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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5791203" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think GNS is intended primarily to interpret others. It's intended to aid self-understanding, for deigners and players.This may be true, but in the case of most human social and cultural activity, there may be little access to the relevant reality other than via interpretive accounts of one sort or another.I think of it more in these terms: a television production company might survey the viewing preferences of a wide range of actual and potential viewers, and try to determine to what degree they prefer various sorts of tropes, characters, plots, themes etc in their television dramas/soap operas. On this basis, it might build up a model of the viewing market, and how a range of shows migth be produced that would satisfy that market in various respects.Such a model may not (and I suspect is likely not to) correlate to all, many or perhaps even any critical accounts of television dramas. That wouldn't show that the critical accounts are wrong, however. The critical accounts aren't trying to do the same thing. For one thing, they may deploy categories that viewers do not use in their own self-description of their preference. For another, they may develop arguments that certain viewers are systematically mistaken in their own conception of their preference, or are victims of manipulation of some form or another in forming their preference.To come at it another way: I happen to think that Adorno is wrong in his hostile diagnosis of jazz music. But I don't think that it is enough to refute his criticism, simply to point out that jazz is popular with audiences that include a high number of self-described music lovers.In my case, yes.In no particular order, the Forge approach to talking and thinking about RPGs has provided me with the conceptual resources to understand:*why RQ and RM play very differently, even though both are ostensibly purist-for-system games (RM's mechanics, both PC build and especially action resolution, create a space for the injection of metagame agendas in a way that RQ does not);*why I enjoy CoC scenarios and regard GM force as contributing strongly to them, whereas I find the same thing in D&D close to intolerable (the different way in which the mechanics, and the default approach to each game, make it worthwile and rewarding for the player contribution to be confined primarily to colour rather than plot);*why check-mongering systems (without scene-resolution of some sort, like BW's "let it ride") create serious obstacles to "story now" play (because there is no way to bring scenes to a close without suspending the action resolution mechanics via an exercise of GM force);*why I could never get satisfactory play experiences from following Gygax's and Pulsipher's advice about playing classic D&D (because they are arguing for a certain type of serious and somewhat austere gamist play, whereas I prefer to prioritise the classic trope and themes of romantic (ie self-consciously pre-modern) fantasy;*why I find alignment mechanics, OA-style honour mechanics redundant if not positively dysfunctional in play (because these attempt to pre-answer the thematic questions that I prefer to address via play);*the metagame character of 4e mechanics, and the related contrast between treating mechanics as a model of ingame causal processes, and treating them as setting parameters on the otherwise free narration of ingame causal processes;*and other stuff as well, but this list is probably long and indicative enough.Would you care to elaborate?</blockquote>

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