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You’re basically saying that because I made the setting, everything I do is just my opinion, that nothing I decide can be fair or logical. That’s a view called constructivism. It means you think all the “logic” in a world is just whatever the referee feels like. But that’s not how I run things...

We’ve gone over this before—my earlier posts lay out the procedural differences clearly enough for anyone interested. No need to repackage it again under a new framing. In the meantime, this post covers what I do, with links for anyone who wants to dive deeper...

You’re admitting both outcomes are plausible, so picking one doesn’t break world logic, it follows from it. That’s the contradiction: you say the logic holds, then claim it doesn’t the moment I make a choice.

I don’t agree, but I understand where you’re coming from. This is the same type of issue I mentioned upthread about Poussinist vs. Rubenist debates in art history. We have two fundamentally different views on structure versus expression. We're operating from a similar kind of divide. It’s clear...

Sure, why not? The history of the creative arts is full of debates over this kind of tension. Take the classic example of the Poussinists vs. Rubenists, where one side emphasized structure and reason, and the other championed emotion and sensory appeal. That debate was never really resolved...

Appreciate the compliment. I still have work to do, but interestingly enough, the comments in this thread, from everyone involved, including yours, have helped me organize my thoughts on how to better present the Living World sandbox approach as a whole. I've always been comfortable writing...

I’m concerned with both sets of goals. Read what I actually wrote before asking a loaded question. Every system has creative goals and priorities. I place plausibility first. Other systems place their priorities first before plausibility. I don’t find clocks to be a useful aid for tracking...

My friends gave me so much grief (in a fun way) about including air currents and ocean currents in my How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. But it was my book so in they went. I tried to distill down to a few useful rules of thumb to make placing vegetation and biomes easier, rather than some involved...

@BedrockBrendan and I have both explained at length how we arrive at our decisions. I was asked for an actual play account and provided one upthread. The Golden Pass and Yonk's Place I get that @thefutilist's question wasn’t exactly the same, so if you have follow-ups, fair enough. And I’ve...

This sudden shift to technical discussion doesn’t erase the pattern that came before, comparing my approach to childish belief, denying internal consistency in the setting, and mischaracterizing the Living World model as incoherent. If you want to move forward with a serious discussion, fine...

You’re backpedaling. You literally described referees who “seek to fool themselves” as being like children who believe Santa Claus is real. That is the textbook definition of self-deception. Denying you said it doesn’t change the record, it just confirms you don’t want to own the implications of...

@pemerton You’re still missing the point. I’m not claiming imaginary things have real-world causal power. I’m saying that in a Living World framework, we treat the setting as if it has internal logic and continuity. That logic isn’t authored moment to moment, it’s extrapolated from prior events...

If the conversation doesn’t move forward from here, I expect the next replies will focus on tone-policing, denying intent, or doubling down on analogies rather than addressing the core issue: that different frameworks of play, like the Living World model, operate on internally consistent logic...

Referees “fooling themselves” or engaging in “self-deception” when treating a setting as a real place for adjudication purposes is not a neutral observation, it’s an inflammatory claim dressed in polite rhetoric. It belongs to the same class of dismissive fallacy as Ron Edwards’ notorious “brain...