Can you play the game wrong/incorrectly?

[Aus_Snow]

No.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The point of the game is to have fun. If you're not having fun then you're not doing it right...

 

[Umbran]

But what if they are having fun?

It is all fun and games until someone loses a spleen

 

[Umbran]

I think you made a leap from "no longer recognizible" to "indistinguishable."

Um, no. I am dreadfully sorry. It seems the language center of my brain went out for a night on the town without me. There was no leap of reasoning there. I was simply using the wrong damn word. My sincerest apologies for what must now seem like a thoroughly irrational position.

There is no other method of telling the difference between two games unless one actually compares those difference. How important each difference is until something is considered something else is always subjective based upon individual opinions.

That there is no other way does not imply that the one available way is useful If the only quantifiable way says nothing about what's actually important, then that quantification really doesn't measure what we need measured.

And Dammit, Umbran, don't use phrases like (naively defined above). Think of a better way of saying what you mean that isn't calling me names.

Again, my apologies. Clearly, this has not been my best day in terms of language use.

I was using "naive" in the way it is often used in mathematics and science - it is not meant as a slur. It simply admits that the thing is a first pass and perhaps too simplistic. This was to leave room for other schemes (for example, one that gave a weighting for how integral the rule was for operation of the system - game theory allows for such).

Also, please note that I was the one who wrote down that one would have to determine what counted as a rule, and enumerate each, and do a literal counting. As far as I was concerned, since it appeared in my post, that definition of the measure was mine. I was saying my construction was naive. Not that you were naive.

So joe, please accept my apologies. I wrote poorly, and what got across wasn't at all what I meant to say.

 

[Odhanan]

So joe, please accept my apologies. I wrote poorly, and what got across wasn't at all what I meant to say.

Looks like many of us have been on edge lately. We all need our summer break, I guess.

 

[Hussar]

There's no such thing as "powergamers" and "munchkins". A good read for you:
The Evolution of Munchkin, by Monte Cook.

There is a wrong way to play D&D, yes, but that's not based on "immersion" or "getting the most XP out of the game" (i.e. play styles and personal tastes) or whatever. That's whether everyone around the table has fun that's important. That's priority number one.

I've seen this linked a few times, so I finally read it. Good read. It certainly jives with my experience. Right now I'm swinging pretty hard on the hack side of things. Then again, in my 3 hours session today, half of it was taken up by a party and another quarter by exploration. 1/4 was a nice slap down drag out fight. Which sounds pretty close to most of my sessions.

I'm pretty broad minded about what I like. About the only game I don't like is one which gets bogged down in what I see as the minutia of the setting. I recently quit a game because of that exact reason. However, that doesn't mean they were playing wrong, just that it was a game that didn't hold my interest.

 

[Odhanan]

The Evolution of Munchkin certainly is Monte's piece of mind with which I agree the most out of all the Rants and Raves he wrote on his website. I think his theory is actually very close to what happens.

There's a cycle going on, some changes I'm going through as a gamer. And even now I change, because now I feel like I want to play all possible gaming styles and can run any game with any type of players provided I know what they want and have a blast doing so. And I'm sure the evolution isn't over yet. I just wonder what will happen next.

The whole belittling of "munchkins" and "powergamers" really is frustrating to me. That's just wrong. So each time I see it pop up on the boards, I post my little link to The Evolution of Munchkin. That's my way of doing what I can to change people's minds about other people's play styles. One poster at a time. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

 

[jgbrowning]

Um, no. I am dreadfully sorry. It seems the language center of my brain went out for a night on the town without me. There was no leap of reasoning there. I was simply using the wrong damn word. My sincerest apologies for what must now seem like a thoroughly irrational position.

np. Happens to me with increasing frequency, unfortunately.

I was using "naive" in the way it is often used in mathematics and science - it is not meant as a slur. It simply admits that the thing is a first pass and perhaps too simplistic. This was to leave room for other schemes (for example, one that gave a weighting for how integral the rule was for operation of the system - game theory allows for such).

Ah. I didn't even know of that definition.

Also, please note that I was the one who wrote down that one would have to determine what counted as a rule, and enumerate each, and do a literal counting. As far as I was concerned, since it appeared in my post, that definition of the measure was mine. I was saying my construction was naive. Not that you were naive.

So joe, please accept my apologies. I wrote poorly, and what got across wasn't at all what I meant to say.

Accept my apologies as well. I misunderstood your post in several ways as well. Sorry.

joe b.

 

[Desdichado]

Absolutely you can. If you don't play it the way I want you to, then in the immortal words of video game crime boss Geese Howard: "You awh beeg foo!"

 

[Rystil Arden]

Ah. I didn't even know of that definition.

Yeah, it's extremely rare outside of a science background. I think one of the few places where it is always safe to assume it is a "Naive Bayesian", which despite being labeled naive, is still used by many for a cause and effect modeling. A Naive Bayesian considers that all variables can have at most a first level solitary effect on one another, such that building a Bayesian net of 'Probability of A given B' for all A and B will yield an effective prediction model. Still not a bad model, but naive because it discards secondary effects