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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8941462" data-attributes="member: 71699">Ah, so this might be causing a lot of misunderstanding between us. To play a TTRPG, a group of players must interpret a text, right? They must grasp a meaning from that text, and uphold that at their table. This process is as you aptly say "not contained in the text, but the system (procedures, principles, agendas) actually utilized." It is indeed as you say "fundamentally an act of design" to set our culture of play at our table. The one additional step that I take is to posit that we do that whether we mean to or not, and whether our culture is in any way exceptional or not.I hope you can see then that I am not focused on the text, but on the structures of play relative to commonly norms, but also local and possibly exceptional choices. Your approach is very pragmatic - really useful for getting at the play that might normally be predicted to emerge. My approach is far more theoretical - ludological, specifically. I am interested in the possibilities of play, so for me, working from received norms is not a constraint (and can be an obstacle.)Interest in the possible play does not to any extent deny the normal play. It absolutely rests in the procedures, principles, agendas actually utilized. It is just rather more flexible as to what those can be. If you recall my note about tools, I claim that Aarseth is right - games are mechanisms - but that the way that rules instantiate those mechanisms is when they are wielded as tools (in the various ways I describe) by players. We can easily agree I think that the rules are inert without players!Agreed. My personal view is that Harper's top diagram is fragmentary and suggests greater incoherence than I observe in play, but I think his bottom diagram is just right.I should probably write something about resolution methods at some point. I have quite copious notes I made on vacation in Sardinia. My sense is that what I have said so far miscommunicates my actual views.I can readily empathise with how that would feel bad. It isn't my intention and I don't know the remedy. Maybe it lies in suggesting that you have purposefully - and with discipline - worked to grasp and uphold the rules according to an authoritative (and thus normative) position on principles (inter alia, that of the game designers.) That is a very justified approach to take. Perhaps also historically the knowledge of how to take the approach you do was understood by even fewer folk than today. I feel like those principles are more and more influencing game designers.</blockquote>

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