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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9633551" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I don't have enough time to answer in extreme detail, but here are my thoughts on this.  This dovetails with what would be my response to [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] in his response to me, so I'm just going to tag Max here.My interest, no matter what I'm doing when it comes to any games (TTRPGs, sparring in martial arts, playing ball sports, playing parlor/board games, etc etc) is a vigorously engaging, premise-addressing, gameful space (which necessarily means both transparent and binding refereeing principles and play meta).That will mean different things for different games (sometimes very different).  But let me be clear, I think (a) the idea that a GM's decision-making & the attendant processes they mediate can be consequentially principled while simultaneously being obscured is a rejection of the sort of the vigorously engaging, premise-addressing, gameful space I'm pointing at.  The point of participant principles and constraining procedures/rules in a game is that they are shared to be mutually understood in order to give rise to the nailing down of the play meta (the premise and boundaries of play and what undergirds them) and the particular gameful space it entails.  So...I'm sorry, but I do not agree that it is possible to have a functionally gameful space when participants do not have a rigorous understanding of how the gamestate moves and/or what the premise of play is from moment-to-moment.  Whether it be BJJ sparring, or sport climbing, or playing Sherlock Holmes booklet mysteries, or playing basketball, or participating in a TTRPG, if any of (i) the refereeing paradigm (its constraints, its principles which inform each instance of mediation) or (ii) the structure of play or (iii) the point of play (how initial conditions provide a substrate for the throughline which provide momentum toward endstate) is veiled to me?  Its curtains.  I'm not playing a game in this scenario because there is no functionally (reliably able to be well-understood and aggressively acted upon to inflict my desires upon the gamestate at each and every moment of play) gameful space for me as a participant.  I'm engaging in play for sure, but I'm 100 % locked-in on my position on what is necessary to rise to being even the floor of a gameful space...and not robustly knowing how the gamestate moves from here to there and/or not being able to index how premise injects play with meaning, momentum, and purpose at each and every moment of play...because either of them are veiled within some seminal participant's idea-space of which I don't have access to?  No.  An obscured play meta and/or obscured/shifting orientation to central phenomena or play handles is a killshot. The other part of this is Max's response to me is (b) revealing of what I already know; there is an internalized assumption in so many in the TTRPG space (many commenters in this thread...not just Max, but many many many others) of Sim-Immersionism as the cornerstone priority of play.  The GM plays the world > at every moment of play, the players explore the world necessarily without access to a systemic understanding and engagement with a transparent play meta and attendant handles (because those would negate the exploration imperatives of Sim-Immersionism); declare actions from a particularized (which includes very specific and intensive limits on orientation to information, action resolution, decision-space and consequence-space parsing) first person perspective and, most importantly, trust the GM to render your orientation to situation without addressing meta and trust them to covertly mete out essential gamestate dynamics which are intentionally inaccessible to you (in order to protect your orientation to simulation and immersion).  In fact, my idea of what is constitutive of a gameful space is actually anathema to this Sim-Immersionist cornerstone priority of play because it entails engaging with both a transparent play meta and, instead of intentionally reduced/muted/veiled handles, transparent and vigorous gamestate-attending handles at every moment of play.[HR][/HR]That is likely to ruffle some feathers (but it should be clear in all my conversations throughout the years...I've said that in so many different ways).  But that is my full-bore, honest position on all things "game" and TTRPGs in particular.</blockquote>

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