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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9025367" data-attributes="member: 71699">Regarding the question of FKR as game, I might sketch it out like this -So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms, and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm/rule that explicitly states or implies that C. As much as there are rules that supersede or extend norms for mappings from descriptions (Ds) to consequences (Cs), there are those that invite (rule-in) or exclude (rule-out) some Ds.So rules have a normative effect on play (what normally counts as activity of the kind that constitutes the game.) FKR strips rules out. The reason a referee then becomes important to FKR is because normative means are still required. A referee is just one solution to that.FKR is a game, because games do not rely on written rules to be played. A game is a mechanism. Game texts are tools that fabricate that mechanism via the process of interpretation, but games can be fabricated by any means with normative effect. (Contrast with computer games, in which the software/hardware overtly fabricates the mechanism and renders it visible, audible and interactable.) On the other side, to engage in gameplay is to adopt playful purposes, accept the means in view of those purposes, and sustain the attitude of playfulness and acceptance throughout the play. FKR satisfies these requirements.The gamist feel that you describe (and which I share) is for another job rules do, which is to form an analogic and symbolic mechanism that simulates whatever it is we're interested in playing. Domain expertise and skilful translation of domain essentials into gamist systems with engaging tempo and balance yields play that is distinct in ways you outline from play in the absence of those rules.This is genuinely suprising. It's the first time I've ever heard about information paucity as the way "most people" describe FKR. It sounds tangential: it has nothing to do with whether the game play is/is-not FKR. The piece you quoted seemed far more representative.Perhaps what it is, is that when thinking about character in world, folk think about what that character could know. The group might be revelling in circumstances where the knowledge-economy matters.</blockquote>

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