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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 6413868" data-attributes="member: 85555">I agree and think it goes beyond GNS. You see it in discussions about immersion for example, you see it in discussions all over the net about gaming in general (in fact you sometimes see it as a response to GNS where another one true way is simply proposed in its place). Most tables straddle a range of styles, approaches, goals, etc. Most players seem to fluctuate between various goals and motivations as well. We have to understand these ways of talking about games are merely models and lenses and they don't necessarily align 100% with every person's experience. They are useful so long as they help you game, but when they start constraining us as players, GMs or designers, we need to take a step back and re-evaluate. For me, while I've never been into GNS, I have been into other ideas surrounding immersion and I've found them very useful but I also found aspects of them too rigid and I noticed a gap between the idea and the table. I think this is going to be a problem anytime you have a unified theory of games, especially if that idea becomes exclusionary (i.e. games with narrative mechanics or dissociative mechanics are not RPGs, realism can't be a goal of RPGs, people who want 90s style storytelling are wrong, people who want tactics to matter are wrong, games that cater to multiple agendas are flawed, people who don't talk in character are wrong, etc, etc). We end up with a giant victorian list of "do nots", yet many of the things on the list people love and see as features not bugs. Again this is what I see going on in the Wick article. He has a big idea about gaming and it is an eloquent and attractive sounding idea, but we know from our experience even if we can't put it into words, that his conclusion that D&D isn't an RPG is just flat wrong. There are some great and useful seeds in that article. He makes several good points, but the model overtakes everything to the point that he is forced to see D&D, the definitive RPG, as not an RPG. Either his model is flawed or he is applying it recklessly.</blockquote>

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