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I know this is weird, but when I saw this, I thought it needed to be a haiku! Railroad or sandbox, Steel tracks hum or soft paw prints, All play finds its path.

You’re misreading my post by selectively highlighting words like “drama,” “dramatic,” and “story” as if they prove I’m secretly describing narrativist play. That’s not analysis, it’s quote-mining out of context to force an interpretation I explicitly rejected. In the post, I contrast...

You’ve laid out different procedures for resolving travel, and yes, each of those represents a kind of structure. But that’s not what was under discussion. When I said players “aren’t constrained,” I was referring to narrative constraint, meaning the referee doesn’t dictate story arcs, scenes...

The problem with asking any AI is that all it tells you is what is in its training data. Paleontologists have long taught that the fossil record often doesn't represent how life was in the past, but represents what is preserved about life in the past. For example, we are far more likely to have...

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Thanks for sharing Baker’s post. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how his narrativist dynamic compares to my Living World sandbox approach: 1. “The PCs have vision, self-interests, best interests, passion, an ideological commitment: something they want and care about.” Narrativism: The players...

I had run several long-term game store campaigns in the past, and run about a half dozen convention sessions a year with people I am not familiar with. The last time I had any issue with any of the players was before the pandemic, when I ran a variant of my Scourge of the Demon Wolf as an...

I’ve now seen a few people suggest that the way I’ve framed my posts comes across as dismissive or exclusionary. To be clear: I’ve made structural comparisons between game systems, not moral judgments about the people who enjoy them. If pointing out procedural differences between, say, a Living...

This mischaracterizes both the intent and content of what I wrote. I’ll break this down clearly, step by step: 1. “Offhanded comments... I don’t think you even realize you make.” This is a mind reading fallacy, suggesting that myself and @Bedrockgames are subconsciously demeaning other games...

To be clear, the response about players being “constrained” by things like distance or money misses the point entirely. It relies on a shift in meaning, what I referred to as constraint, was narrative constraint: the idea that the referee directs the story or limits player options through...

I never offered a definition of agency. I gave a description of how agency functions in my own campaign structure. Not sure how that’s any more challenging to grasp than Pemerton’s or Ron Edwards’ descriptions, which, by the way, were also treated as intelligible and worth engaging. So we have...

That makes no sense. It’s like accusing The Pitt of dissing other medical dramas just because it focuses on realism. Blades in the Dark is very clear about its intended approach, look at sections like Playing a Session (structured like a TV show) and Touchstones (Peaky Blinders, Lankhmar, Thief...

I’ll take your word that you’re not framing sandbox play as ideologically suspect, but you're still misrepresenting how agency works in my campaigns. The referee maintains the world, but the direction of play comes from the players. They aren’t constrained; they choose what to pursue, and the...

An outsized role in what, exactly? This is not about challenging your statement. If we want to avoid talking past each other, we need to be specific: what is the referee controlling, and what are the players controlling? Too often “referee control” gets thrown around without clarifying whether...

At its core, a story is simply an account of events. However, that’s not what is meant by “story” in Narrativism. In that context, “story” refers to a thematic structure shaped intentionally by character decisions and their consequences. That kind of thematic structuring doesn’t exist in my...

Yes, and that’s unfortunate. Despite what some of my more critical posts might suggest, I genuinely believe most people can be drawn into a productive conversation by engaging with their concerns and showing that those concerns are taken seriously. And for those who aren’t responsive to that...

I agree, and that’s exactly why I emphasized that clarity is the responsibility of everyone involved. Redefinitions aren’t always obvious at first, and I’ve been in plenty of discussions where it takes time to realize we’re not even using the same language. That’s no one person’s fault. But I’d...

I don’t dismiss that definitional disagreements can be meaningful, especially when they reflect different priorities, like what @pemerton is analyzing versus what most hobbyists care about in play. But that’s also why clarity is so important. When someone redefines a widely-used term like...

Without knowing the specifics of what you’re referring to, all I can say is this: look at what I said earlier about @pemerton’s use of “railroading” versus the more common usage. Or the earlier posts about shared control over the fiction as a creative goal for some posters here. Unless there’s a...

That kind of one-word dismissal doesn’t really advance the discussion. If you disagree with Maxperson’s claim that the referee can control most of the fiction without it being a railroad, then say why. Otherwise, it just shuts down the exchange instead of clarifying the disagreement.