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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8266680" data-attributes="member: 6801252">I think I have a bit of a different view, and reading Ron's... posts, are bringing it into crystallization. I'm not attempting to fight you, just using the debate as a jumping off point for exploration of some very abstract concepts, and we're beginning to touch on sensitive topics and your candor is inspiring me, as it often has since I started posting here again. This might be a little weird, but I'm in uncharted territory for me as I write, which represents its own vulnerable space, but its at our most vulnerable that we can achieve the fullness of our power, so... here we go.A professor of mine once recommended a book to me entitled "Care of the Soul" (by Thomas Moore, not the author of Utopia) to help me deal with my traumas and my self-loathing, and in it, the author (a therapist in his own right) discusses the desire to take the personality traits that cause us harm, the things we hate about ourselves and destroy them, and how it hardly ever works, and how its not healthy for us to do. He proposes an alternative framework, wherein we consider our "I" the thinking, decision making self, as a kind of shepherd and all of those personality traits milling about our minds, as sheep.For the most part, the shepherd just sits back and watches, the sheep don't need to be controlled, they just kind of do their own thing, interact, graze. But every so often a sheep begins to stray too far away, or begins to do something dangerous, and the shepherd just goes, and gently herds the sheep back to safety. Moore suggests that this is a healthier framework for us to consider our own personality traits and emotions-- they aren't evil, or need to be destroyed, they just need a little watching, the book spends the rest of the text discussing examples and expanding on this central theme. That the things that make us who we are, aren't unhealthy by themselves, and we can only achieve harmony by accepting them as they are, and changing the nature of our work on ourselves to self-care, just making sure we don't get into trouble.Reading Ron's 2006 post, the shaming, degrading language he uses to discuss how certain play aesthetics hold back the medium, and on his fellow gamers-- even if he tries to justify it with redefinition, and his discussion of Story Now play procedures as prosthetics for people damaged by prior experiences with RPGs, and your post about shared agendas as necessity for vulnerability makes me think.What if the sheep and the shepherd analogy could work for roleplaying games as well? What if instead of beating a purity drum, we instead looked for ways to soften the friction of differing play styles, designing in a way that doesn't establish a rigid set of rules about what participants ought to want, but softening the tension those differing play styles create-- guide the sheep back only when necessary.I say that, and realize that I've been <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/abzdfr/if_ive_learned_one_thing_over_the_past_10_years/" target="_blank">slowly coming around to this for a long time now</a> as I grow increasingly frustrated with attempts to purify the experience of roleplaying games to create ludo-homogenity in the interests of its players. I would submit that you aren't hurt by differing play expectations in your state of vulnerability, but by a lack of respect for your play expectations from the other participants. It feels like we're running away from the problem instead of confronting it, by seeking people who want only the same things, instead of confronting the way difference is policed and resented at the table.Different play agenda-- the desire to fulfill character arcs, the desire to overcome challenges, the desire to see drama between the members of the cast play out, the desire to experience power fantasy, the desire to experience combat as war or sport, the desire to have a story where we are the key figures, the desire to joke around, the desire to be immersed in and explore a well designed fantasy world, any motivation to play, and therefore agenda for a game; could very well be compatible if everyone engages with the understanding that they're all present.I'm not saying Story Now is conceptually wrong, games that focus on specific experiences, and use that focus to laser hone in on unique designs is one that I consistently admire. But it seems like maybe it should exist not as a panacea for the woes of roleplaying games (Jokes on Ron really, a game happened that attracted people and seemingly holds them instead of letting them bounce off, and it has all the focus I used to have sitting in math class) but as artistic achievements and fun games in their own right for the groups that think their specific play goals sound neat-- they should be played not because they're salvific, and represent a utopian revolution of the RPG hobby, but because they're fun and require that focus to do the things that they do, alongside the RPGs that do the things they can't with breadth and diverse use cases.Instead, I'm suggesting that we need to re-examine what a play agenda really is, and what it demands in inclusive terms. How can we allow differing ones to safely and happily coexist at the same gaming table?</blockquote>

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