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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5601065" data-attributes="member: 54877">I begin to suspect that the hole in the Forge theory is due to the personality of its supporters leading to a blind spot. No, I don't mean that in any hostile way. I mean personality traits, the same way that being extremely introverted has consequences for what I do and like, but is hardly an indictment (or kudo) to my personality. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I keep hearing "focus" on a particular agenda to describe a behavior that to me sounds more like "intensity". You see this over and over in the reports--it was not that the themes of the narrativist session excluded any particular focus on simulation or gamism. It was rather that the particpants became so intense on the themes, that everything else necessarily became less important. I've met people that do this, but I'm not generally one. I can focus on something, say a light-read, fun fantasy novel, to the point that I won't hear a phone ring right next to me. But it is not an intense experience. It's just a fluff book that I happen to be heavily focused upon. It isn't a perfect match, but you might say that the logical part of the brain is the focus and the emotional part the intensity. I'm not sure that this works the other way--very intense on X without also focus on X--though I know of a few serious examples where it might be true. In any case, I've previously described that our group is made up of people who task switch very rapidly when gaming, and this is why we have relatively fruitful gaming out of all three agendas, often switching our focus in seconds. I think when games are "clicking" with traditional groups, playing in a traditional style, this is what is happening. What Forge theory describes as disfunctional, is actually highly functional giving sufficient cues passed back and forth amongst the group. (Nor is this limited to the agenda, as task switching into and out of metagaming, social gaming, and so on also can occur.) I think the synergies that Starfox discusses emerge out of that mix of task switching and cues.  If you've ever played in a jazz band, and done improvizational jazz, you'll know exactly what I mean.</blockquote>

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