NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8625515" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, taking a totally inexperienced stab at it...I think there are four main goals, and that GNS was decent at looking for them, but biased in certain ways because it was a response to the dominance of one type of system.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">"Score" and "Achievement." "Score" is a measure (not always literally quantitative) of how well one succeeds. "Achievement" is an emphasis on besting a difficult problem, on proving yourself (or your team etc.) superior to the forces that oppose you (which may be enemies, weather, the other side(s) of a negotiation, the process of crafting an item, etc.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">"Groundedness" and "Simulation." A "Grounded" experience is one that has truthiness, that has the ring of truth, that feels concrete and even practical in some sense. A "Simulation" makes, as close as possible, the actual sequence of events as accurate, precise, and close-to-physicality as can be achieved while still being playable.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">"Conceit" and "Emulation." A core "Conceit" is the heart of a story structure, a concept that one desires to explore. "Emulation" is an effort to inculcate a particular tone or feeling through the process of play, usually inspired by a medium (like superhero comics) or a specific work/author (like Tolkien or Lovecraft).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">"Values" and "Issues." "Values" are the things the characters care about, believe in, or have commitment to, in a moral/ethical/knowledge sense, which can shift or change as a result of dramatic events. "Issues" are moments of tension, revelation, or crisis regarding these things, which force a response, often a change or a hardening of one's choices.</li> </ol>If one wishes to acronymize these, SAGSCEVI works, though a different acronym might be better. This is just a first stab with literally a few minutes effort put into each category, striving to show why I think it is unwise to combine some things Edwards combined.I believe these things can be combined in a single game, but in general it is difficult to design things that serve multiple goals with similar levels of fidelity. E.g. I think 4e is very big on Score and Achievement in its combat system, but offers some minor Conceit and Emulation in the doing (the "fantasy action movie" idea), but without a lot of concern for Groundedness or Simulation. Values and Issues are addressed in a much more emergent kind of way; it is not strictly that the rules seek out to address them, but rather that they trace out the appropriate shapes in a rudimentary way.By comparison, 3e goes all in for both Score-and-Achievement (as intended, according to Monte Cook anyway) and Groundedness-and-Simulation, but is rather pointedly opposed to Values-and-Issues as a thing to play through (see the many, many issues and confusions induced by alignment), and has a love/hate relationship with Conceit-and-Emulation. (That is, the basal system kinda avoids it, but several of its settings try to pursue it, e.g. Eberron uses the Conceit of "what if we just...make a world that would result from the rules we wrote?", and it is openly an Emulation of classic pulp adventure, Doc Savage and Indiana Jones type stuff, with a bit of noir and political shenanigans thrown in for spice.)</blockquote>

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