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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8628750" data-attributes="member: 71699">I can see how such concerns might arise from conflating concepts that are dissimilar. My claim is as to functional play. Functional for whom? All players participating in that play. Mine is not a claim about artistic (or other specific) merit, although I can see that where I or others use a general word like "success" we risk suggesting a much wider claim than intended. I hope it is clear that I am not suggesting anything wider than functional (and as contrasted with dysfunctional)!Your point as I understood it was that Edwards is not offering a theory of the success of RPGs. Are you clarifying here to say that the theory does predict success, but just not commercial success?You may have in mind a false dichotomy, unless your argument really is that commercial strategy and commercial success rule out the possibility of success on other criteria? If so, I'd again stress that I am making a narrow claim about the play being functional for the game's players. Success on other terms than that (including commerical) would be a separate debate.I see. For me the actual words of folk playing a game are worthy of credence, and I feel that the alternative view is unnecessarily elitist. I could be more critical of 5e and suggest that - like Marvel movies - it regurgitates and marginally improves upon only what has been found to be successful before it. But that is a separate complaint: it does not rule out the game also being successfully more functional for its audience (i.e. making improvements that result in greater or enhanced functionality for them relative to its precursors.)I could say that those precursors were all just as functional, or even more so, for their various (and variously sized, but smaller) appreciative cohorts. It's pretty hard to make the case either way, but for me folk writing glowingly to make direct comparisons with those precursors based on their personal experience both of them and the current game, would be indicative. Or at least extremely difficult to count as implying the opposite, and putting the burden squarely on those who might think otherwise to sustain their counter-claims.As to the artistic, ethical, etc merits? For me those are answered separately and from previous conversations I believe I share many of your preferences there.</blockquote>

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