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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8615541" data-attributes="member: 71699">Likewise! Maybe it will help if we clarify the experiences informing our arguments?I gather you play with family members and a university or peer group. Based on the titles you reference, I assume you have decades of TTRPG experience. My grasp of how you play is that you don't allow mechanical cues to influence your fiction, except where the game designers have dictated that unequivocally in writing. (I've worded that strongly only in the hope that it will be easier for you to clarify.) Funnily enough, you often cite titles that chimed now or in the past with my own tastes.I play with family members, a peer group (formerly a university group, now more often work colleagues), and in the last few years folk I connect with on discord or VTT. Like you I have decades of TTRPG experience. My work has kept me in close connection with games and gamers. I have also been involved with research on play and cognition over several years. One caveat is that the overwhelming majority of folk I have played with have been committed gamers: more steeped in gaming than average. (Average for players broadly I mean, not average for these boards.) I and the folk I have played with do allow mechanical cues to influence our fiction, while also aiming to take advantage of the game as designed.Broadly, I view games as tools. As I've said elsewhere, I share Aareth's intuition that they amount to mechanisms. Tools have expected uses that they are shaped for, but a tool's use is ultimately settled by its user.</blockquote>

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