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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8286978" data-attributes="member: 6696971">When you say something like this...who do you think you're talking to?  Me?  Because you're not going to convince me of anything with this sort of statement.  It not only doesn't remotely reflect the reality of the situation (how principled and proven structure imbues the "movespace" of the involved participants with clarity and explicit limits such that "going rogue" becomes something to be avoided) but it can't possibly be intended to convince me or the people who play games with me of something (no one who plays games with me will feel like their "dirty human intentions" or my "dirty human intentions" cease to propel play).You're creating this ridiculously excluded middle of "bereft of creativity and utterly automated decision-tree navigation" and "(arbitrary - meaning unstructured/unprincipled) curation by fiat."So who is this this intended for?  Is there some audience in mind?And do you have any sort of experience in your life with principled structure?  If not athletics or martial arts or TTRPGs...somewhere else perhaps?No one is arguing this position.  Its like you're trying to A-Bomb all nuance here.How about this.  If "curation" is the hill you're intent on dying on, you can have it.  Insofar as "curation" can be definitionally seen as "navigating a decision-tree and choosing one thing vs another thing", ALL games possess curation by EVERY participant because everyone is navigating decision-trees and choosing one thing vs another thing."HOWEVER...there is a significant difference between (lets call it) "structured curation" where a hefty chunk of your decision-tree is pared away by way of said structure (the constituent parts of that structure constrain the permissible "move-space") and "unstructured curation" or "curation by fiat" that does little to no paring away of your decision-tree (like your example above where you, Crimson Longinus as GM, are good with both (a) denying a player their success on their move they succeeded at - actionable intelligence - while simultaneously (b) giving them a complication - now you've got reinforcements...such that next time they will be damn sure to just kill that kobold rather than sparing the kobold and making a social move).I'm assuming you don't agree with that...or suddenly you can just automate-by-way-of-computer the remaining decision-tree because my position must be that any "dirty human intentions" involved in the navigation of the remaining decision-tree....is...bad...or something?</blockquote>

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