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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5606646" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't agree with this, apart from anything else because the pull of simulationist (ie exploration-focused) priorities has historically had such a big influence on RPG design and play.Scenarios like Dragonlance or Dead Gods, for example, where the payoff for the players is basically having the GM lead them through a compelling story, have been very influential on the hobby. And this is all about exploration. The players aren't authoring a story. It has already been authored (by the scenario writer). The players are exploring someone else's creative work (perhaps adding a bit of colour and characterisation in the margins).Games like Runequest and Classic Traveller have also been very influential, and these are primarily about generating, via a range of dice mechancis, a causally coherent gameworld that the players explore via their PCs. (This is a marked contrast with early D&D, for example, which at least in the published text strongly emphasised Gygaxian gamism. Although he doesn't use the modern Forge terminology, Andy Slack discusses this contrast between classic D&D play and classic Traveller play in an old White Dwarf article called Backdrop of Stars.)The main contrast that The Forge is trying to get at, as I see it, is between metagame-driven play - whether gamist, where the players play to win, or narrativist, where the players play so as to generate a satisfying story - and play that abjures metagame, and just focuses on exploring the fictional material. The latter is simulationism.</blockquote>

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