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Essentially yes, the whole process of rolling initiative and then beat-by-beat following of the action in a game like DND/PF/Lancer falls into this category as well, the resolution on the moment to moment action increases to the extent that the story of who threw what punch when and how...

Plus it concerns narrative framing, stories themselves contain differences in narrative velocity (e.g. the speed that the events of the story transpire) and how many turns the narrative contains. A story with a lot of "dramatic trajectories" e.g. where play is primarily concerned with what...

It's a matter primarily of degree, we can suss out damage differentials on blocks of tofu right now, but they're fairly small and as a result it's fairly easy to assert that differences in play will be negligible, and functionally be a wash due to the variety of differing situations you...

Yup, though with the way optimization is chiefly limited by action saturation and hard limits on bonus stacking, any group playing in free archetype actually hits the optimization point with a minimum of class feats-- you can either take more that simply compete with your existing ones (and are...

I just relistened to a solid portion of that one, the first chapter pulls together (through the lens World of Warcraft) something about how play priorities and agenda's of the game, intersect with those of the players, that I think injects a lot of new life into the discourse of goals of play...

This is something that Pathfinder 2e takes up, the class features are asymmetrical, and each class has core mechanics (with varying degrees of imposition on play-style) that create ludic texture for each one. A swashbuckler must do a cool thing (distilled into a skill check, usually attached to...

Interestingly, I never really thought about it at the time, but I think some did and some didn't think of it as a game, for instance Fizzy Bubbles knew it was a game and does have an extensive ruleset which you apparently need to be logged on to see, (that's a password I haven't used in a long...

I think one very important element to understanding neo-trad and gamist priorities is that contests of skill that have multiple approaches, builds, etc can be an avenue of further expression by playstyle. When you sit down to play a fighting game or an RPG or a MOBA, each character has their own...

In terms of that particular player, yeah I'd have to look more deeply into them, as for your question though, I think its the presumption of what the narrative focus is on so, maybe both? they don't necessarily mind a villain breaking through the wall like the kool-aid man to fight them or...

I haven't yet, we usually play Pathfinder 2e, we tried a couple of Masks games that petered out after a few weeks, I've got some Chronicles of Darkness sitting on a shelf waiting for the right time and the same for Avatar Legends and Blades in the Dark which I've now read, and we're on the third...

Largely I agree with you, I typically create characters that fit the system I'm playing in, I tend to notice that the frustration some people have is that they don't really start with the idea of playing a given system as the goal act, they tend to start with a fantasy that the game nominally...

Maybe, I've thought about the possibility before, I do know (from experience) that Masks style playbooks did not work for them because they did not process the basic idea of conflict with the other members of their 'legacy' as core to the experience-- which is kind of concerning because all the...

My experience is that since we're still playing a roleplaying game, the neo-trad desire for character definition is always in conversation with other gameplay elements, whatever the mechanics happen to be-- absolute control is more or less disqualified by the multiplayer nature of the activity...

You are correct, it can be both too though, the same player I've been talking about actually has in the past, basically designed for me a setup where their character's bullying brothers appeared as minor antagonists through the campaign (e.g. showing up as hired muscle by other bad guys) so he...

Sorry that was me attempting to imply that play had already been taking place or the players had come to an arrangement about shared backstory elements, I have seen that happen organically as you assumed it had here but if so it would have been accompanied by a quick (ooc: [question planning...

Yup! This description I think captures a lot of the essence of the mindset, and I think the earlier reference of problem statements rather than complete arcs intersects well with this-- the baggage that the character carries around with them defines their story as much or more than the external...

This really is something that shows up with literary movements too, you have authors who in retrospect were doing things that would become the norm even centuries before the movement actually seems to take place, when that happens we just talk about them in those terms, alluding to them as...

Avoiding getting too caught up in the semantics and categorization, but I wanted to touch on this, the thing about degenerate forms of play is that they sort of suggest an intrinsic value judgement that comes from somewhere (it's actually a really unfortunate term, given the concept of...

Universal systems would indeed have the benefit of latching directly onto the roleplaying without much fuss, but I also agree that crunchy systems that include lots of character options give a toolbox for self-expression that can get the player excited by letting them sort through it looking for...

There's an expression that Collville turned me onto "The Map is Not the Territory" where it emphasizes that while a map is useful for navigation it doesn't necessarily describe the perfect reality of what it is attempting to depict. Collville was discussing how rulebooks and forum discussions...