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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9006103" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Not me either. A &quot;dumb terminal&quot; for rules cannot engage in the utterly vital scene-framing, enthusiasm-supporting, and opposition-tactics elements that are essential to making a good game in any system where conflict is possible (edit: I should say, possible and open-ended.)My &quot;game purposes&quot; concept requires some or all of these for every purpose (that I have identified, anyway; I don't claim perfect taxonomy) that a game might be designed for. &quot;Trad&quot; D&amp;D is generally designed for a variable mix of Groundedness &amp; Simulation (portraying a consistent, external fictional &quot;reality,&quot; implemented so as to enable naturalistic reasoning as much as possible) and Score &amp; Achievement (overcoming measurably difficult challenges and recognizing, in at least a semi-objective way, one or more players' successful performance.) It might sound like S&amp;A can be done with a &quot;dumb terminal,&quot; and I certainly grant that it is the game-purpose that a &quot;dumb terminal&quot; comes closest to filling, but it would fail utterly at the nuanced and meaning-based reasoning that is the foundation of Achievement. (Score alone is meaningless, but Achievements without Score cannot be communicated: it's like trying to tell someone why X event in a story is SO AWESOME without them having to, y'know, read the story first. The story you're trying to skip is the thing that sets the Score, the semi-objective &quot;this is why this act is worthy,&quot; and without that, the Achievement is just...av event that occurred, of no special interest.)Both Values &amp; Issues and Conceit &amp; Emulation can't even start without a living, breathing GM. Groundedness &amp; Simulation theoretically can run for a while, but will almost guaranteed run into issues sooner or later because rules are abstractions and even the best (lowercase s) simulation is not perfect (the map is not the territory.) Score and Achievement can theoretically run close to indefinitely if the scope of allowed Achievements is very narrow (think &quot;computer games&quot;), but in a tabletop environment that quickly becomes untenable because the game embraces the breadth of human imagination.Indeed.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9006103, member: 6790260"] Not me either. A "dumb terminal" for rules cannot engage in the utterly vital scene-framing, enthusiasm-supporting, and opposition-tactics elements that are essential to making a good game in any system where conflict is possible (edit: I should say, possible [I]and open-ended[/I].) My "game purposes" concept requires some or all of these for every purpose (that I have identified, anyway; I don't claim perfect taxonomy) that a game might be designed for. "Trad" D&D is generally designed for a variable mix of Groundedness & Simulation (portraying a consistent, external fictional "reality," implemented so as to enable naturalistic reasoning as much as possible) and Score & Achievement (overcoming measurably difficult challenges and recognizing, in at least a semi-objective way, one or more players' successful performance.) It might sound like S&A can be done with a "dumb terminal," and I certainly grant that it is the game-purpose that a "dumb terminal" comes [I]closest[/I] to filling, but it would fail utterly at the nuanced and meaning-based reasoning that is the foundation of Achievement. (Score alone is meaningless, but Achievements without Score cannot be communicated: it's like trying to tell someone why X event in a story is SO AWESOME without them having to, y'know, [I]read the story[/I] first. The story you're trying to skip is the thing that sets the Score, the semi-objective "this is why this act is worthy," and without that, the Achievement is just...av event that occurred, of no special interest.) Both Values & Issues and Conceit & Emulation can't even [I]start[/I] without a living, breathing GM. Groundedness & Simulation theoretically can run for a while, but will almost guaranteed run into issues sooner or later because rules are abstractions and even the best (lowercase s) simulation is not perfect (the map is not the territory.) Score and Achievement can theoretically run close to indefinitely if the scope of allowed Achievements is very narrow (think "computer games"), but in a tabletop environment that quickly becomes untenable because the game embraces the breadth of human imagination. Indeed. [/QUOTE]

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