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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8630861" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Your phrasing and posting style seems to indicate otherwise. That is, you pretty clearly seem to be doing some Socratic questioning, which is necessarily an attempt to poke holes in things, not to generate fresh looks with fresh eyes.Worth noting, while I think such a scenario, if backed up by structure (whether that be "DM wrote the train timetable" or "this system has rules for how train timetables are constructed") is naturally what I call Groundedness-and-Simulation in purpose, it can be relatively easily tuned to Score-and-Achievement because there are natural, objective metrics of success present, if one wishes to emphasize them. There's the simplistic "do you make it to your destination on time," but there can be much greater fineness of strategic play, e.g. making it to one's destination the fastest, or with the least money spent, or with the fewest transfers, or in a way that can't be traced (this last one being a non-numerical form of Score, to emphasize that Score need not always be literal numbers to still be semi-objective). In general though, people who really deeply love S&A-driven gameplay are going to find a "train timing game" that goes all in for G&S-driven play disappointing, because (as is the case with so many things IRL), there is little to no real strategy, and little to no benefit between near-perfect optimization and solutions which simply get the job done. Conversely, if you switch it to G&S lovers in S&A gameplay, they're very likely to get annoyed by all the "illogical" or "unrealistic" assumptions, and find the lack of concreteness unrewarding. (Though I DO NOT want to discuss the argument itself, consider the complaints about "combat as sport" vs "combat as war," which specifically highlight artificiality designed to make engaging strategy/tactics.)And this would be why I said what I said above. In fact, you have specifically dismissed "process" Sim with your first three words, "forget resource management," and then imported "Gamism" with the following phrase, "it's all about finding our way efficiently."The instant you do that, you are setting aside the physical metaphor of the activity (at least loosely related to what I call "Groundedness") and concerns with the causal chain (ditto for what I call "Simulation"), and instead setting a metric by which success may be semi-objectively judged ("Score") and focusing on a Situation/Challenge which the player(s) may either overcome or fail to overcome ("Achievement.") You have specifically made the leap from "process" Sim to "Gamism," and even called it out with your own words. Indeed, in so doing, you have shown how there is tension between these things; in order to really make it a satisfying challenge to overcome, you chose to set aside the context or nature of the play-actions in order to focus on ways they can be evaluated and promoting skillful/strategic play.Such a turn seems to lend credence to the idea that, whether or not the GNS creative agendas are mutually exclusive, pursuing one within a particular context has a tendency to pull one away from the others.Well, I'm not the person you asked. But my answer would be: "If you don't actually care about it (whatever 'it' was), then it was never Point B to begin with. If you DID care but stopped caring, then you 'got to' Point B because of that realization: the Issue was resolved by way of letting go of the Value you thought you cared about. If you DIDN'T care but at some point started caring, then that is a new Issue that has arisen naturally in the course of play, which may resolve separately or concurrently with the current Issue. If you cared all along and reached a resolution that satisfied you, then you reached Point B (and also why are you complaining?!)"I'm not really sure 'Sim Now' and 'Game Now actually do make much sense in context though. As noted, 'Game Now' is something like Calvinball, or for "real" games, things like Nomic and Mao; these games look almost nothing like roleplaying games and are so much more niche than TTRPGs they make "Story Now" look broadly popular. As for 'Sim Now,' well, you haven't even articulated what that would look like, and I will admit up front that I am skeptical it can even happen. How do you make consistent physical metaphors for the activity and I mean...others have already given their answer here. But mine would be "because Gamism is pretty much cut and dried and doesn't require much discussion." I articulated in a prior post what seemed to me to have been a very clear consensus on the topic of GNS Gamism. No one objected, and several folks who have been discussing GNS here reacted positively. Since the "Gamism" conversation seems to have largely run its course, apart from flare-ups like "what would 'Game Now' look like?", the discussion has focused on stuff that's, y'know, still up for discussion.That seems to belie the actual things Gygax said though. His absolute ironclad adamant stance that it was "impossible" to run a game where strict time records were not kept is an openly Gamist prescription (though one that, as with the train example above, could be turned to "process" Sim ends if that is what one finds valuable).Again, I'd dispute that. Firstly, everyone generally agrees that it is possible for even very well constructed systems to go wrong. That doesn't necessarily mean they "don't really consider system important," it means they are being realists about the quality of actual games made by imperfect humans. If, however, the response is very literally "nah, do not MAKE a rule, just figure it out fresh each and every time," then yes, I would call that "system doesn't matter." E.g. even in 5e, which wears its (alleged) "system doesn't matter" on its sleeve, we've seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the (oh-so-feared) removal of alignment, or removing fixed ability score bonuses from ancestries, or the bitter and acrimonious debates about "broken" options like coffeelocks and one-level Hexblade dips and such. If system didn't matter, no one would ever complain about these things. Because they're pure system, and yet they matter! Likewise, even really simple things come up, like the fact that spears and tridents are perfectly identical other than tridents being heavier, more expensive, and harder to use (spears are simple, tridents are martial). A Gamist "system matters" critique of this is, "why even print it if it's totally useless?! No one would ever willingly use a trident if a spear would do the job!" Which is something I have in fact actually seen. I have also seen, much more rarely, a more "process" Sim critique, more or less "it's illogical that a weapon would exist that is in all ways equal or inferior to another, so why doesn't the trident have something to justify its use in the world?" Many "system matters" "process" Sim folks will just provide that justification, codifying it as a house rule.Because house rules aren't a declaration that system doesn't matter. House rules just mean system matters and the default system was (in some way) wrong for the table. Actual "system doesn't matter" play would be to shrug off even openly inconsistent rulings, which very few D&D players are willing to tolerate.</blockquote>

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