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Which makes it rather sound like - 'anything the player desires to find upon picking the lock he should find on a success'. And if that's not what you are saying then it's not clear why this supports your actual position instead of the 'finding anything he desires on successfully opening the...

I think that's a cart before horse problem. If people don't have a somewhat shared terminology for nearly any of this how can you even ask questions about preferences when 2 participants may answer they have a preference for X but understand X to mean totally different things? (You need the...

Right, I'm personally interested in where that boundary lies between which new situations are fail forward and which are not. To me it's the heart of understanding it. That's why I don't get the pushback here. My goal isn't to say, see fail forward is incoherent because you can't fully define...

Obviously that the terms can mean something different than the person think they mean. But I'm saying it's the combination of complexity and overloadedness. Take for example 'I want horror in my next RPG.' Do I mean the setting is horror? Do I mean I as the player want to experience horror...

I’ve not played the others but I think stars without number would handle it well. Love the game too! Though can’t say I loved the ship combat, but I don’t know that any game handles ship combat well.

Humans have been dealing with the communication problem ever since we began communicating :) Better language won’t solve the problem. Education might, but most of the time avoidance is easier than confrontation and so the person never realizes what actually caused the issue if they even realize...

Or if you just want to design a game that should play similar no matter the table, making it easier to join random games and get what you want out of them.

On the incomplete question - Maybe. Maybe not. I’m less sure on that point. To some degree the mix of players on a basketball team changes how they play, but that’s strategic and tactical and not on the game level, or the match between the Chicago and Boston is a different experience than...

I do as well. It’s back to pros and cons though. Consistency in each instance of play vs greater flexibility in experiences we can achieve. I can see how that consistency might be more important to some and from a game design perspective would be much easier to design for.

How would you be able to tell the difference? Because no player has ever unjustifiably got aggravated with another’s play simply because they didn’t like the final outcome? Because every player playing in good faith is a great communicator in the meta channels? I think you are demanding...

Right. But each of those settings can have their own setting mechanics as well. I think talking about core d&d 5e is useful, but as a full picture of the game, it’s incomplete. Systems that leave less gaps here (in this example they define their world, but it could be any kind of gap) are...

There are many worlds which d&d does poorly. People craft ones that work well with the system. But maybe more to the point, I’d view each d&d world as a separate game.

I view the world as one inherently part of the game. It cannot be separated from the design, or at least you’ll get bad results if you do.

The key here seems to be there’s some medium, the stone with alot of gaps/possibilities. That aligns to what I said, it’s the purposeful gaps in rpg rules where players/dms can have input on things beyond strategy/tactics. Edit to add: I think there’s some question on how gapful some RPG’s are...

I think you go too far here. There are characters that will be perfectly fine in say 99% of all possible circumstances. I don’t think it’s the players fault when such a character encounters external circumstances (other characters or dm crafted scenarios) that perfectly push those buttons. I...

If ‘game’ is a construct with alot of human judgement calls, not just about strategies and tactics, but around the exact nature of the opposition, timing, and what precisely occurs next (as every RPG is) then I don’t think such a construct can be analyzed as if it’s one invariable thing, which...

By game do you mean something approaching ‘collection of mechanics’?

Might I offer an ‘out’? A single mechanic on its own may not recognizably support one interest-set (leaving aside whether GNS or GN or something else entirely are the best ways to categorize interest sets). I believe most of the ‘work’ is done when combining mechanics together to form a system...

Right I once played a large dumb brute of a barbarian, he once seen the small goblin wizard cast shield and block the attack of a stone golem. He proceeded to call the wizard ‘blocks rocks’ and pick up said goblin and try to use him as a shield the rest of the encounter. If I recall correctly...

Well there’s the gap in communication. I’m not saying your implementation of fail forward does that. I’m saying why isn’t that technically/definitionally one implementation of it? I don’t think @Maxperson is right that it has to be something interesting. Most of my blades in the dark successes...