clearstream
(He, Him)
One thing I took away from it is to reflect on how PbtA delivers genre. When I think about games like Avatar, MotW and DW, I can see how Moves have let their designers crystallise their focus genres into their core mechanics. (I've dropped the "emulation" because I think those same structures would deliver genre even if it were innovative - emulating nothing - notwithstanding that practically every PbtA design I can think of is emulating some preexisting genre. Although many also synthesise between and evolve them.)That apoc world argument is so dumb. idk what you guys are even getting at any more. feels like the thread was derailed by baker haters who intentionally misinterpret his words and game to prove some strange point
Separately, I was thinking about the story/discourse split in narratology, and whether that had applicability to RPG. (Story is the sequence of events, discourse is the way they're told.) I was thinking about whether some of the objections were as to PbtA's management of story or its management of discourse. There seemed to be a mix of both, with connected objections around management of time at the table (what we're doing, when.) It's interesting to reflect on what Vincent describes as important to him as a designer - for example in pemerton's post just above - and what his rules achieve. It's not solely that we want to say unwelcome things: we want to say paradigmatically unwelcome things!
So while I don't agree with what I initially understood to be its point, I wouldn't characterise the digression as dumb.
Last edited: