Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Point of fact, I was discussing degenerate play, not characterizing a playstyle for which I have just started a new campaign as wholly degenerate. Every playstyle has examples where it can degenerate.Posts like this are why we have such trouble having real discussions. I try to be charitable in my assessment of other peoples posts and play styles. But there are also patterns of behavior here where it becomes difficult to ignore the shade being thrown at your preference (even if it is couched in theory or jargon). If you are going to characterize playstyles as degenerate, rather than really look at what people are saying they want and are experiencing, you are going to have conflict. I would never label a playstyle or taste in gaming degenerate (partly because that is an enormously loaded term, and doesn't at all seem useful for analyzing game play). This is an equivocation. I am acknlowedging play can degenerate (just like a conversation can degenerate---i.e. using it as a verb). But that is different from using degenerate as an adjective. There is a sense of superiority coming across here that is immensely off-putting. I personally have no problem with Pemerton's style of play. And I think it meets a need that is out there. Nor do I have a problem with people looking for other various kinds of play. I do take issue when I see something I see work at the table mischaracterized (no matter how well made the argument). It is very easy to push someone into a rhetorical corner in an online discussion about playstyles. But what I am seeing just doesn't match what I see live at the table.
The point here was that you will find many DMs on these boards who will jump in to say that they control the world and the players have to react to them. Which goes straight to making [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point. There are similar examples of degeneration in narrative games from as well, and arguments about style and pronciple to prevent degeneration there as well, it's just not as bold as with the larger "trad" game base, where you can generally count on *someone* to show up and proclaim the players are their playthings. You haven't, and it wasn't about you.
And, that's totally not to say that "degenerate" play isn't fun, but that it has "degenerated" from a given set of play principles. A pure railroad with the party being overshadowed by uber-DMPCs is a non-controversial example of degenerate "trad" play. There are others. If the DM is ignoring player desires to present his preferred story, I think that's sufficient as an possible example of degenerate play in D&D. That doesn't say that prep and use of prep is degenerate, or a per se example of MMI.