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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9340786" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Wow.  Shocked.  This is actually a really good thread with wide and varied contribution.  I was certain this was going to be an absolute, 0-200 MPH trainwreck when I saw the title and then saw the very predictable early responses.  Pleasantly surprised.A trio of thoughts on art vs creative vision as North Star & audience of one vs mass consumption motive.1)  My partner and I (along with my sister and her husband...who are both actual artists) make a lot of random stuff for personal life hacks, for our home's general function/decor, and for climbing workouts in particular (actual things to facilitate getting stronger or working on techniques and then mounts for them when necessary).All of this stuff is (i) 100 % creative vision as North Star & (ii) audience of one (well...two if you separate us out!).2)  Contrast (1) with the varying Story Now games that I GM.  There is no creative vision as North Star; that would basically be the entire site nuked from orbit.  What there is would be (just GM-side here) a novel game engine + the constraints of that engine + the constraints of prior fiction and present situation-state/game-state + my brain locked into the moment (following Yoda's Empire advice to Luke!) trying to generate the most compelling decision-space for player(s) to navigate right now.3)  Interestingly, this cognitive orientation and ordering of play looks somewhat similar when running the type of Pawn Stance Dungeon/Hexcrawls that I've spent at least half of my GMing hours on (probably more).  Make a map, key/stock/theme it, run the procedures and do my part providing vigorous opposition with respect to what has come before.  Does it count as creative vision as North Star when you prep the dungeon/hex?  There is certainly a level of focus on outputs/progression there.  However, if you generate a good dungeon/hex, with compelling and dynamic branches (including multiple ingress/egress to various rooms), with compelling and dynamic encounter tables when Wandering Monsters hit, relentlessly follow NPC Reactions to the interesting and varied places they can lead (particularly when they turn up a WTF reaction)...well, you've got something compelling and dynamic that can generate a rather different blow-by-blow play experience (GM-side and player-side) upon different playthroughs.I mean, don't get me wrong.  Its not going to be something like an Agon Island or a Dogs in the Vineyard Town where the prep and the play is centered around protagonist-interests.  But I don't think we need to reference "does this game center its play around protagonism upon moral/ethos-motivated lines" in order to examine whether prep and play (either discretely or both in concert) to scrutinize it for its level of (or absence of) creative vision as North Star, right?I'm finding myself wondering how this tracks with the conversation?</blockquote>

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