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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8156902" data-attributes="member: 6696971">No, its not that simple.(a) "Believability" undergirding play in case (i) in one game while (b) genre logic (that strains the credulity of case (i) persisting in the same milieu) undergirds play in the same game in case (ii) isn't a place I take refuge when it comes to games.  If I'm examining one thing for "believability" I'm examining all things for internal consistency.  Or I'm examining none (which is where I pretty much always sit).  Games are games.  I play/run them as games and I take my cues from the designers in terms of "what is the point of play" and "how does the embedded genre logic/tropes facilitate" the playing of that game.My Torchbearer games are brutal, dark fantasy featuring very mundane martial PCs that can't do those things and Face PCs that fail at massively higher rate than D&D Face PCs.  My Scum and Villainy (Star Wars Space Opera meets Peaky Blinders or GTA) game features suave Face PCs with high hit rate in parleys but non-Force, martial PCs look like Star Wars characters (or us).My 4e and Dungeon World games feature thematically robust PCs and mythical tropes (that scale with the Tiers of play) from martial heroes to spellcasters and from chasm jumpers to primordial convincers.My Dogs in the Vineyard games feature very mundane, gun-toting Paladin characters and if there is a supernatural element (Sin manifesting as actual demonic influence) will vary from game to game (so anointing someone's head with Sacred Earth during an exorcism or blessing a marriage in a ritual may or may not manifest as a supernatural event). And "just talking" escalates to "fists/knives" or "guns" pretty routinely depending on if its a "relatively" frivolous domestic dispute (a family's child set fire to the stables and he needs to indenture them to the owner/proprietor for a season to work it off) or something more ominous "cattle rustlers have taken up residence in a house of ill-repute."My Blades games feature mundane, martial PCs with heist genre logic/tropes where the supernatural is an accepted part of being held hostage in a world that has undergone a ghostly apocalypse.My Mouse Guard games feature action-adventure heroic mice that do what swashbuckling + medieval heroes can do but no more as they deliver the mail, settle disputes, guide travelers, trailblaze new routes between settlements, and secure their villages and lives against the predators of the forest.  Outside of actualized anthropomorphism, its a mundane game that lives off of the prior tropes.All of these games feature conflict mechanics, PC build tools, action resolution + binding GMing principles/procedures and very explicit (and distinct) play priorities that dictate results and all of them opt-in heavily toward "playability."  In none of these cases is "Free Roleplay + adjudicate by believability" what undergirds outcomes with respect to parleying, journeying, trailblazing, mail-delivering, undead turning, argument de-escalation-ing, cliff-climbing, chasm-leaping, lightning pillar repairing, ship piloting, Wookie-calming, dispute settlement-ing, (non)lethal combat-ing, chases-ing, exorcisms-ing, ing-ing, etc.Genre logic is good not just because its fun and creates form...but because its useful/functional and coherent as a game stabilizer/perpetuator (and it doesn't play nice when it manifests as a double standard as one character archetype becomes preternaturally competent in their shtick, which happens to be a huge site of conflict for play, yet grounds another character archetype in their shtick, which happens to be a huge site of conflict for play).</blockquote>

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