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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9770862" data-attributes="member: 7026617">Went back to this given your addition of your third paragraph.I think the problem here is "intent" is serving a bit too many masters for this sub-discussion.A general purpose game like GURPS or Hero is not really being designed with a theme or even a tone intrinsically in mind; it may hit one because of its evolution (which is largely what happened with Hero) but a lot of is just that its almost impossible to have a generic game system with any detail at all where the details don't put their thumb on some tonal things (GURPS early decision to lean into quasi-realistic representation lands here; they could have just as easily leaned more into the fantastic, but they were going to lean somewhere).The problem that produces is that in a certain sense, a generic game system doesn't by itself have intent.  What I mean by that is its not aimed at doing a specific thing; in fact its very actively aimed at not doing that.I think "intent" and "purpose" should probably be made more distinct for that reason here.  A game aimed at a theme or specific of genre has an "intent"; its trying to get a specific kind of result.  A generic game, or a game theoretically aimed at those themes or genres that doesn't do that lacks intent, but at least in the former case, may still have "purpose".(Its not impossible to still have purpose with a game aimed at a theme or genre and not have intent, but I think I'll stick with the position that's usually a case of some who hasn't entirely thought through what they're doing, or the relatively rare case of semi-generic systems (i.e. ones that are aimed a sort of genre, but very broadly).</blockquote>

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