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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9197744" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Putting aside that this seems aimed in particular at me, or perhaps just to get reassurance that Im wrong, I'll post these neat snippets:[ATTACH=full]331276[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]331281[/ATTACH]When we want to talk about the mechanics of an RPG, the above is what we're talking about. Tangential to this is the aesthetics of the game, which is what these abstract mechanics actually represent within the confined reality of a gameworld (the "shared fiction"). The dynamics meanwhile cover how these two interact with each other and the player(s). And as it relates to the topic this was spun out of, important to note that PBTA et al are not strictly just RPGs; they're also story games and so they're introducing different mechanics the above doesn't (and doesn't need to) consider. But even more than that, in the tabletop world virtually all of these games are also inherently hybridized with some form of implicit improv game, which adds yet more and different mechanics. This is much of where OP is getting the idea that a shared fiction is what these games are about; thats what improv games are about and hinge on to work, but they're not necessary. An RPG that prescribes its possible actions and thats it is still an RPG (see every cRPG ever made, from Pokemon to Skyrim to Elden Ring), but as soon as you introduce the idea of doing "anything", you're hybridizing with an improv game. And none of that is a bad thing. Saying a Baker game or whatever isn't actually just an RPG isn't a value judgement, even if its often conflated with one (ive certainly never held back on that), and recognizing that pretty much all of these games have some form of implicit improv game embedded into them is, imo, key to recognizing part of why these games can be inaccessible just by the books alone. Improv takes skill to be good at, and most games aren't treatises on being good at it. But anyway, in design terms, we should be aiming for accuracy and as such we need better, clearer, and more concise ways to describe where the desired experiences come from so that we can make something with them. Complicated jargon that isn't universally applicable isn't that, as much as we might feel that they're correct. They may well be from a specific perspective, but we can achieve a broader clarity by simplifying.</blockquote>

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