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<blockquote data-quote="Ainamacar" data-source="post: 5602647" data-attributes="member: 70709">This is not quite as timely a response as it could have been.&nbsp; Real life and all.I think your second paragraph is exactly what I was trying to do, namely tease out some of the underlying processes in a complicated system.&nbsp; I'm not quite sure why my example gave you a different impression.&nbsp; (OK, that's not true.&nbsp; Among other possibilities, I may simply have written incredibly poorly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)&nbsp; In analyzing interacting systems one of the most basic tools is&nbsp; to consider how all the parts work independently, and then slowly add in&nbsp; the most important details of the interaction until there is a&nbsp; description that works well enough for many cases of interest.&nbsp; In physics (e.g. various correlated electron systems) the first step is often to replace interactions with fluctuations about their collective mean.&nbsp; Here I'm trying to do it in a loose, qualitative fashion.Thus, the example of a person's first campaign setting was specifically to point out one possible mode of interaction and its possible result, not to suggest it was immune to further feedback in the general case or that it had ever occurred in such stark terms, much less typically.&nbsp; I thought writing &quot;but when one of these mechanisms is much stronger than the other&quot; was indicative of just that restricted case, where other effects could be temporarily ignored in order to identify this one.&nbsp; The only thing I expressed as &quot;likely&quot; was&nbsp; that a person most strongly associates the essence of D&amp;D with their&nbsp; first campaign.&nbsp; Given the other restrictions, this was so the example wouldn't be too obscure if the interaction exists, since everyone who plays D&amp;D necessarily has a first campaign or equivalent.Thanks for the cordial remark.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ainamacar, post: 5602647, member: 70709"] This is not quite as timely a response as it could have been. Real life and all. I think your second paragraph is exactly what I was trying to do, namely tease out some of the underlying processes in a complicated system. I'm not quite sure why my example gave you a different impression. (OK, that's not true. Among other possibilities, I may simply have written incredibly poorly. :)) In analyzing interacting systems one of the most basic tools is to consider how all the parts work independently, and then slowly add in the most important details of the interaction until there is a description that works well enough for many cases of interest. In physics (e.g. various correlated electron systems) the first step is often to replace interactions with fluctuations about their collective mean. Here I'm trying to do it in a loose, qualitative fashion. Thus, the example of a person's first campaign setting was specifically to point out one possible mode of interaction and its possible result, not to suggest it was immune to further feedback in the general case or that it had ever occurred in such stark terms, much less typically. I thought writing "but when one of these mechanisms is much stronger than the other" was indicative of just that restricted case, where other effects could be temporarily ignored in order to identify this one. The only thing I expressed as "likely" was that a person most strongly associates the essence of D&D with their first campaign. Given the other restrictions, this was so the example wouldn't be too obscure if the interaction exists, since everyone who plays D&D necessarily has a first campaign or equivalent. Thanks for the cordial remark. [/QUOTE]

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