EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I mean...when it's pretty clear how negative Edwards thinks "incoherent" game design is, to the point that he seems to struggle to speak positively about "hybrids" etc. even when outright trying to do so, it doesn't seem like much of a leap (or, indeed, a leap at all) to see incoherence as being the defining reason why these things separate from each other.I think you are looking for a type of narrow univocality of labelling that was not Edwards's purpose, and that is not common in other taxonomic frameworks.
Then, as I have said before, I see this as a fault built on reifying a union of distinct ideas arising from a quirk of the language we use, rather than the actual character of the things involved. Like someone saying that, because I would the same verb in the phrases "I love ice cream," "I love my boyfriend," "I love my homeland," and "I love the design of 13th Age," these things must all fundamentally be the same in some core sense, whereas "I enjoy long walks among the trees" must be fundamentally different because it doesn't. They are not, and indeed I wouldn't even put them in the same categories of actions, even if there's some commonality there (e.g. romance for one's SO is rather different from patriotism, even though both involve affection).The reason that high concept sim and that purist-for-system sim are both sim is because both focus on heightening exploration as the main priority of play. That's it.
Man, at least from the essays I've read thus far, I never got any sense of this! It very very much read like Sim is a monolithic thing that is fundamentally united with minor, perhaps even irrelevant details, not a vast category containing multitudes that could conflict internally. Same with the other creative agendas. This is...really really getting into territory of "why on earth did Edwards use the terms he used if this isn't what he meant?"Even within high concept sim games, there is incoherence in that I can't at one and the same time have the exploration of situation that is typical of CoC and the exploration of setting that is typical of much Forgotten Realms play. Or if I foreground character, as in Pendragon, then setting will tend to be backgrounded; whereas foregrounding setting (again, as in FR) will tend to background character (a typical setting tourism adventure doesn't care who the PCs are).
Perhaps I am daft. What does color refer to?That's before we get to incoherence of colour: I can't get the colour of D&D and the colour of Traveller in the same game, for instance.
I guess I need to go diving in the "provisional glossary" again to get all these underlying terms defined because I thought I understood them (due to them being natural language stuff...) and am now seeing that no, it's
This reads, to me, like some logical pedantry (not that I have much room to complain about pedantry in others, but still.) That is, if we have defined system so broadly, then literally all activities are now an RPG system. Some are just awful stinkers.But its still constitutes "system"...it just so happens that "system's say" is entirely "GM's (unbridled...unconstrained...unstructured...not principally informed) say." Doesn't this game look an awful lot like a complex, intricate system with all kinds of PC build and action resolution widgets and interactions that caveats hard with a "oh yeah...the GM can ignore or change rules/outcomes at their discretion if they feel like it leads to a better game"...except it dispenses with the illusion that all of that other stuff (PC build and action resolution etc) brings about actual, verifiable, insured-against-(overt or covert)veto, capacity to evolve the gamestate in a manner desired by the non-GM participant?
But to answer the question buried in there...no, it doesn't look like that at all to me. What you call an "illusion" being "dispelled," I call rejection of an inherently valuable consensus between participants. "Dispelling" that "illusion" means stepping away from consensus and into dictatorship, and alleging the result is still a "democracy" in the Verinari one-man-one-vote style: Verinari is The Man and he gets The Vote.
Well, I haven't played AW, so I can't make a full comparison. But the constantly repeated "talk with your DM because this whole thing could be completely worthless if they decide not to use X" smacks pretty hard of Calvinball to me. There is this pervasive "nope we literally cannot even assume that there even are races, let alone what they might be, because absolutely positively EVERYTHING is 110% malleable, and indeed might even change from one session to the next." I see a lot of lip service paid to telling DMs to be consistent and little to nothing on how DMs actually become consistent, which just makes matters worse. (But, again, I am highly, highly skeptical of the claim that DMs are typically very consistent and rigorous in their freeform work. That would require a level of statistical understanding and working memory of past choices that I have not seen borne out, neither in direct experience nor in discussion with others.)In my experience, and in play I read about or view, cases of 5e Calvinball have been equal in number to cases of AW Calvinball, which is to say none of either.
....it is inherent to the idea of "a rule" that you are supposed to follow it, insofar as following it serves the purpose for which the rule was designed.* Just as it is inherent to the idea of rules to have a purpose for which they are designed. For something to be a rule, it must be both normative and teleological. If it is not normative, it isn't a rule: maybe it's a guideline or a suggestion or a proposal, but it's not a rule without normativity. Likewise, if it has no designed purpose or end, it isn't a rule. In fact I'm not sure it would be anything at all without a telos! Maybe a mere barked command?It's irrelevant what rules we have, unless we agree to follow them. Agreement is never located in a rule, it must pre-exist a rule for that rule to take effect. An example I've used before are these rules, governing our interlocution
Even though rule 1 and 2 specifically say that they are about agreement - agree with @clearstream - agreement to them is not located in them. You'll decide on other grounds to go along with them (or more probably, not.)
- Agree with whatever @clearstream says
- Agree with rule 1
The need for agreement is located in them because of the definition of thing they are (or claim to be), in the same way that the need for 90 degree angles are located in squares because of the definition of "square." To be a rule is to have both telos and normativity.
*This, incidentally, is why I get annoyed when people assert that "Lawful Good" must be inherently less Good than "Neutral Good." But that's a side issue.