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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9288043" data-attributes="member: 7023840">This is the familiar "Texas Two Step" that we see repeated. I've talked about this before when simulation is the term used.********The trouble is that while this is jargon, it also has specific connotations that people are familiar with in the real world. For example, when someone says that a pilot has 1,000 hours in a Boeing 737 simulator, a person who hears that assumes that the machine is designed to simulate the reality of flying a Boeing 737- not just some fictional world or fictional genre. In common parlance, simulations usually reflect our reality, and the closer that they completely reflect reality, they more accurate they are as a simulation. So this is where the Texas Two Step comes in, over and over and over again.Zeno: I like playing that RPG because I like Lord of the Rings.Achilles: Well, we all know that is a simulationist RPG. You like simulations! (Using the JARGON that someone is playing the game as a simulation of the LoTR genre).Zeno: Um, sure. I like the way the game immerses me in the feeling of Middle Earth, and the fiction of Tolkien.Achilles: HA! How dare you say that? Don't you know that game doesn't accurately simulate the economics of Middle Earth? For that matter, how can a world exist on the same technology for thousands of years? Heck, I don't even think that Tolkien understood plate tectonics and didn't accurately model how the mountains in his world formed!!!! It's not a simulation! (Using the COMMON VERNACULAR of simulation).Unfortunately, this happens repeatedly- people that deliberately conflate jargon with the more widely-understood meaning in order to berate people for differing preferences. It's the Texas Two Step- first, get people to use jargon, then use the non-jargon meaning to criticize them, and then go back to defending the jargon. Rinse, repeat. Once you see this pattern happen, you will see it happen over and over and over again, with all sorts of terms.***********It's the same thing with plot. Most people use "plot" in the more general sense when it comes to TTRPGs. So, for example, the idea that there is some pre-planned material that adventurers might happen across (such as in a sandbox) is not considered "plot." If you talk to 99 out of 100 gamers, they would not consider a sandbox to be something that has plot. But then there are some that will deliberately conflate both their own jargon use of the term and others' use of the generally accepted term in order to criticize them. Here, we see this - regardless of what one might think of Jason Alexander, it is obvious that he is using the term "plot" in the generally understood sense of the term, yet people are criticizing him using a specialized and insular meaning that is not generally accepted in order to score points by making it seem as if he is, in fact, not practicing what he is preaching.Again, it is perfectly fine for people to use a more specific meaning when they are talking among themselves; it is rather bizarre to demand that others (especially those that may not agree with them) agree to use specific jargon definitions in place of generally accepted meanings for words that have general currency in the field.</blockquote>

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