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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8285309" data-attributes="member: 71699">Systemitized is a reasonable way to describe it. I like also your "a process and structure of play which facilitates an emergent narrative that is an inevitable, coherent outgrowth of that marriage." There is an open question as to what extent that is possible, of course.We have to remember that players enter the game from outside, and that the meaning of rules is far from settled. Players grasp the rules in varying ways and uphold them to varying degrees: an inevitability given their external contexts.So what I might add to your definition is the matter of goals and acceptance. Players in GN mode accept mechanical outcomes of play. They don't adopt goals that conflict with those outcomes because such goals would have no meaning in the accepted context. They are open to what happens next.It is the mode of play, rather than the game, that is decisive. I could take B/X and play it in SI mode (I wouldn't, but I could). No matter how much I wanted B/X to be SP in that case, it will be an SI game. Again, we have to remember that players grasp and uphold the rules: the game does not play itself.It is more that my position is hard to find the right words for and depends on a context for the ideas being developed that is itself neither settled nor easy to summarise. It's still hard for me in particular, because I'm bad at explaining things. What I find in these discussions is that very often all the initial posts just find out what the interesting concerns of the OP really are. They might then be disregarded in terms of developing any arguments. We then often run into matters of definition that need to be bridged.So with your OP, am I 100% clear what the key concerns are? I think there is a concern whether a goal of SP might sometimes conflict with a goal of SI. There is - or ought to be - a concern whether said goals necessarily conflict. There are definitions that must be agreed for SP and SI (and consequences of those definitions, such as my contention that SI is not gaming, and therefore there is nothing to resolve that can matter to gaming: the mistake was to connect SP with SI in the first place. It's like worrying about the price of tea in Kuo-toa when deciding if you like the flavour of pears: they're not connected even if your concern about the flavour of pears happens to distract your attention from the price of tea.)The crucial comments came up in another thread. Posters claimed that some game mechanics cannot be used for SP. I feel it is undermining to any common definition of SP if some mechanics will be included and others not. What is the filter for that? References were made to elision, but game mechanics always elide: what is real in a game is the concrete mechanic. An example is that mage hand and unseen servant were conceded status as SP - along with 10' poles - while ability checks were not. I think both are game mechanics for players to avail themselves of skillfully. I asked if SP equates with addressing game as boardgame: that still hasn't been concretely answered or rebutted (or it has, but in a fashion or post that I have not noticed!) If it is more than boardgame, what is that more?And this is where we came to win cons. We explored an idea that winning is beside the point - games must have goals. At least one poster felt winning and losing essential to games, but how does one win or lose SI in a measurable fashion? Is the group presumed to score their theatrics? Might they have perverse and whimsical goals? If they are perverse and whimsical, might those goals sometimes put losing off the table and look quite different from winning? And then, how can such SI goals possibly matter to SP? All those sorts of questions. It was never answered if the supposition is that games must have goals, and that Wuthering Heights is a game, but Wuthering Heights does not have goals. Do posters still feel that anything that can't be won isn't a game? If so, how can they connect SP and SI in any meaningful way?!</blockquote>

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