And now we're getting into critical theory. I prefer the informal fandom approach to the formal one that whitters on about Signifier and Signified and that obfuscates through excessive jargon.
I don't think of the Forge primarily as literary theory (maybe because I'm not a literary theorist). I think of it as closer to interpretive sociology or cultural anthropology, but with a practial bent. It is trying to make sense of certain human behaviours, with an eye to improving them.
For the sociologist or anthropologist it is very important to have regard to the religious beliefs of a community. But in putting forward accounts of that community's behaviour, it is not permisssible for the sociologist or anthropologist to appeal to the doings of gods or spirits. Such entities will figure only as the objects of belief, and it is the beliefs, not the spiritual beings, that are imputed with causal power.
And if the Forge ignored the Watsonian in favour of the Doylist, if they focussed on the experience of the player over the in-game logic this was at the very least a useful correction to analysis that had been almost exclusively the other way.
Personally I see it as more than a useful correction! Playing a game creates an experience. I want designers to have that experience in mind when designing games.
How many crappy modules have been written because the author only thought about writing an interesting story, as opposed to producing an interesting and engaging play experience?
If you're designing a game, then you should obviously bear in mind that it is a game, so it should be playable. It doesn't matter how descriptive or accurate your mechanics are, if the net result is a game which is unplayable.
If you're talking about the events which occur within the game world, then they should not need to take into account the politics and preferences of the players at the table.
There is no roleplaying game that I know of where the events that occur within the gameworld have not been conceived of by reference to the preferences of the game participants.
For instance, in D&D the game is designed to ensure that the events at the table include monsters, treasure etc rather than farming, peasantry etc. That is not a coincidence; it's a design feature.
In Classic Traveller, nearly every PC ends up being skilled in combat and having some adventurous experience or expertise (fighting, bribing etc). The world of Traveller contains plenty of ordinary shopkeepers and bureuacrats, but the PCs don't live such lives, either in thei backstories or in play. This is not a coincidence; it's a design feature.
There are different ways of ensuring that the events in a game will be engaging to the participants in the game. AD&D and Traveller both rely heavily on random tables strongly weighted towards dramatic events. Other games rely on GM judgement, player judgement or some combination of both.
If PC 1 is fanatically loyal to PC 2, but highly suspicious of PC 3, then that has zero bearing on the out-of-game relationship between Players 1, 2, and 3; and vice versa.
I don't see how you can assert this as a general truth. For instance, I can tell you that I have played games in which hostility between two PCs absolutely had a bearing on the out-of-game relationship between two players. If one player's PCs keep killing another player's PCs, the first player may well get irritated at the second player.
This is much like a multi-player boardgame, for instance: if two players repeatedly gang up to knock out a third player, that third play might start to feel picked on.
The same things goes for GM-player relations: if the NPCs and monsters always target and kill one PC rather than another, the player of that PC might feel picked on.
If your players take issue with the content of the game being run, then that's something you should address outside of the game; if they're bored with the random lightning show, then assure them that more interesting things may happen later on if they stick with it, or ask if you should be playing a different game entirely.
I'm not sure what "outside the game" means here.
In the session I GMed on Sunday, my attempts to get actual play underway kept getting stymied by the players - one in particular - discussing things like what sorts of items they might need to help tackle the forthcoming challenges. In the end, I asserted my authority as GM, and told them that if they wanted to build items they should have sorted it out by email during the week, but I wasn't interested in discussing those things now and wanted to get on with the actual play of the game.
Is that resolving something out of the game? It happened during the session. And it was foreclosing a PC option (making potions) for a metagame reason (the endless discussion with no likely outcome driving me bonkers).
There's a huge difference between a character believing something, and it actually being true. And even if it is true, for some high-magic settings, the player is playing the PC - the player isn't playing the guardian angel.
Unless you're playing a game where the players routinely have control over NPCs, but that isn't D&D (unless you're into DMG2 territory, for how to change the game dynamic).
The player might play a guardian angel, much as s/he typically players a character's familiar, pets, and even henchmen.
