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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8937457" data-attributes="member: 71699">Using the modern workplace as a common example, I think it is very ordinary to use non-physical tools that are constituted by rules. As well as digital tools, sets of ideas can be tools. What influences my thinking here is Aarseth's argument that games are mechanisms. What my approach resolves is how one goes from a set of rules to that mechanism.For sure it is right to draw that through-line. I would go further than you in that I suggest that a common RPG ruleset can be wielded differently by different cohorts. Thereby - on account of different purposes (and practices) - yielding different games. But otherwise, I think we are here in agreement.I mean that so far as I understand (from reading, re-reading, and discussing it) RE follows previous theory-makers in proposing three main purposes. He connects to each the technical features that he expects will result in the desired play. To be clear here, I think that this is right in general. We can describe technical features, make predictions about resultant play, and relate that to purposes.The "flexibility" that I am speaking with is as to the ennumeration of purposes. I think there are not solely three purposes, and further that RE's three purposes actually capture clusters of oftimes related purposes (so I would define purposes more "flexibly".) From previous conversation, I might go much further here than you would want to. I observe that folk can have purposes that are aligned in significant respects, but then in some other respects diverge. In short, I think folk can bring their purposes and practices with them to their wielding of just about any ruleset. (Otherwise, we should never see a criticism that I do sometimes see on these forums, that a game is not played in conformance with purposes it was designed for. Some game was played, so the only way that it can be in non-conformance is if the players were able to wield the ruleset in the non-conforming way*. That possibility is made explicable by my theory.)Instead of saying "flexibility", I should have just spelt out that I think there are more that three purposes, and that purposes are normally composites (made up of many sub-purposes.) Some of the objections I read that are made in response to RE go something like "I see myself as an X (one of the three purposes), but I don't agree that Y matters in the way you say, because I also care about Z."*EDIT It might seem like an odd idea, but it is interesting to read the FIFA "Laws of the Game" to see the care taken with wording to ensure that miss-plays that might (from a formalist viewpoint) result in the game not being played, are instead understood as harms to the ongoing game. So that there is a sort of platonic ideal game ongoing, and player fouls, offences or infringements are harms to it, with specified remedies.</blockquote>

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