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Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8637803" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The strictest possible view is, in my view, not a plausible view.</p><p></p><p>I sketched my view in the post you replied to: some rules are constitutive, some are not, there may be borderline cases. In AW, "If you do it, you do it" is I think constitutive. That is what drives play and gives the game its distinctive character. It is the absence of that from [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s Not-AW that, most fundamentally, makes it Not-AW.</p><p></p><p>Gygax and Moldvay spelled out principles in RPG texts in the 1970s and early 1980s. Marc Miller came pretty close in 1977 too.</p><p></p><p>So I don't see it as a new development.</p><p></p><p>What I think changed in the 1980s was that different principles from Gygax's and Moldvay's were promulgated (To players: <em>stick to your characterisation, which should be consistent with your stats</em>; to GMs: <em>make sure the story occurs</em>) but the techniques and systems in widespread use weren't suitable to serve those principles, and so meta-principles like the so-called rule zero or Golden Rule became widely adopted and advocated. It's very common, today, to encounter people who assert that those sorts of conferrals of power on the GM are part-and-parcel of RPGing. And what is distinctive to me about a game like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World or MHRP, in spelling out its principles, is that one thing the principles do is to state that "rule zero" or the "Golden Rule" is not part of the game.</p><p></p><p>I don't understand what the force of this point is supposed to be.</p><p></p><p>Every day people all over the world cop parking fines not because they deliberately set out to park illegally, but because they failed to notice the signs, or they misread them. People make errors in filling in forms, and reporting earnings or expenses, and the like, not because they are tax cheats or insurance cheats but because they get confused or forget something or the rule isn't clear to them.</p><p></p><p>So it's no surprise that some people - especially if they have strongly internalised the idea of "rule zero"/"the Golden Rule" - might play AW in a way that doesn't conform to its principles. Even if they've read the principles and a sincerely trying to implement them! That doesn't show anything about a lack of power in the principles; it just shows the fallibility of human cognition and intention.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8637803, member: 42582"] The strictest possible view is, in my view, not a plausible view. I sketched my view in the post you replied to: some rules are constitutive, some are not, there may be borderline cases. In AW, "If you do it, you do it" is I think constitutive. That is what drives play and gives the game its distinctive character. It is the absence of that from [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s Not-AW that, most fundamentally, makes it Not-AW. Gygax and Moldvay spelled out principles in RPG texts in the 1970s and early 1980s. Marc Miller came pretty close in 1977 too. So I don't see it as a new development. What I think changed in the 1980s was that different principles from Gygax's and Moldvay's were promulgated (To players: [i]stick to your characterisation, which should be consistent with your stats[/i]; to GMs: [i]make sure the story occurs[/i]) but the techniques and systems in widespread use weren't suitable to serve those principles, and so meta-principles like the so-called rule zero or Golden Rule became widely adopted and advocated. It's very common, today, to encounter people who assert that those sorts of conferrals of power on the GM are part-and-parcel of RPGing. And what is distinctive to me about a game like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World or MHRP, in spelling out its principles, is that one thing the principles do is to state that "rule zero" or the "Golden Rule" is not part of the game. I don't understand what the force of this point is supposed to be. Every day people all over the world cop parking fines not because they deliberately set out to park illegally, but because they failed to notice the signs, or they misread them. People make errors in filling in forms, and reporting earnings or expenses, and the like, not because they are tax cheats or insurance cheats but because they get confused or forget something or the rule isn't clear to them. So it's no surprise that some people - especially if they have strongly internalised the idea of "rule zero"/"the Golden Rule" - might play AW in a way that doesn't conform to its principles. Even if they've read the principles and a sincerely trying to implement them! That doesn't show anything about a lack of power in the principles; it just shows the fallibility of human cognition and intention. [/QUOTE]
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