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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8636843" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I mean...when it's pretty clear how negative Edwards thinks "incoherent" game design is, to the point that he seems to struggle to speak positively about "hybrids" etc. even when outright trying to do so, it doesn't seem like much of a leap (or, indeed, a leap at all) to see incoherence as being the defining reason why these things separate from each other.Then, as I have said before, I see this as a fault built on reifying a union of distinct ideas arising from a quirk of the language we use, rather than the actual character of the things involved. Like someone saying that, because I would the same verb in the phrases "I love ice cream," "I love my boyfriend," "I love my homeland," and "I love the design of 13th Age," these things must all fundamentally be the same in some core sense, whereas "I enjoy long walks among the trees" must be fundamentally different because it doesn't. They are not, and indeed I wouldn't even put them in the same categories of actions, even if there's some commonality there (e.g. romance for one's SO is rather different from patriotism, even though both involve affection).Man, at least from the essays I've read thus far, I never got any sense of this! It very very much read like Sim is a monolithic thing that is fundamentally united with minor, perhaps even irrelevant details, not a vast category containing multitudes that could conflict internally. Same with the other creative agendas. This is...really really getting into territory of "why on earth did Edwards use the terms he used if this isn't what he meant?"Perhaps I am daft. What does color refer to?I guess I need to go diving in the "provisional glossary" again to get all these underlying terms defined because I thought I understood them (due to them being natural language stuff...) and am now seeing that no, it's <s>turtles</s> terms of art all the way down. Never, ever assume you know what a GNS term means on sight. Because it probably diverges, sometimes a lot!This reads, to me, like some logical pedantry (not that I have much room to complain about pedantry in others, but still.) That is, if we have defined system so broadly, then literally all activities are now an RPG system. Some are just awful stinkers.But to answer the question buried in there...no, it doesn't look like that at all to me. What you call an "illusion" being "dispelled," I call rejection of an inherently valuable consensus between participants. "Dispelling" that "illusion" means stepping away from consensus and into dictatorship, and alleging the result is still a "democracy" in the Verinari one-man-one-vote style: Verinari is The Man and he gets The Vote.Well, I haven't played AW, so I can't make a full comparison. But the constantly repeated "talk with your DM because this whole thing could be completely worthless if they decide not to use X" smacks pretty hard of Calvinball to me. There is this pervasive "nope we literally cannot even assume that there even are races, let alone what they might be, because absolutely positively EVERYTHING is 110% malleable, and indeed might even change from one session to the next." I see a lot of lip service paid to telling DMs to be consistent and little to nothing on how DMs actually become consistent, which just makes matters worse. (But, again, I am highly, highly skeptical of the claim that DMs are typically very consistent and rigorous in their freeform work. That would require a level of statistical understanding and working memory of past choices that I have not seen borne out, neither in direct experience nor in discussion with others.)....it is inherent to the idea of "a rule" that you are supposed to follow it, insofar as following it serves the purpose for which the rule was designed.* Just as it is inherent to the idea of rules to have a purpose for which they are designed. For something to be a rule, it must be both normative and teleological. If it is not normative, it isn't a rule: maybe it's a guideline or a suggestion or a proposal, but it's not a rule without normativity. Likewise, if it has no designed purpose or end, it isn't a rule. In fact I'm not sure it would be anything at all without a telos! Maybe a mere barked command?The need for agreement is located in them because of the definition of thing they are (or claim to be), in the same way that the need for 90 degree angles are located in squares because of the definition of "square." To be a rule is to have both telos and normativity.*This, incidentally, is why I get annoyed when people assert that "Lawful Good" must be inherently less Good than "Neutral Good." But that's a side issue.</blockquote>

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