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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 6415596" data-attributes="member: 85555">One thing we need to get used to in the RPG world is words have different meanings depending on context and who is using them. No one really gets to control the words. But definitions are about identifying all those uses and describing them (not picking one and favoring it). I agree there are a lot of bad faith definitions of story games, but even those have use in that Story Game has that particular meaning when it is used by those folks who are hostile to the style. Obviously you wouldn't use that definition alone or give it primacy but you might mention it. Look at a word like Yankee. Outside the US it means someone from the US, inside the US, it means someone from the the north. In the North it sometimes means someone from New England, and in New England it can mean a person who traces their lineage to the mayflower. All of those definitions are valid but their context matters. In some of these cases Yankee isn't a good thing, it has a negative connotation. Accepting all these definitions doesn't mean accepting that anyone who can be described as a Yankee is worthy of ridicule, it just is an acknowledgement of particular uses. As long as our definition is descriptive and not proscriptive this shouldn't be an issue. When people start using one of these definition to enforce a norm in gaming, that is when issues arise. So when someone starts doing things like saying: Yankee is a term of derision for people from the North, therefore anyone from the North deserves our scorn, that is clearly a bad faith, illogical argument trying to use semantics as a rhetorical bludgeoning instrument and enforce an idea. I think it is the same with these various definitions of Story Game, Simulation, Immersion, etc. In some quarters those will be bad things, and in other quarters they may be good things. Both might also have different definitions of each one.</blockquote>

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