Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8629620" data-attributes="member: 42582">The question is: what is the actual error in looking at different modes of exploration?In taxonomy, we could group bees with birds because they fly, but instead divide vertebrates and invertebrates, even though the latter have far more species and far more varied morphology than vertebrates. And not for arbitrary reasons.Edwards has an account of "genre emulation", in high concept sim. It is explanatorily powerful: it explains clashes between that approach and purist-for-system/process sim despite the widespread idea that all you need to do is "add setting" (see eg GURPS); it explains why that approach generates conflict around issues like alignment, metaplot, etc; it is able to answer the questions being asked in this thread about why genre is doing completely different work in AW compared to (say) GUMSHOE.And that account has been used, in repeated posts by me and others, to explain what is going on with D&D play from the mid-80s, and the way that D&D play (since then) and D&D rules (at least since 2nd ed AD&D, with 4e as an exception) straddle the line between low-competition, cooperative gamism and characters-face-problems high concept sim.What is actually missing from the analysis, in your view?EDIT, to QFT:Just to elaborate, and to link to what [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has been saying:If someone loved playing 2nd ed AD&D-style Dark Sun, with lots of worries about water supplies and encounters with dinosaur-riding halflings, and then thought that they could get some similar post-apocalyptic action with AW, they would be surprised - perhaps disappointed, maybe excited, but definitely doing something pretty different with their RPGing. The point of play, and the resulting nature of the experience, is completely different, despite the surface-level resemblance of genre tropes.</blockquote>

Verification