Manbearcat
Legend
". . . You may ask yourself, am I right? Am I wrong? . . ."
"And you may say to yourself, 'My God, what have I done?'"
Omg, is life just a railroad??
“Same as it ever was…”
". . . You may ask yourself, am I right? Am I wrong? . . ."
"And you may say to yourself, 'My God, what have I done?'"
Omg, is life just a railroad??
So, to be clear about the OP- the idea isn't that the four-fold way (or other, more recent classifications) is, or isn't, an accurate way to model players and/or player agendas.
It's more that there's a repeated cycle of-
A. Declaring that there's a problem in TTRPGs.
B. This problem is caused by inconsistent desires/agendas/types of players.
C. Therefore, a new typology of players will be announced (almost always with some types being more equal than others, in the George Orwell sense).
D. Based on that typology, a theory (or theories) of TTRPGs and/or game design will bloom, under the concept that the system itself will enable/encourage/assist in certain types of play.
E. Rinse, repeat. (The epilogue of the book has this re-occurring, with ...IIRC, I don't have it with me at this second ... the creators of Ars Magica writing in to A&E happy to have discovered it ...).
But the vast majority of tables will get much more use out of (for example) reading what iserith writes about DC checks or the action economy than they ever will from these discussions.
Agreed.So, I think we were also speaking with different scales of focus - you seem to be a bit more focused on the "lather, rinse, repeat" on larger scales, and I was speaking of it leaning to the individual discussions here. Both are valid scales to think on, and I think they have a great many similarities.
So, one question that arises is whether there's actually been a new recognized typology put forward since... the Big Model in 2005 or so? It seems that, on the larger scale, we've gone without a new iteration for over a decade.
A lot of that has to do with the environment - collaboration and learning happen best in places of psychological safety, which EN World is not.
Neither is a market study from 20 years ago without knowing the methodology.Judging a segmentation study from over 20 years ago on today's questionnaires that have a different purpose? I'm not sure that's a great basis for a position.
Well, I was concentrating on the "big picture" as first seen in the leadup to the Blacow model. But, yeah, it's constant. New models are constantly being proposed
I would say that there is actually a lot out there, especially within the last five-ten years, but the discourse, here, is largely frozen between Big Model/GNS advocates and those who are not giant fans of same.
I would say that EN World is actually pretty good
...but it does have some great cat videos! Also? A lot of quality streaming TV. Too much.
Neither is a market study from 20 years ago without knowing the methodology.
But, check the dates on those models.
Blacow - 1980
Threefold model - 1998
Robin Laws - 2002
Color Theory - 2002
Meilahti School (part of "Nordic" theory)- 2002
Turku School (another "Nordic" theory) - 1999
Channel Theory - 2003
Forge Theories (GNS and Big Model) - 1999-2005.
What has there been since 2005? Can we actually name any? It looks more like there's Blacow, and then a burst of theory around the turn of the century, and then not much new in the past decade.
This is completley in alignment with what I said. So I'm not seeing disagreement here.
But, since we aren't really exploring the possible theory landscape, we aren't going to find anything in the discussions.
And believe me, I will now 1000% go out of my way to elucidate my experience with coming around to what "Story Now" play can do. Having an understanding of what it is and what it does has improved my group's level of play and enjoyment. Because I greatly care about finding new, fun, exciting, and innovative ways to get better at and maximize enjoyment from play.
You mean like claiming that my entire position is based on their current surveys? Yeah, that would be disrespectful.Note how I didn't take a whole lot of a position, other than, "Hey, I remember this is in line with that"?
Overblowing what I did say makes a strawman. Please don't.