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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9340468" data-attributes="member: 4937">One of the problems with GNS is that it denied fellowship was one of the reasons players played a game.  In other words, it was developing a theory of fun that kept excluding exactly why many or even most people found the game fun.  It also kept denying that games which were enjoyed by so many people were fun, taking his own frustrations and bad experiences with the game as proof of something other than his or his friends on failures to engage with the game in a functional way.   And let's not get into an analysis of his own games that presumably are what he thinks is fun.(As a simple proof that fellowship can be part of the design of a game, you can design a game with strong competitive aesthetics - for example the fact that an RPG like Aliens often assigns players the role of traitor or Paranoia often has the players on opposing secret factions - and players primarily playing for reasons of fellowship will often find that aesthetic interferes with their enjoying the game.  It's not wrong to design a game that way, but here we have a tangible element of game design that affects player fun and which lies outside of the agendas of play described by GNS.  Good design here doesn't avoid or use that design, but it does address to the participants whether and how they should leverage that aspect of design based on their group goals.  And yes, you can have conflicting agendas were some players think it would be great to play a backstabbing game and others don't think that would be fun, but that conflict at some level exists outside of any possible mechanics of the game.)I disagree with his description of how to design a game then, and I disagree with his revised description now.At a fundamental level, an RPG session is a work of collaborative art created by the participants and art is subjective, and in this case personal, and its creation can't be described by any set of rules simple enough to put into a book.  Making that art requires talent by all participants, and the process of making that art in a way that everyone enjoys requires empathy by the participants.  You can't make empathy out of mechanics.One of the easiest things in the world is to see that something has problems.  But the ability to see that something has problems is completely disconnected from the ability to figure out solutions to those problems.   A lot of people become convinced that because they see the problems that they also have the solutions and become true believers in their own pet theory.</blockquote>

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