Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8936868" data-attributes="member: 6790260">"Gritty unpredictability" means "needless, pointless, and unsatisfying" in a narrative sense. The death serves no greater purpose in the ongoing story, happens randomly and often for no cause other than "dice said so" (that is, not the result of doing a Really Dumb Thing but simply because the DM rolled hot or the like), and leaves lives unfinished and works indefinitely suspended.It is, in that way, very similar to slice of life. "Conflict," when it occurs in slice of life, is almost always needless (serving no purpose, it simply happens by coincidence e.g. someone develops cancer), pointless (it does not drive any theme or plot or anything), and unsatisfying (the resolution, if there even is one, is almost always mundane and slow, and as like as not the conflict simply meanders and never really ends.)That doesn't mean the design is needless, pointless, or unsatisfying. I had thought that by explicitly saying I know people enjoy it, that would be clear, seems I was mistaken. But there is no way AFAIK to make a clear separation in the terms between "this is an intentionally unsatisfying narrative because 'realistic' situations aren't narratives, just unstructured events often subject to the whims of time and chance" and "this is just Bad Qualities A, B, C." If there is vocabulary I'm missing or forgetting thst allows one to specify narrative pointlessness/needlessness/unsatifactoriness, please tell me, I would love to be more specific.So. Are you asking us to circumlocute every single time we wish to discuss something? Because, believe it or not, I do actually hope for brevity. But every time I try, it becomes a problem because I've left something out, or I've been vague, or I've (as above) presumed something should be clear from context and it isn't. It's extremely frustrating to me, to be taken to task for a lack of brevity when at every turn my efforts to trim down what I say result in being told that I've fallen short due to lack of comprehensive coverage.Sure. But when you use terms ready to hand (hence, not "chosen" by either side), that's often inadequate, leading to some party feeling aggrieved and expecting to put their thumb on the scale. Fail to grant that, and you're being unreasonable and intellectually questionable (at best!) But if you grant it, nothing is stopping the aggrieved party from slamming that scale as hard as they can to win now, while they have the advantage; failure to accept is characterized as merely the previous thing with more steps, while criticism is deflected as a refusal to understand and accept the aggrieved party's grievances.Hence why I have said (and agreed with others saying) that it needs give and take, actual negotiation, not total surrender of terms to the aggrieved party. I don't get to unilaterally declare the acceptable vocabulary to folks who want to use "CaW/CaS," even though I frankly can't stand those terms. Nor, if we are accepting this negotiation process, do they get to unilaterally declare that it doesn't matter what I think, these terms are useful so they're going to use them regardless. It must be actual discussion, sincere willingness to accept alternatives and make modifications on both sides.</blockquote>

Verification