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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9241989" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, all 'ergodic' means is a system in which all possible paths will be, or at least realistically could be, traversed. In game terms it would imply that every valid game state can be reached. This has further implications in terms of representative sampling, etc. So I am not sure I agree that the implication of 'effortful' is implied. OTOH I'm unclear how this really relates to the rest of the argument anyway, but I'm reading on.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Yes, we mean specific things beyond "all games are played and it is uncertain which trajectory any specific one will take without playing it" which is trivial and I think we can assume VB does not mean this!I feel like you're beating a dead horse here, this should all be a given.Yes! You have gotten halfway!Story in this case is INCIDENTAL, it may indeed have aesthetic value, but there are no arrows between story and game here. Not to say this is entirely the case for all computer games of course, some do ask you to make judgments which may be necessarily aesthetic (IE you lack information that would be required to make them in a gamist fashion). Point is the word 'to' in 'Play to find out' is actually carrying real water!I don't think it is necessarily critical to make a hard and fast distinction, but OK.I think there's a bit more here. What your gamist parenthetical says to me is that the gamist isn't playing to find out what happens, they are playing to gain some sort of an achievement, that the appreciation is NOT of story/narrative, but of success/failure in the face of difficulty, and probably in the practice effect that comes from repeated attempts culminating in success. I think there is a significantly different type of experience in 'sim' play as well, as the appreciation is OF THE CHARACTER OF THE SIMULATION, and perhaps that is incidentally in the narrative, but it is usually found in other elements of the process of play, as any of the many trad GMs who comment on these threads will quickly point out!Yeah, I think the problem, IMHO, is you are generalizing too much and from this 10,000 meter level it may seem like all the houses are the same, but its a bit different when you descend to street level, each one has unique character. While neo-trad play certainly can be posited to share many mechanical contrivances with narrativist play (including Story Now/Low Myth techniques, potentially) they're used for genuinely different purposes. When I say "Play to find out" I have already posited an orientation towards a narrativist agenda in which the 'what?' is of the nature of how the characters evolve/behave under pressure and what that brings. I'm specifically interested in that. Yes you can completely recontextualize the statement and talk about "Play to find out" if the halfling thief escapes from the GM's diabolical trap, but you ALREADY presupposed a different agenda which makes that entire phrase not equivalent. Context matters!</blockquote>

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