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I think the above give some pointers. When both me and my players are looking for ways that a situation can be exploited without drawing weapons, combat can be made quite rare indeed. Even in situations with very high tension and conflicts of interest.

Expanding on the above, both combats in your example just make no sense if what you are after is a good story. As you point out the only purpose of this battle appear to teach a system. That presumes there is a system of interest that handles combat as a special thing. From a nararive...

I see one problem with this claim in the larger context. You speculate that long winded combat is the reason D&D feel combat focused. However really long winded combat was introduced by WotC, while I would say TSR era D&D had an even stronger reputation for being combat focused back in the day...

I have not have a chance to read trough this thread, but this one seem to keep comming up. Could you please try to find a different word for your concept/feeling? Railroad is established as one of the extremes in the railroad-sandbox axis debate. However your concept clearly encompasses even the...

Yes it doesn't have anything to do with rule zero. It was only my second paragraph that you did not quote that had anything to do with rule zero. No problem. I did not try to persuade anyone about that. It was merily an idea I thought might be interesting to examine as an example of how a...

This is very of topic, but want to try to cool this tangent. Teacher here. A teaching method that could indeed be shown to be is the best there is for 50% of all students would indeed be a revolutionary discovery and would immediately be adopted everywhere. The claim that experience works best...

I think the problem is not with the principle, but with the heading. The phrase "be a fan of the characters" is also completely unintelligible for me taken out of context. You need to have the extra explanation connected to it in the rulebook or as you gave now to make it make sense. As such...

No, you dont need best practises to teach and learn. You can learn about descriptive causal processes, and be inspired by common patterns without there being any normative weight to those teachings.

But the game state has changed - it is the next participant's turn. If it had still been your turn, and you could attack again, then the gamestate hadn't changed. A full round of misses however would in most situations been quite wasted time, hence good to try to at least make the probability of...

I actually think everyone agree that the GM shouldn't have absolute authority in it's "real sense". I believe everyone arguing for granting the GM absolute authority are doing it due to lack of an established better alternative. The problem is that if you try to list positively all authorities a...

I am confused as to where you think there might not be an agreement, as your follow up seem to be matching exactly my point? We appear to fully agree natrating fiction is the mean games generally provide for establishing players' interest. That is if in the ludic mode, it can be argued that the...

Yes, these two paragraphs matches up. (ii) enables the gameplay of making informed pre adventure choices. (iii) Is about the immersive aestetics of a continous in fiction experience unbroken by undue meta game exposition. The fundation for my thesis was that this is qualities that indeed is part...

But that is not the point. In my examples the in fiction eventuality of the characters ending up in front of that particular dungeon entrance was never in question for either of the cases. The case in question was the level of eagerness of the players once that situation was a fact, and what...

Didn't have any spesific example in mind, as it is a new abstract thought to me as well. But after pondering a bit there is at least one classic situation that come to mind: Starting a dungeon adventure. First consider the GMs goal had been simply to establish that the common fiction of the...

Thank you for your lengthy insightful replies! I don't think I will pursue the state analogy anymore, as I think it has served it's commutative purpose, and talking about the obviously present analogy flaws I don't find were interesting. However I think this statement is an opportunity for...

I think we agree. Comparing terminology in two completely diffrent paradigms are extremely hard. I agree that "social contract" appear to at least encompas lusory attitude according to my understanding as well. But my understanding of the term "social contract" do not only encompas the agreement...

Ah! I think I see the issue here. Suits "rules" term is as far as I can see more aligned with what forge call "social contract" than what is commonly consider "rules" in an RPG context. I think no one would claim any RPG affords the GM unilateral power to modify the "social contract". Any...

The context of my answer was replying to the trouble with splitting the ones knowing hidden information from referee in a game where hidden information is a central part of the game. The player nor a pure PtbA style dice cannot take into account hidden information, and hence were not relevant...

There are board games that really pushes those two characteristics. For instance HexploreIT has an overarching goal, but the posibility space of what you can do in the game and the scope is so large that you effectively have to set shorter term goals, and those goals can fail without ending the...

No, I didn't read it as distribution of referee powers, but rather distribution of the content creation and manipulation powers usually granted to the GM in traditional rpgs. I guess some of the misunderstanding lies in my use of "Unlimited". This is a poor word, that was why i put it in...