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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4237697" data-attributes="member: 42582">PrecociousApprentic, I just wanted to respond to a couple of your very interesting posts.I think many simulationists can find the intervention of mechanics which have no in-game meaning a bit confronting, however, because such mechanics foreground the metagame in a way that is at odds with the immersion, be it the "verisimilitude" immersion of purist-for-system or the "genre" immersion of high-concept.Tunnels and Trolls would be another example of results-oriented rather than emergent/process-oriented design, and I find it hard (not impossible, but hard) to imagine really satisfactory simulationist play using Tunnels and Trolls.I agree that purist-for-system and high-concept are very different things. But I think both aim at a type of immersion which can be disrupted by a flagrant metagame - and once fluff and crunch are divorced in the manner you are describing the metagame can become rather flagrant.I take the implication of what you are saying here to be something that I also thought when I read the OP, namely, that the "blackbox" model is just another label for "fortune-in-the-middle" action resolution.And again, I think there is a reason why simulationist games tend to aim for fortune-at-the-end: it helps keep the metagame suppressed.If you are an "illusionist" simulationist who nevertheless likes the ouput focuse/FiTM approach, does that mean that you are happy to let the GM do the narration? Once the player is doing the narration, the game might be tending towards narrativism (because the GM is no longer creating an "illusion" of player protagonism).</blockquote>

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