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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9760021" data-attributes="member: 4937">So many people just don't want to engage with what I'm saying.  Arguments by analogy are almost always wrong.  I used to make them all the time but then I realized I was usually doing this because my thinking about the subject was fuzzy.  But it doesn't get any less fuzzy by bringing an analogy in, because all you are doing now is complicating the argument rather than simplifying it.  Now in addition to the original argument, we have additionally to argue over whether the analogy is apt and whether you have correctly described the thing you have brought in to be the analogy.  In this case the analogy isn't apt, because a punch is defined as "too much force applied usually with a close fist or other solid striking surface (else it is a slap)" and not as merely touching, yet no one even of my critics has claimed that the definition of railroading was "to use too much GM force to get your way".  Everyone has been saying that the definition of railroading was to use GM force to reduce player agency in order to get what they want.  If people had from the start the idea that "railroading" was just "using too much GM force to get your way" we'd barely have anything to talk about because then people have to admit that this thing was quantitative and that railroading techniques did reduce player agency but that that was acceptable as long as you didn't do it too much.  We'd have completely congruent mental models but just slightly different language.  All we'd have to do to get agreement was just map our different terminology to each other's terminology.  Instead the problem is people are holding different mental models of what railroading is.So why complicate the discussion by veering off into an analogy when you could just address what I actually said?</blockquote>

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