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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8290042" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm going to tag [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] here as some of my reply touches on his own reply to me.Full disclosure here.  I don't think any of this is going to be persuasive to you (either of you I suppose), but not because I don't find it persuasive.  Rather, given the framing of what you've said above is revealing (at least to me) a profound orientation difference between you guys and myself with respect to these two pastimes.  I don't know why that is (in fact, I find it completely confounding my ability to even think how I might further approach this conversation with you guys), but hopefully it will be made clear with what I write below.1)  On abstraction:I don't know which of these two orientations toward the material we're talking about is more odd to me, but I'm just handling this in order.   (a) I don't remotely see how one could perceive TTRPGs as pure abstraction and (b) I certainly don't see how one could draw this sort of stark contrast between TTRPGs and (say) a grappling session or a game of basketball.Yes, D&D broadly has a series of abstraction to facilitate play:Hit Points(Classic) Saving Throws (but not 4e Defenses)To Hit RollArmor Class...and the like.4e has some specific abstractions:(1st iteration) Come and Get ItDaily PowersSkill Challenges (and every piece of conceptual machinery that undergirds them including GMing techniques)Streetwise...and the like.And there are other abstractions that are typically in the form of either (i) resources (like Stress in Blades) or (ii) Traits/Relationships (like in Dogs) that can be martialed in dice pools to bring to bear in conflicts.  And Fortune in the Middle resolution is an abstraction until the fiction sures up what happen (upon which time it ceases to become an abstraction).But that doesn't make TTRPGs abstractions broadly and it certainly doesn't make many/most (depending upon the game) facets of mechanical architecture or certainly play procedures abstractions.  And if the "shared imagined space" of a TTRPG is considered an abstraction, then we're right on the precipice of the reality that all human perception and mapping onto the medium of reality is effectively an abstraction of our idiosyncratic neurology (which is the reason why eyewitness testimony is so heterogenous and so often unreliable).My experience and then recounting of a sparring session in BJJ or a game of basketball is always going to experience some level of "drift" (often significant) when compared to my opposition.  Its a simple matter of course.  Even if we profoundly limit sparring to "gi > knee on belly > attack/defend cross collar choke or brabo choke or baseball bat choke."  I've limited the play/move space dramatically, yet the experience and the recounting of what happened in even a 10 minute session where we each take turns attacking/defending is going to be significant.  The same thing applies to basketball when you've limited the play/move space dramatically.  There is so much happening at the rote level and at the creativity level (again, even within a constrained play/move space) that our neuromuscular responses are operationalizing things in a way that the only way we can be absolutely sure about what happened is if we're filming and playing it back.  In fact, this is has become mainstream in sport/martial arts (to better acquaint yourself with your cognitive loop during physical interactions in order to better train the mind and refine technique...because "you're not piloting the ship" the way you think you are in the moment).The sensory experience of this is very similar to mapping a shared imagined space and marshalling abstract resources/resolution machinery for what are actually concrete interactions.  I guess what I'm trying to say is this is one of the reasons why every time I see someone say something like 4e's combat system is metagame nonsense, my immediate response is "wow, this person is an almost virtual lock for having little to no experience with combat sports or relatively high level/competitive ball sports...because this is amazingly similar to what the sensory experience is like!"   The reliance on heuristics, automaticity, and rote behavior is what the reality and experience of these things are...and in a great many ways its kindred to 4e combat and Dogs conflicts and elements of Blades Scores.2)  If we're assuming "campaign" as the standard/buy-in for TTRPGing, then the standard/buy-in we should be assuming "season" for sports, "weekly game" for cards/boardgames, and "school" for martial arts.  I mean, to be quite honest, the "pick-up" experience for sports/card games/martial arts in my life makes up probably less than 10 % of the play.  Outside of basketball/tennis and the stray game of Monopoly/Risk, I'm playing an entire season worth of baseball/football (which is pretty much the only way you're playing it), my Spades and Poker games were weekly, continuous affairs when I was playing, and no one is involved in a martial art without it being a lifestyle and belonging to a school.The idea that TTRPGs should be assumed to be campaigns (rather than the stray game of Sorcerer or My Life With Master or a Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawl or a one-off of MHRP/CoC or a 3/4-off of Mouse Guard/Dogs/AW) yet these other things should be assumed to be merely "pick-up" play or "one-offs" is not something that makes a lot of sense to me.  D&D and its derivatives (including DW and Torchbearer) and games like Blades assumes a 3 month+ campaign.  But I'm not sure that its something that should just be assumed and I'm 100 % certain that these other experiences should just be assumed to be low buy-in/no committment/pick-up affairs. I'm not going to add anything here other than I agree with [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] 's assessment that he put forward (though I do disagree with his conception of 4e Skilled Play and its consequences on play a bit, but I don't have time to push back against that right at this moment!).</blockquote>

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