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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5586415" data-attributes="member: 80487">Only now, the main thrust of that &quot;story orientation&quot; is called (in GNS jargon) simulationism. Notice that Pulsipher opposes it to &quot;those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game.&quot;Do not take the segment of &quot;those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as protagonist&quot; as meaning just what a &quot;new school&quot; would take it to mean. To do so would be to remove entirely from the spectrum the role-playing game as actually conceived and presented and (in my experience) usually well understood in the 1970s.The concept of reducing the real game to a sham in order to tell some frustrated novelist's story was still too perverse to occur to most people at all, much less to occupy the huge mental space it does today. The most likely response to such a suggestion would be, &quot;But...but...what's the point, then?&quot; (That was the response in my circle to the Dragonlance Saga a few years later, and that may have been fairly light railroading compared with some later examples.)Even later, I can tell you from personal experience as the designer of one such, the concept of a new game form that combined RPG techniques with &quot;narrative control&quot; on the part of players to make telling the story the focus of how players played the game was an innovation regarded with considerable wariness and skepticism and some confusion. It was not until the late '80s that I saw this form really take off.Metaphors such as &quot;improvisational puppet theatre&quot; were just very approximate and incomplete comparisons of aspects of the new thing with existing things, not the direct equivalences that newer game forms implement.Such jargon as &quot;hit dice&quot; and &quot;armor class&quot; and &quot;encounter&quot;, &quot;adventure&quot; and &quot;campaign&quot; has also&nbsp; changed meanings as the game changed. &quot;Hit dice&quot; actually means nothing in 4e, I think.Neither of those tendencies, by the way, was anything like a &quot;school&quot; back in '77, certainly nothing like the &quot;new schools&quot; that have so changed not mere &quot;play styles&quot; but the official rules of the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5586415, member: 80487"] Only now, the main thrust of that "story orientation" is called (in GNS jargon) [B]simulationism[/B]. Notice that Pulsipher opposes it to "those who like a silly, totally unbelievable game." Do not take the segment of "those who prefer to be told a story by the referee, in effect, with themselves as protagonist" as meaning just what a "new school" would take it to mean. To do so would be to remove entirely from the spectrum the role-playing game as actually conceived and presented and (in my experience) usually well understood in the 1970s. The concept of reducing the real game to a sham in order to tell some frustrated novelist's story was still too perverse to occur to most people at all, much less to occupy the huge mental space it does today. The most likely response to such a suggestion would be, "But...but...what's the [I]point[/I], then?" (That was the response in my circle to the Dragonlance Saga a few years later, and that may have been fairly light railroading compared with some later examples.) Even later, I can tell you from personal experience as the designer of one such, the concept of a new game form that combined RPG techniques with "narrative control" [I]on the part of players[/I] to make telling the story the focus of how players [I]played the game[/I] was an innovation regarded with considerable wariness and skepticism and some confusion. It was not until the late '80s that I saw this form really take off. Metaphors such as "improvisational puppet theatre" were just very approximate and incomplete comparisons of [I]aspects of[/I] the new thing with existing things, not the direct equivalences that newer game forms implement. Such jargon as "hit dice" and "armor class" and "encounter", "adventure" and "campaign" has also changed meanings as the game changed. "Hit dice" actually means [I]nothing[/I] in 4e, I think. Neither of those tendencies, by the way, was anything like a "school" back in '77, certainly nothing like the "new schools" that have so changed not mere "play styles" but the official rules of the game. [/QUOTE]

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