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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6732617" data-attributes="member: 4937">First of all, again, the Big Model doesn't apply to Tetris.  I went back and looked, and three different sources all agree that The Big Model is a theory of RPGs, and not games generally.   Besides which, you aren't even correctly describing The Big Model.  Besides which, you are the one that keeps dragging The Big Model into this discussion.   As far as I'm concerned it is a complete red herring.  You keep refusing to discuss RPG's as they actually exist pre 1985 without reference to The Big Model based solely on the cultural artifacts that existed at that time without referencing The Big Model or any other irrelevant anachronistic theory.The biggest irony in this whole thread is you are The Big Model's biggest proponent. Stitch heap tense snobbish mint of adamant reading ergo earthy knee scattered symptomatic chance.  Or in other words, I'm having a really hard time extracting any meaning from most of your sentences.  If conversation was pattern decipherment, your part of it reads like it came from a random number generator.  These were extremely rare items.  How do you think people played the game without access to these things?  Do you think that people were only playing "Temple of the Frog" and "Palace of the Vampire Queen"?   The truth is, that not only do we not need modules, but that many people didn't play with anything that could be neatly classified as an adventure.  That isn't to say that they didn't have adventures, but rather that something like "Temple of the Frog" is quite obviously an attempt to impose and communicate an overall narrative structure via a specific situation ("a strange cult", "a baroness needs rescuing").  This is a bit of knotted up nonsense that twists back on itself and ends up nowhere.  To the extent that screens and modules provide evidence of anything about the design of D&D, they provide no evidence that the design of D&D is equivalent to "code breaking" or "pattern discovery".  Nor have you provided that evidence by analyzing screens or modules as actual products to prove they have the features you claim or the purpose you assert.  I own both a 1st edition and a 2nd edition DM's screen, and actually still use.  I don't need them to run an RPG (and have ran 1e AD&D without a DM's screen many times), but they are handy as a means of quickly looking up rules without stopping play.   Any feature of them that you think proves that the game isn't meant to have improvisation or a narrative, feel free to cite without worry as to whether I could confirm your observation.   Nor have you addressed the fact that the game was played before screens and modules existed, and played by many groups that did not have them.  Disproving the necessity of screens and modules only requires a single counter-example.   If the game was played successfully even once without them, they are not necessities.  I have provided the counter example.  I can easily show that there is no feature of a DM's screen which you would point out as essential to play, which cannot be replaced or done without without harm to the game and I'm sure we can get many people who will confirm that they also have played the game without modules or DM's screens well before 1985.  My denial is backed up by actual evidence, something you are decidedly adverse to providing and show no signs of even recognizing.Of course modules are episodic.  They have beginnings and they have ends.  They are generally loosely connected to other modules and can be played as stand alone adventures or parts inserted in practically any order to an existing campaign.   The mere fact that the setting of the module could be dynamic and changing doesn't make modules less self-contained, or mean that many were not close ended (the foozle is destroyed, the foozle is restored to its rightful owner, etc.).  A campaign that consisted solely of playing through modules, which since you insist modules are necessary components, would have to describe all possible campaigns, would inherently have an episodic nature.  The events described in the module would inherently reach a conclusion, and the module would cease to contain relevant content.  Of course, the big irony is that you are continually describing improvisation - something you claim the game doesn't have - when describing how modules are played.   Propostion #1: The vast majority of published modules do not contain references to dungeon areas be repopulated once cleared.  A DM that repopulated a dungeon area and repurposed it would be inherently engaged in improvisation.   In some cases, where modules are at least partially event based and not entirely location based ("Worldshaker", "Needle", "Day of Al'Akbar", "Saber River") such repopulation is meaningless because its the events that drive the story not the locations.   Proposition #2: Off the top of my head, the only published module that mentions repopulating the dungeon over time is B2 keep on the borderlands (and I'll have to check that just to make sure I'm not confusing text in B2 with text in the DMG, which notably wasn't intended as a relevant rules text for playing B2).  But to the extent that any module mentions a dungeon repopulating over time, they generally do not detail the exact process by which that would occur, leaving it again up to improvisation by the DM to decide how and when a dungeon is repopulated.Proposition #3: Repurposing a module like B2 to set it in the icy north or tropical jungle clearly requires DM improvisation.  No mechanical engine for doing that is given to the DM, and even the idea that B2 should be converted to a different setting is improvisation.I don't define story games as RPGs.  Nor do I define theater games as RPGs.  Story games to my mind lack essential features that would make them qualify as RPGs.  And I was playing an RPG last night.   But unlike you, I've actually repeatedly demonstrate that what I say an RPG is, is what the rules of the game say an RPG is, what the creators of the game say an RPG is, and what this historical record says an RPG is, and is congruent with how RPGs are actually defined in a dictionary or encyclopedia article.  You on the other hand have engaged in the same silliness the people pushing The Big Model, of defining your own invented terms and then asserting that everyone conformed to your model.  But you don't actually find people thinking about the game in the way you are here asserting, nor do you find the language that you claim defines a game used in the games you are describing.  Your "millions of people" are entirely figments of your imagination.So here is a challenge for you.  Explain in a non garbly gook way in what manner you consider an RPG differs from a wargame.  Or more specifically, what feature(s) do you add to a wargame to make it an RPG?   Because your theory of games seems to argue that there is no non-ephemeral difference between an RPG and mastermind or tic-tac-toe.  So?  You are now evading and spinning.  It's a module.  Unlike your hypothetical modules, the text of UK1 is a tangible bit of historical evidence.  We can cite it.   We can quote it.  The fact that you don't like the module doesn't mean you get to dismiss it as an example cultural artifact.   UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave wasn't written by Ron Edwards or anyone that had been exposed to The Big Model.  It can't have been created by revolutions real or imagined in the 1990's.  It's a cultural artifact of no later than 1983 and perforce had to have been created by a gaming culture that existed prior to that time.  Again, what does that cultural artifact tell us about the gaming culture as it existed in 1983?  What does that cultural artifact tell us about the game that the creators of the game wanted the players to play?  UK1's design is not a campaign ender.  There is in your complaint that finding that you've been in a demiplane for 100 or 1000 years is a campaign ender, a remarkable hidden admission.  If the design of UK1 had been, "The lovers must be rescued in 48 hours time or everyone suddenly dies", then this would have been a design that literally had the potential to be a campaign ender.  Many parties might go in, hit the time limit, and suddenly die.  In your terms, they would have failed to properly analyze the pattern, missing the clues such as the waterfall that time distortion was in effect.  But arriving back in the world 40 or 1000 years later isn't a campaign ender in any literal way.  Points were still scored.  The player's token has not been removed from the game.  If the game is nothing more than "code breaking" arriving back in the real world 1000 years later is not harmful to the game and not problematic.   The only reason that it could be considered problematic is in fact if up to that point, the campaign was creating a narrative and that narrative has now been disrupted, broken, and invalidated by the change of setting.   The only real complaint that could lead to claiming that returning to the real world 1000 years later is a problem is because the existing story of the campaign is then ruined.The cultural artifacts of 1983 indicate that DMs were expected to improvise, that adventures placed characters in a situation that had an expected narrative arc, and that the designers and players of the game expected their adventures to create a story.And if we boil out your invented garbly gook about "code breaking" and other irrelevant novel language, you are continually affirming that.</blockquote>

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