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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6413959" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think it's a good first step, but its too simplistic.  It wants to tie up things in a neat little bow, and it ignores some things that I think are fundamental truths to do that.   One example of how it misleads designers is it over prioritizes putting rules into a neat little bow because it doesn't notice that several games can be going on at once and to the extent it does it is appalled by the lack of elegance of that.  So Forge influenced designers tend to want to make "the one true mechanic" to fit to GNS's idea that each game has one true way to be played based on its written rules.  But even if you think about the game board howandwhy99 is talking about, you'll see that one true mechanic isn't necessarily helpful.  Even within the game howandwhy99 is playing, there are bunches of little minigames present.  To suggest that you need to have exactly the same mechanics for handling the minigame of turning left and right on the gameboard that represents the physical space of the dungeon, as you have for the minigame that is about defeating some obstacle that blocks further progress down one of those paths, as you have for the minigame that involves navigating the often poorly documented mental space that represents changing an NPCs mental space (from hostile to helpful, or helpful to hostile, or whatever), is I think to miss the point and potentially do harm to the game as a whole.  Each minigame only needs to be functional for the part of the game board it references.  It's ok to be playing one game and then 15 minutes later switch to a completely different one.  If you've been playing RPGs for any length of time, you're doing it all the time even if you aren't conscious of it.  Yes.  But the important point is that we realize those qualities actually are "both red and blue".  That purple is red and blue together is something you are taught at an early age.  But it's not actually a trivial point.That would be a problem with imposing a system for discussing things generally, but specifically GNS as developed by Ron Edwards also argues that mixtures are wrong.  Edwards argues that any game that has rules that allow for a good game from one perspective inherent conflicts with any other agenda.  Each game must be approached from a 'one true way' perspective, and a good designer is one that knows his perspective and rigidly adheres to it.   They even have a word for a game that tries to fulfill multiple agendas: actually, they've gone through a series of words in a fit of private political correctness, so I don't remember what it is but its like 'kludged', 'conflicted', 'incoherent' or some such thing that suggests 'bad'.  There is actually a lot to be unpacked in my suggestion, but I didn't want to start unpacking any of it until I gave everyone a chance to respond and digest my first set of conjectures and assertions.The players of the characters in "West Side Story" were given an additional mini-game to play that isn't found in the original source material. As a result, the story produced by the game has features not found in the original.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Stretching the analogy even more thinly, Shakespeare didn't specify the combat system to be used to resolve contests between the characters, leaving GM's open to very creative interpretations of the mini-game suggested by "They fight." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Which proves simultaneously that "System matters", and "System doesn't matter.",  for different values of "matters".  Exactly.</blockquote>

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