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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9771192" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can tell you what I took away from your "aimless" comment (and some of the elaboration/discussion it prompted, eg from [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER]):A system is aimless, in this sense, if it adds on elements intended to represent this and that component of the fiction - eg encumbrance rules to represent how laden/burdened characters are; ever-more intricate combat rules to represent the tactics and kinetics of small unit, reasonably close quarters, fighting; weather-generation rules; etc, etc - but it does not talk about, or perhaps even really seem to contemplate, how those elements actually get incorporated into the play of a RPG.The most tell-tale sign, for me, of this sort of "aimlessness" is that the game doesn't talk about how situations are framed or how stakes are established or how outcomes from one moment of resolution feed into or inform subsequent moments of resolution. The game presents itself as an imagined-state-of-affairs-simulator, but doesn't say anything about how a group of people actually go about establishing what to imagine, or how to make it unfold based on the inputs of the various group members. This is all just assumed as "prior knowledge" that the game participants bring with them (probably from their play of mid-80s style D&D).</blockquote>