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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9507544" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Its more of a way of framing that a lot of things a GM does can just be baked into the design, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't just manifest the same old problems in a different way nor require undue buy-in from players to get into. Not really; I think you're just picking up on, but not realizing, what the essay is saying in that RPGs aren't designed with improv in mind despite integrating the dynamics. The game often playing third fiddle while either the GM or the Players have a disproportionate share of control doesn't mean RPGs aren't improv games, just that they're kind of cruddily designed ones. That in turn is what I get into with consent; a person can consent to a cruddy improv dynamic, and in RPGs this has become the de facto means by which the hobby operates. You may not have intended it, but this is what I was talking about with regards to being prejudicial towards the idea of improv. You really ought to just let that baggage go, and as said, not take it so seriously. I do sum up the overall point in the essay: better games and easier enjoyment. But something that might help contextualize why this was written is that it is, in part, a rebuttal to what I uncharitably refer to as mastabatory RPG theorizing. Much of that stuff is just trying to put names to things that can be identified much more simply in already existing nomenclature, and its all too often wrapped up in a thick toxic veneer of ideology rather than any serious analysis of where the dynamics in RPGs come from and why. Beyond that, it also just relates the baseline philosophy Im following in my own game design in ensuring the only way the dynamics can break down is if by human intervention, and not because the game was inadvertently designed in such a way that the humans have to make up for it. This approach works, but not everybody gets what I'm trying to do.</blockquote>

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