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Below is the flow of a game of The Between. I'm not an actual detective, but the form of play fits roughly with the flow dynamics and general feel of my real life work continuity. If I'm so inclined (very much not right now), I'll stitch together one of our Threats (mysteries) from our Excel...

The return to Neverwinter's available northern gate (the River District's gate is closed) into the Blacklake District features the following: * A hastily constructed, wood-framed message board where 3 x parchment are hanging from iron nails: Meta: The Moonstone Mask is Convalescence House...

Putting to one side for a moment whether a chemist attempting to come up with a material regime for breaking down and repurposing superheated cranberry skins or a forensic engineer performing cause and origin on why a structure failed, or a physicist sorting out the enigmatic nature of the...

That second player didn’t specify that they are trying to respirate nor trying to blink to moisten their eyes! Boot them the hell from the game! Bloodtide, you big softie! I expect more from you!

Yessir, it is one part of the variance I'm referring to. When I speak to variance within the Trad sphere, I'm talking about two kinds: 1) Variance within the game itself (perhaps from one week to the next). What you're pointing out above where you harvest several different techniques and...

You can't just say "hands them the dungeon map" and leave it at that. In a conversation like this, with so many divergent systems and techniques involved, there are so many values for and variations of "hands them the dungeon map" that the statement reveals very little about what sort of play...

This above just doesn't seem helpful to any broad discussion of TTRPGing. It also seems to obscure or mystify what is actually happening in these games. Only a certain from of TTRPGing is contingent upon: * freeform puzzle solving where players explore a GM-exclusive prefabricated conception...

There is no straw man. Here are my contentions specific to what you quoted: 1) There are GMs here, elsewhere online, and all over meatspace that (a) have an approach to play that prioritizes their personal sense of cause & effect within extremely complex systems; their generated and modelled...

Exactly. And you can't just look at a single instance of this in a vacuum. The knock-on effects on the participants create a feedback loop of instability in drawing functional inferences (for play that relies upon the apparatus of inference-based puzzle solving). Frequency and magnitude...

Ok, a little time here so I wanted to respond. My response is exclusively centered around Narrativism, not Gamist concerns. First, I really, really appreciate your lengthy, clarifying post. I'm going to take the direct above and answer it. Then I'm going to grab your usage of RotJ and focus...

I'm pointing at the surreal or bizarre notion that (a) we can actually perform this calculus, (b) that such calculus would actually generate a real/more immersive imagined world (as you point out, improbable things happen routinely in our benign, material world), and (c) even if you were capable...

I don't have time to engage with any posts (nor the large ones I've been tagged in), but I do want to say a few brief things. No I don't think that people who believe that they are engaged in Sim-Immersionism are delusional. However, I will say that my concerns lie in the following, regardless...

So a couple thoughts on this that I hope clarifies my position as it pertains to Narrativism. * When we talk about unilateral fiat being the beating heart of Narrativism, I have the following questions: Are we talking about GM having unilateral fiat over situation-framing or is their...

Sorry I haven't been able to answer prior posts (and I'm still not doing it). Rather short on time presently and the amount of work required for me to engage with some of these points would be more than I'm willing to devote right now (and I have plenty in the past so some of this feels like...

Multiple components here: * This is the place of the mass grave. The interior was clearly blown open by the profound southerly winds from the pyroclasm uprooting the massive tree and forcing it to slam into the structure. They were likely to have been doomed anyway due to other aspects of...

How are people using the term GM fiat in this thread? If it is indistinguishable from (general) GM decision-making then those using it that way need to sure up their usages, because that is a trainwreck of worse than useless (actively confusing) usage. If that is what you mean by GM fiat, then...

Sure. A given game might be written poorly such that the actual systemitized play experience fundamentally doesn't work despite the designer expressly telling you "follow the rules and this thing will work." That can certainly be a thing. But here, in the context of this particular...

EDIT - Yikes. I was just made aware that this is your first series of posts. My apologies for the rather blunt engagement below! You should get at least 10 posts before someone aggressively interrogates your position on something! I don't quite understand what utility these sorts of...

While I think your usage of "player-DM" and some of your other descriptors are clearly meant as pejorative, I do want to say that, as someone who has never played these games, you've actually a fairly solid job of talking about these games in this thread. Not perfect by any means (more on that...