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<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 4258522" data-attributes="member: 697">Yup. I think that GNS is a quality-neutral metric, not a tool or a true measure of how good a game is.The important lesson of GNS and similar theories is very simple: make sure your game does what you want it to do. It also provides a useful vocabulary for talking about a game.If you want heavy simulation, then bring on the charts for cargo weight and volume, interstellar tax rates, and fuel consumption for your SF game about interplanetary travel.If your game of high adventure swashbuckling is too slow and cumbersome, you might say &quot;Hey, our rules for stunts are too complex and slow. We pushed too hard for simulation.&quot;The nice thing about that statement is that not only have you figured out what is wrong with the rules (they're too slow), you also have a useful insight into why they are too slow (they're stumbling over realism.)IMO, GNS goes wrong when it tries to dictate how to design a game. I like the three categories as useful tools for talking about games and what they do, but I think that using it to design is like saying a movie has to be either a comedy, an action flick, or a drama. Every line in a comedy has to be a joke, and every second of an action flick has to have violence or explosion.That said, it's still useful to say &quot;Caddy Shack is a comedy&quot; or &quot;Ang Lee's version of The Hulk was boring; the fights were dull, and it the scenes between them dragged on forever!&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mearls, post: 4258522, member: 697"] Yup. I think that GNS is a quality-neutral metric, not a tool or a true measure of how good a game is. The important lesson of GNS and similar theories is very simple: make sure your game does what you want it to do. It also provides a useful vocabulary for talking about a game. If you want heavy simulation, then bring on the charts for cargo weight and volume, interstellar tax rates, and fuel consumption for your SF game about interplanetary travel. If your game of high adventure swashbuckling is too slow and cumbersome, you might say "Hey, our rules for stunts are too complex and slow. We pushed too hard for simulation." The nice thing about that statement is that not only have you figured out what is wrong with the rules (they're too slow), you also have a useful insight into why they are too slow (they're stumbling over realism.) IMO, GNS goes wrong when it tries to dictate how to design a game. I like the three categories as useful tools for talking about games and what they do, but I think that using it to design is like saying a movie has to be either a comedy, an action flick, or a drama. Every line in a comedy has to be a joke, and every second of an action flick has to have violence or explosion. That said, it's still useful to say "Caddy Shack is a comedy" or "Ang Lee's version of The Hulk was boring; the fights were dull, and it the scenes between them dragged on forever!" [/QUOTE]

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