NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8594513" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't see how it's "immune to analysis" - for instance, in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/at-the-intersection-of-skilled-play-system-intricacy-prep-and-story-now.687017/" target="_blank">this active thread</a>, discussion is taking place of the relationship between "step on up"/gamist play and "story now"/narrativist play.Edwards also accurately predicted the main flashpoints around 4e D&D. As I posted nearly a decade ago:I think that's a theory (or analysis, or account - not much is at stake in this choice of terminology) with a significant degree of power. At the very least, it strongly suggests that he successfully identified some important features of approaches to RPGing.Nearly everything I understand, these days, about RPGing I owe to Edwards, Vincent Baker, Paul Czege, Robin Laws and Luke Crane.But I don't think I share all, or even many, of their preferences. Edwards grew up on Champions; I've never played it. If you look at Baker's and Czege's RPGs, they have a type of thematic seriousness or sophistication or "edginess" that is not part of my RPGing, which mostly involves pretty standard fantasy and adventure tropes.I didn't find Edwards's essays convincing. I found them illuminating. They explained RPGs - like T&T and HeroWars - that up to that point I had found incomprehensible (for different reasons in those two particular cases). They explained, what up until that point had been mysterious to me, why I found RM more enjoyable than RQ even though both are, on their surface, hardcore process-simulations RPGs. The same thing also explained why archery builds were the least interesting sort of RM PC. (The explanation is that RM melee and spellcasting - but not archery - contains a distinctive site of player decision-making that allows the player to inject their own conception of how much is at stake into the resolution process. It somewhat resembles the decision-making, in HeroWars, about how many action points to bid.)By laying out different sorts of techniques and orientations, they allowed me to take self-conscious control of my RPGing in a way that I never had before. I'm a better GM, better player, and have had far richer RPG experiences, as a result.</blockquote>

Verification