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This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so much more comfortable talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is...

'Gorice's gospel' has a nice ring to it! Anyway, I should have known that Vulgar Marxism would explain 90% of everything once again. I don't think you're being dismissive of pedantic D&D discussion here, but I want to mention anyway: someone (I think it was actually Ron Edwards) once said...

I'm sorry I alluded to the Forge, however indirectly. It always ruins threads. Getting back to the OP, I'd like to read The Elusive Shift when I get the chance. I looked at an article or two in the academic journal, and immediately closed them, since they committed what I think is a cardinal...

Oh, completely. I didn't mean to suggest that there aren't critical discourses that establish taste now. What I think has changed is that few people in Bourdieu's day would have responded to a critique with normative implications with something like 'how dare you judge my taste'. Actually, one...

My working definition of TTRPGs is somthing like 'games that are played using both rules and the logic of a shared imaginary space'. I'm sure it's not watertight, but I think it gets at the common thread. The thing is, a lot of internet TTRPG theory is made by people who actually do have...

I think it really needs to be stressed that denying the validity of critical or aesthetic judgments made by critical amateurs (or anyone else) is also a productive activity of critical amateurs (the main one, if Twitter is anything to go by). Critical subcultures do not like anything they...

This really resonates with me. One thing about old-fashioned map and key play is that it has procedures to ensure there is always an opportunity cost to actions. This gets back to the point someone made about force/illusionism being needed to stop failed checks from 'falling flat' in trad play...

These are good points. Personally, I still struggle, especially once characters reach high levels, but as you say, it's not an insurmountable challenge. Ultimately, though, I think I prefer it if physical attributes map more directly to mechanical attributes (so, a tiger-sized apex predator is...

I've been reading this thread with great interest, since it relates directly to some problems/questions I've been having in play recently. I hope no-one minds if I make a couple of observations. Firstly, I think preferring purely in-universe ('diegetic', I guess) descriptions of things is a...