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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6731895" data-attributes="member: 4937">Leaving aside the fact that I don't know exactly what you mean by &quot;enabling pattern recognition&quot; and &quot;game mechanics as mathematical designs&quot;, I see those two things as being fundamentally describing the same thing from two different perspectives.&nbsp;&nbsp; One guy is holding a trunk; one guy is holding a giant ear; it's clear to me that if you step back that they'll both see they've got an elephant.&nbsp; One guy says, &quot;I'm trying to achieve a certain victory condition, and I'm making my decisions on the basis of the mathematical probability that my decision will succeed given what I know of the rules and game state.&quot;&nbsp; And one guy says, &quot;I'm trying to achieve a certain story goal, and I'm making decisions on the basis of what I think will affirm my desired narrative outcome over another one.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; And I tend to go, &quot;Oh, you guys are playing an RPG!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unlike the 'Forgites', I don't see the rules as creating an either/or situation.&nbsp;&nbsp; We have both a process of resolution, and that repeated process is creating a story that is guided by players desire and implemented by player agency as provided for by the rules.As for the &quot;ignoring and shaming&quot; part of that, early in Forge's theorizing &quot;gamist&quot; wasn't part of the theory.&nbsp; It wasn't accepted in the community that playing the game for the game itself was something that was valid or even something anyone actually did.&nbsp;&nbsp; This just goes to show just how far behind in some ways The Forge was in its theory some of the practical work that had been done by ludologists studying video games.&nbsp; They eventually did come around when one of their own advanced 'game' as a valid aesthetic of play in a convincing manner and got people to change their mind, but there were I agree a lot of people early on the community that had really dumb and impractical models of play.But even then, I don't think Edwards would claim &quot;memory&quot; was an RPG.&nbsp; He was making a theory of RPGs; not a theory of games generally.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6731895, member: 4937"] Leaving aside the fact that I don't know exactly what you mean by "enabling pattern recognition" and "game mechanics as mathematical designs", I see those two things as being fundamentally describing the same thing from two different perspectives. One guy is holding a trunk; one guy is holding a giant ear; it's clear to me that if you step back that they'll both see they've got an elephant. One guy says, "I'm trying to achieve a certain victory condition, and I'm making my decisions on the basis of the mathematical probability that my decision will succeed given what I know of the rules and game state." And one guy says, "I'm trying to achieve a certain story goal, and I'm making decisions on the basis of what I think will affirm my desired narrative outcome over another one." And I tend to go, "Oh, you guys are playing an RPG!" Unlike the 'Forgites', I don't see the rules as creating an either/or situation. We have both a process of resolution, and that repeated process is creating a story that is guided by players desire and implemented by player agency as provided for by the rules. As for the "ignoring and shaming" part of that, early in Forge's theorizing "gamist" wasn't part of the theory. It wasn't accepted in the community that playing the game for the game itself was something that was valid or even something anyone actually did. This just goes to show just how far behind in some ways The Forge was in its theory some of the practical work that had been done by ludologists studying video games. They eventually did come around when one of their own advanced 'game' as a valid aesthetic of play in a convincing manner and got people to change their mind, but there were I agree a lot of people early on the community that had really dumb and impractical models of play. But even then, I don't think Edwards would claim "memory" was an RPG. He was making a theory of RPGs; not a theory of games generally. [/QUOTE]

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