I'm wanting any system for Simulationist-focussed play to model an internally-consistent world and, if it is attempting to model any specific genre, one that models the genre world, not attempts to force the genre stories to happen.
This relates to the "impossible thing before breakfast" that Edwards brings up. What you seem to be asking for here is for genre stories to be generated by simulating the setting where those stories took place. That can't work. Many things were assumed to have happened (in the imaginary world) where the stories were set. "The Story" was presumed, in the conceit necessary for good fiction, to have been simply one particularly interesting series of events that happened there. By trying to "force the luck" to generate such supposedly unusual events, we break the world model.
To paraphrase Charles Tilly in his excellent book "Why?", "The Truth is Not a Story". Stories are simply ways we arrange sets of information that seem to us to be extraordinary or noteworthy. If we try to generate a story by defining the way the world works, we are doomed to failure - which is why successful Narrativist supporting games don't model world physics (as a general rule).
I liked this post (but can't XP you yet).
Are you suggesting, here, that high concept simulationism is
inherently unstable as a design goal, because the mechanics that are introudced to support the creation of genre stories (eg Pendagon passions etc) are in danger, if taken literally, of pushing the world into incoherence?
Edwards doesn't go quite that far in his Right to Dream essay, but he does seem to suggest that high concept design is ripe for dysfunctional play, as the GM uses force to keep the "story" on track. You seem to be raising the prospect of the GM also having to use force to keep the gameworld on track.
My own feeling is that good high concept design will try and dodge these issues by using the mechanics to shift focus, and to subordinate the potential sites of breakdown so they don't emerge in play (as I suggested upthread).
In CoC, there generally can be a plausible reason for why the journalist doesn't make his deadlines: he's freelance, he's on leave on absence, he decided that there are more important things in life than his career after seeing a Shoggoth (or conversely, he tries to keep his job as denial/coping mechanism). The players don't necessarily have to explore these reasons, they just assume it's there. Depending how far the average person digs, there IS a good reason for it. Thus internal consistency is more or less intact.
My feeling is that the more the players try to explore this issue, the more pressure they will put on that consistency. So it's fairly important that they
do just assume that it is there.
A similar issue in a simulationist LotR game would surround the economy of the Shire. As presented in the books, it (i) is close to autarkic in its economic arrangements, (ii) has a pretty modest population, but (iii) has a standard of living comparable at least to late 18th century Britain. This is more-or-less impossible, as far as realworld economic history is concerned. But nothing in the LotR suggests that there is some non-realworld factor in play to explain the economic viability of the Shire. Rather, the reader is not meant to think about it too much. It's a background, that provides colour to the
real stuff.
I see the role of PC profession in CoC as similar - it provides colour, we assume it makes sense without looking at it too hard, and get on with playing the game.
Purist-for-sim players who care about economics will break the LotR game, as the Shire's economy crumbles under the weight of their exploration. They will break CoC too, I think, as they start to investigate the economic and institutional factors that the game itself doesn't support and tends to assume will not be engaged with.
That's not a criticism of CoC as a game. Nor of the putative LotR game. Any more than it's a criticism of LotR itself, or Tintin (the "boy reporter" who never takes notes, never interviews anyone, and never files a story!).
I think
this is a good summary of some of these features of high-concept supporting mechanics:
At first glance, these games might look like additions to or specifications of the Purist for System design, mainly through plugging in a fixed Setting. However, I think that impression isn't accurate . . . things which aren't relevant to the Explorative focus are often summarized and not "System'ed" with great rigor. When done well, such that the remaining, emphasized elements clearly provide a sort of "what to do" feel, this creates an extremely playable, accessible game text. . . when it's done badly, resolutions are rife with breakpoints and GM-fiat punts . . .
