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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8630959" data-attributes="member: 16814">As has been cleared earlier, GNS dispensed with genre as a concept and actively told readers to not consider it.  So, in consideration here, the only way genre could be considered would be as the focus point of play in a high-concept sim.  You call this an artificial requirement, and of course it is -- this isn't making any useful point.  All taxonomies are artificial!  Your intent seems to be to say it's not a useful requirement, and here I could not disagree more.  Looking at what the focal point, the main point, the primary agenda of play is very useful. It says exactly what is hoped to be most achieved in play.  Simulationism says that this primary desire from play is to generate play that adheres to a specific and known internal cause (this term is defined in the essay).  It's about this kind of cause and effect, in other words.  So if the primary point of play is to recreate the feel and type of story from Mad Max, then you're engaged in a kind of high-concept sim of a type of post-apoc story.  If there's a question in play about what happens, adherence to that genre set of tropes is the trump card -- you will go with that.  This is what high-concept sims do.  So, looking at this, it is useful to identify if this is the primary agenda -- if adherence to this genre emulation is the trump in any conflict in play.And, in AW, it's absolutely not.  In a game like Gamma World, it much more is -- the mechanics bend to produce this resolution and the GM is authorized to override the rules when they result in outcomes that violate this premise.As for genre as trappings -- set dressing if you will -- this is pretty much all games.  They all have some set dressing.  The question isn't if it's present, because it always is, but if the set dressing is the most important part of play.  Take Star Wars games -- there's a lot of effort to make sure that it's the setting that has the primacy of place.  You're playing a Star Wars game, it feels like Star Wars, and you tell Star Warian stories.  If the game doesn't feel like Star Wars, this gets called out as a problem (and we've seen this with the d20 Star Wars, corrected a good deal with SAGA, but done much better with WEG or the newer versions of the game).  Evoking setting isn't simulationism, though.  I'm wondering how many people have to say this how many times before it starts to resonate with you.  Set dressing isn't it.</blockquote>

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