To allude back to an earlier post, those are possible transcripts of play, accounts of events that oocur in the fiction. But from the transcript we can't tell what the play experience was. We can't tell who estabished the fiction, or how, or what the actual play experience was of doing that.
Yeah, the actual play experience will be subjective, so looking for the difference there will, at most, uncover some dusty system artifacts that might reveal which system was used, but nothing much more.
Now, whether via system procedures, or via some naïve-RP/freestyle/make-believe consensus, the same persons could have established the same elements of the fiction in the same order.
I don't know what you mean by roleplaying activity or roleplaying experience.
Good. It's nice being the one using confusing terms for a change. ;P
Well, I don't think I'm trying to draw a distinction between the two. I am trying to draw a distinction between the, I guess 'high level,' experience of roleplaying, and the, I guess 'low'/detailed level, experiencing of system artifacts.
Do you mean transcript of events that occur in the fiction? Or something else?
No. In that one example alluded to a transcript, /because it was hypothetically happening on UseNet/ and text is what we had (and still have, here) to work with.
The example could have as easily been of play in progress.
You seem to be asserting that deciding whether the PCs are beaten up by the orcs, or vice versa, by freeform RP is the same experience as resolving that question in D&D using its combat mechanics.
I /could/ be, yes. I'll happily acknowledge that for 10000 trials of stomping orcs in D&D, you'll get 9999 that feel like D&D to them, and for 10000 trials of freestyle orc-stomping you might get IDK, 17... so /could be/ the same experience.
So, maybe that's part of what I'm observing: a system might deliver similar experiences consistently, while freestyle consistency is based only on the consistency of the group doing it.
But I don't think that's a very widely held view.
I would suspect not.
But I am comfortable holding /extremely/ unpopular views.
If I were to start a thread asking whether it makes any difference to combat resolution to use combat mechanics rather than (say) GM decides or the whole table talks it out, I think every poster would say that it does.
Nod. Yet you wouldn't get the same result for a "Social Pillar" scene, would you? Even though they're both just fictional events that can be modeled by mechanics.
That's why I think these discussions get so fouled up. Because they quickly become not about the system, which can be objectively described, evaluated & analyzed, but about "the experience" or "the agenda" or the something-in-Forge-speak-which-means-the-reverse-ogive-of-what-it-sounds-like-it-means - which quickly becomes totally subjective.
So, really, it's fine to say "System X has no resolution mechanic for Y." But, as soon as you extend that to "So whaddaya system-X weasels do when Y?!? Huh! Suckers!!!" our even a less overtly offensive "You can't do Y in system X" or, worse, a more intellectual "you cant duplicate the experince of doing Y in system Z using system X," you're getting on a retreat-into-subjectivity merry-go-round. Because, of course, the weasels /can/ do Y, they can Y all they want, and have done, on numerous occasions, in fact, system X is ideal for Y precisely because it leaves them the freedom to Y as they judge best fits their group.
Yeah.
You can't argue with logic like that.
For obvious reasons