NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8285266" data-attributes="member: 71699">Perhaps relatedly - I'll put it here anyway - for me there is a question of a possibility versus a necessity. I feel forced to concede that a group in SI mode could possibly have a story in mind that for whatever reason they refused to adapt to the outcomes of the game mechanics. That could be extreme - a TPK, but it doesn't suit their story so the mechanical outcomes producing the TPK are modified.A point I have hopefully being emphatic about is that an imposed story is not a gameful element. Emergent stories are gameful. I see RPG mechanics in terms of player leverage or fiat over the shared narrative. With a fireball I can say - creatures in this area are more likely to be discounted. Sometimes RPGs offer process rules for shaping or informing the narrative - an example might be the fronts in AW or IIRC some rules in Ars Magica. It seems to me that is a fruitful area for future game design.So although I accept that a group can ignore mechanical outcomes they dislike - for any reason including no reason - in order to impose whatever outcomes they like, I have seen zero examples where that was necessary.I don't see things in SI as having fail states, because they are perforce managed by fiat. Deus ex machina - the gods cannot fail.Again, I believe they are not necessarily in conflict. Hence there is no need to prioritise one over the other. Accepting of course that team-SI might still decide to do so. Maybe an analogy could shed light. If I am asked to prioritise between a choice of pears or agile software development practice, because I'm told that for Joe these are in conflict, I am like - wtf? Of course, I accept there where we are with games today, we see a lot of Joe.Perhaps - <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gameful-world" target="_blank">The Gameful World</a> - to whom Zimmerman is a contributor. Gamefulness is sometimes associated with gamification. I use it to mean very simply - full-of-game - being part of, coming from, arising from game qua game. Play > playful. Game > gameful. There are a few gaps in the language that force one to jargon terms when discussing games.I see games as an evolution of what narrative can be, just as movies were an evolution of what narrative can be. Games are the medium, not the story. One ought to be able to just say "games" and be done, as we can say "movies" and know we are speaking of a medium for narrative. There isn't a consensus on this so whichever way you come down on will find support.</blockquote>

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