Recent content by pemerton

Not trying to one-up you! Just curious. I only know some of the main systems of that period - RQ, C&S, T&T, DQ, Traveller - but what about Metamorphis Alpha, Gamma World and Boot Hill? And other systems that I don't know about?

RQ and Traveller are both earlier than DQ. Which early games besides D&D were class-based? T&T, though not in quite the same fashion as D&D. C&S, I think. Which others?

I'm familiar with Popper's notion of falsifiability, although the quote you have provided isn't quite accurate - Popper does not think there is such a thing as a theory being supported with evidence, because he is a sceptic about induction (basically on Humean grounds) and so denies that any...

What I want to get out this episode of RPGing is a preference. What techniques, processes of play, resolution methods, etc will achieve that preference is not primarily a matter of preference. Like any other question of means to ends it's about cause-and-effect relationships. In the context of...

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that's on the GM - maybe I agree, because upthread I talked about doing a good job as GM. But to try to explain what I mean, I'll point to the earlier discussion in this thread about running a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror scenario. Part of any system that...

I think we're a bit at cross-purposes here. I'm not referring to system advice. I'm meaning - to use a metaphor - knowing the moving parts of the system. And understanding how they affect the play experience.

For me, the slogan system matters is an injunction to think seriously about the processes of play, and how they interact with the mechanics, in order to do a good job as a GM. Conversely, if there are aspects of play that seem like they could be improved, system matters tells me how to think...

This is (roughly) how The Dying Earth RPG works. It's three spheres of activity are social, combat and magic.

Seeing as this thread has been necro'ed and I seemed to miss it first time around: Here is Vincent Baker on the purpose of RPG rules: Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such...

Oddly enough, that would probably be truer both to JRRT/LotR and to REH Kull/Conan!

Yes. And these are reinforcing over time. They also interact with the streaming effect discussed above. Market presence and familiarity, streaming, player networks - these are all mutually reinforcing.

In many cases we can only speculate why ancient artists created the rock and cave art that they did. The cultural meanings and reasons are lost to us. Does that mean we can't admire their beauty? That their destruction would not, or should not, matter to us? When we're talking about the...

On the comparison of Ruskin to Hitler: I don't know who else posting in this thread teaches Holocaust studies. I do (as it happens, in the same module where I teach Williams and hence Ruskin - it's a modernity course). If you do teach Holocaust studies, you will know that it is emotionally very...

To add to this: I have taught Ruskin (via Williams) and have taught Zygmunt Bauman (Liquid Modernity). Only on ENWorld do I encounter this phenomenon, whereby restating, and pointing to, some of the historically important ideas and arguments in aesthetic theory is dismissed as appeal to...

I'm not appealing to an authority. I'm quoting an argument! I take it that you have a different view, that you deny that producers shape taste, and that you deny that there is a difference between producing something of quality and producing something that flatters a consumer's existing vanities?