP, let's do it elsewhere.

Whoops, never mind.

Perhaps an Amazon-style "People who liked X also liked Y" is his best hope.

Honestly, and this is just my first opinion after reading a couple pages, it reminds me of the worst parts of AD&D 1e. All the needless overly complex charts for example. Do we really need to track moisture lost as a percent of body water? Is that why you come to the game table every week? I get it that some people are rules fanatics, but really? Everything you do at a table takes time. Isn't time better spent than that? If my DM every told me I needed to track my body water lost as a percentage by hour, I'd quit.