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<blockquote data-quote="loseth" data-source="post: 4018808" data-attributes="member: 54535">I agree with both of those assertions, though I don't think the latter affects or is affected by GNS.Here's where we disagree. This is what I mean by believeing (in my opinion falsely) that if you're doing one of GNS, you must be 'sacrificing' the other. I'm a serious immersionist, but the existence of a sword that makes someone hit his opponent every time not matter how poor his skill (which is effectively what the proposed +40 sword would be, assuming we're talking a D20-ish game) totally destroys my sense of immersion. It doesn't seem to fit with (simulate) the fantasy literature I know and love, thus jarring me from my immersion, and it doesn't fit my conception of how magic might affect the world were it real (simulating reality--i.e. verisimilitude). Now let's take a magic sword that, in the hands of a skillful warrior, increases his chance of defeating an opponent but doesn't make him invincible by any means. That provides genre emulation and verisimilitude for me, allowing me to immerse myself much more easilly in the game, setting and story. In this case, increasing the simulationist value of a given game element (the existence of magical sowrds and the bonuses they give) helps increase game balance and thus increases the gamist value of that same element.Of course, as I stated earlier, there are places where two or more of GNS really do conflict and you'll have to choose, but I think there are many more situations (like the one above) where designers assume a conflict exists because the three elements of GNS are often wrongly portrayed as mutually exclusive 'styles.'</blockquote>

[QUOTE="loseth, post: 4018808, member: 54535"] I agree with both of those assertions, though I don't think the latter affects or is affected by GNS. Here's where we disagree. This is what I mean by believeing (in my opinion falsely) that if you're doing one of GNS, you must be 'sacrificing' the other. I'm a serious immersionist, but the existence of a sword that makes someone hit his opponent every time not matter how poor his skill (which is effectively what the proposed +40 sword would be, assuming we're talking a D20-ish game) totally destroys my sense of immersion. It doesn't seem to fit with (simulate) the fantasy literature I know and love, thus jarring me from my immersion, and it doesn't fit my conception of how magic might affect the world were it real (simulating reality--i.e. verisimilitude). Now let's take a magic sword that, in the hands of a skillful warrior, increases his chance of defeating an opponent but doesn't make him invincible by any means. That provides genre emulation and verisimilitude for me, allowing me to immerse myself much more easilly in the game, setting and story. In this case, increasing the simulationist value of a given game element (the existence of magical sowrds and the bonuses they give) helps increase game balance and thus increases the gamist value of that same element. Of course, as I stated earlier, there are places where two or more of GNS really do conflict and you'll have to choose, but I think there are many more situations (like the one above) where designers assume a conflict exists because the three elements of GNS are often wrongly portrayed as mutually exclusive 'styles.' [/QUOTE]

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