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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 9843140" data-attributes="member: 6993955">Huh, well, I don't think I completely agree. My first disagreement is that contract bridge players are somehow the straight equivalent to RPG players. I don't think that's obvious at all (or particularly accurate). I suspect that contract bridge players are way more serious about the rules that your average RPG player.Second, I think that you seriously discount the actual nature of the game, by which I mean the conversation that happens at the table, as a primary site of learning for players. I think that players are quite possibly as concerned, or perhaps even more concerned, about being 'better' in terms of their at-table play as they are concerned about delving into the rules to develop better heuristics. This idea of being better is only peripherally concerned with the rules, but is very concerned with all the other stuff that happens while we play RPGs.I don't disagree that some RPGs don't provide a lot of heuristic levels for players to plumb, I think that's quite obviously the case, and I think that the games that is true of will lack a lot of extended or replay value for canny players. That doesn't mean those are bad games, they just aren't deep in the way you want them to be. Not every RPG needs to be that. There's lots of room for games that great for a short run, or a palette cleanser between other games.I don't think we have any major disagreements here, I think we just differ on the shading. With one exception. RPGs are special, at least insofar as they really aren't the same as games like bridge, or a board game - there's a whole other set of enormously important things going on in RPGs that make them their own case. This isn't simply a matter of better or worse design (although that is undeniably important) but I think that your argument is entirely focused on the rules, rules as interpretable text, and ignores what I think is the core element of RPGs, which is the conversation that happens at the table. That exchange of interpretations and meeting of hermeneutic horizons that characterize the recursive exploration of the shared diegetic space. It's really not that much like bridge.</blockquote>

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