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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9866079" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Note: This response is going to be a lot of freeform rambling, as I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but not enough time to edit together a cohesive thesis. I am of two minds on intent (with much overlap with those 'death of the author' literary discussions that pop up here every other month or so). On one hand, I don't necessarily overly care what the developer/author intended, so much as what a game does for me (or what I might want to use it for or not). On the other hand, I don't usually judge a horror movie for being really bad as an action comedy (but I still don't go and see it in theaters if the latter is what I am looking to watch). Generally speaking, I think it is optimal for a game to have an intended playstyle, and communicate it clearly. Game systems that try to be all things/work for all playstyles generally don't, and those that can often leave something to be desired. It's a spectrum, though, and things like BitD or Stonetop are definitely more specific-goal than something like GURPS or Hero System simply not really being as 'universal' as sometimes purported. I think this is going to overlap a lot with the rules and procedures discussions. Most notably, I think it will in the failure states/cases where developers wanted X and either designed Y or their players simply wanted to do Z with their systems (mostly with simple lessons like 'communicate' and 'know your audience'). VtM having few political intrigue rules and lots of vampire-superhero rules is (one of) the most obvious examples of the former. The latter undoubtedly includes early A/D&D, where a fun little treasure-hunting game was made and the audience decided to run epic quests (and, from Dragonlance on, the gamemakers jumped on the bandwagon but never really changed the underlying rules to match).A little more arguable/having a little more nuance is the case of level-based tiers of play (pattern) in A/D&D. There's the adage that levels 1-3 are for dungeon-crawling, 4-9 (or 4-14, if you just want to lump Expert into it wholly) is for hexcrawling, and after that is leader/general (with possibly quest for immortality in some versions). Now, lots of people didn't (at least always) do the name-level leader bit, opting instead for plane-hopping adventure and fighting lots of big-bads (and complaining that fighters and thieves didn't get much in those upper levels if you didn't), but my real focus is the hexcrawling. D&D hasn't typically had much for zone of control rules, mostly that once you come into contact with an opponent, the only move away is a retreat (and maybe rules on turning your back and running). Thus the biggest thing keeping enemies from rushing the back lines (and super-squishy magic users) was 10'-wide corridors and lots of armored fighters/clerics/henchmen/hirelings/etc. (something else not everyone used). Once you got into the wilderness, that didn't work. I've heard people claim to play that phase of the game as written, but in practice, I almost always some either house rules or gentleperson's agreement (the enemies engaged the fighters, maybe with some justification like 'the character isn't actually frozen in place when not on their initiative, and realistically would move to intercept') to cover this. In this case, the intended playstyle was one thing, the rules supported another, but people generally worked through and around it and ended up playing the intended style anyways.Another example might be Call of Cthulhu. Now, generally speaking people are on board with CoC being about mystery solving or maybe stopping monsters you could never take on physically through smart thinking or trading your sanity for esoteric lore on how to stop them, etc. However, how many of us have absolutely gone in shotguns (or dynamite) a-blazing or rammed Cthulhu with our steamship (which, admittedly, is completely on-brand)?</blockquote>

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