Aldarc
Legend
Your commentary is not really something I particularly want to spend my time arguing against.I wasn't aware of that, though it doesn't materially change my commentary of how the act of translation affected it.
Your commentary is not really something I particularly want to spend my time arguing against.I wasn't aware of that, though it doesn't materially change my commentary of how the act of translation affected it.
The way you do that is by leaving the thing you don't want to engage with alone. Not alluding to it repeatedly in disdainful tones and putting the burden of disengagement on someone else.Your commentary is not really something I particularly want to spend my time arguing against.
I feel you are being disproportionately more hostile and disrespectful to me than I believe that my own tone and meaning conveyed.The way you do that is by leaving the thing you don't want to engage with alone. Not alluding to it repeatedly in disdainful tones and putting the burden of disengagement on someone else.
Ditto, you acted awful when we discussed my experiences with Story Now, though in other interactions you seem fine, and now whenever we happen to intersect over it in other threads including those not about Story Now you disengage, which is fine, but your means of doing so convey a need to get the last word in about how that disengagement should be interpreted. No one is forcing you to debate my thoughts if I happen to spin off you while working through the thread, you don't need to make cryptic allusions to how you see my arguments. I am sorry for the bad blood, because I can see I rubbed you the wrong way too, or maybe made you feel pressured to argue with me? I wasn't trying to pick a fight with you, I'm trying to understand my own experiences in contrast with other cultures of play, which your post helped me crystallize while grappling with the differing styles of narrative source.I feel you are being disproportionately more hostile and disrespectful to me than I believe that my own tone and meaning conveyed.
I've skimmed the last few pages, so apologies if I mistake your meaning here. What you describe in your last sentence captures what I have overwhelmingly experienced with rules light games. The setting (or some other premise) comes first. Rules are secondary. I want to caveat here that rules light games are ontologically a patchwork. The motives behind one rules light game may differ wildly from another, and what one such game chooses to codify another might not care about.As I mentioned above, I'm a fan of rules lite systems, but it's led (for me) to a lot of comparing systems. That is, you start with the ruleset you want, and then you build your setting. Or, you try to match ruleset and setting. So you might start with a ruleset, even 5e, and try to hack it to make it a sci-fi game, or you might pick up Stars Without Number, because it's already a ruleset created for the purpose of running an osr sci fi game.
To me, "play worlds not rules" suggests that you start with the setting/genre, and then you build a ruleset around that as needed. The provocation there, such as it is, is to say that when you do that, actually, you might need a lot fewer rules than you think. As you and others point out, maybe this is only tangentially at best related to Free Kriegspiel wargaming, and if so, fine but I do think the switch in the order of operations (not "ruleset, then setting/genre" but rather "setting/genre, then ruleset) is interesting.
When I see "play worlds, not rules" I think of the blog you pointed me to, which says this:To me, "play worlds not rules" suggests that you start with the setting/genre, and then you build a ruleset around that as needed. The provocation there, such as it is, is to say that when you do that, actually, you might need a lot fewer rules than you think. As you and others point out, maybe this is only tangentially at best related to Free Kriegspiel wargaming, and if so, fine but I do think the switch in the order of operations (not "ruleset, then setting/genre" but rather "setting/genre, then ruleset) is interesting.
I think the notion of neutrality is actually pretty fundamental in analyses of the "GM" role in RPGing. I don't know how common it has been historically, though I would guess that it was more common (at least in proportionate terms) 40 years ago than today.
But conceptually it's been pretty fundamental to understandings of RPGing. And I think it's legacy is felt in many ways even when the reasons underpinning it have been left behind.
* The setting/situation/scenario is established, and set-in-stone, prior to play;
* Action resolution is (ideally, and hopefully in actuality also) a "model" or reflection of how things would really unfold were these events really happening;
* The influence of the players' desires on action resolution is fully exhausted once the PC's action has been declared (and hence can be disregarded by the referee, provided the action declaration has been properly interpreted);
* The influence of the players' desires on setting and situation design does not extend beyond informally telling the referee what sort of stuff might be fun (and for the truly austere even that might be stretching things, because it risks the players recognising the influence of their expressed desires on the fiction as they engage that fiction via their PCs).
not about making sure the PCs are able to kill Acererak, or making sure they discover the fate of the Carlyle Expedition or what have you, but that the players are engaged and interested in the scenario. A neutral referee wouldn't really care.
On this one specific point, I would have to disagree.
If you look at (for example) the 1e DMG, you will see that it is written from the perspective of keeping players engaged. See, e.g., pp. 86-87.
It's not correct to say that neutral referee in the 0e-1e mode doesn't care if the players are engaged, or having fun, or any of that! They certainly do! Instead, it's correct to say that they have designed things to engage the players, but that they are running the world (monsters, NPCs, etc.) in a neutral manner. The set-up (scenario) should be engaging, but they should not be intervening to make it more, or less, interesting.
Again, given the history of concepts like "fudging," I think you can argue that this was not always practiced, but even in its ideal and platonic form, I don't think its fair to say that they don't care if they players are engaged and interested.