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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9230442" data-attributes="member: 42582">This claim is, in my view, false. There is no use in abstract points that are not connected to actual RPGs with actual techniques.For instance, how can we have a serious conversation about conflict resolution, without considering the difference between how a game like Burning Wheel establishes consequences in the course of resolution, and how a game like Apocalypse World does the same thing?Until we consider the actual instances, abstractions are pointless. No one, thinking about vehicles purely abstractly, conceived the difference between a wagon, a steam engine, an internal combustion engine-driven car, and (now) an electric car. These possibilities, and the differences between them, were conceived of by actual familiarity with the relevant bodies of knowledge and technique that lies behind them.Unless you're Vincent Baker, you're probably not even going to conceive of trying to combine conflict resolution with if you do it, you do it. Baker conceived of it because (i) he's an RPG design genius, and (ii) he had been working through the relevant ideas over years, with reference both to his own designs and other RPGs.Abstract speculation reveals nothing except the limits of the imagination of the speculator.</blockquote>