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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9816768" data-attributes="member: 42582">Your reference to "pressure" here makes me thing I may have not properly understood your earlier post - apologies for that!I now am inferring (I hope correctly!) that when you referred to a "focus on the interaction and exploration of the 'game world' itself" you meant that sort of interaction/exploration for its own sake. (That is, independent of or without regard to any sort of "pressure".)If I've got that right, then I think you're right back in the Forge/GNS/Ron Edwards meaning of "simulationism". And I agree that that's a reasonable sense of the term, in the context of RPGing. Though I think the interaction/exploration can be focused on things other than the setting. There can be exploration of character for its own sake (eg at least some approaches to Pendragon, with its rules for passions and traits and so on); of situation for its own sake (eg at least some approaches to CoC, where making sense of the mystery and horror doesn't have a "complete the adventure" focus but more of a "bask in the radiance of horrors humanity was not meant to know" focus); and of mechanical system for its own sake (eg at least some moments of Rolemaster play, where there is just pleasure in seeing how the mechanical interactions and consequences unfold).I think sincerity can also mean a willingness to accept what is revealed. In the context of purist-for-system sim - that is, sim which prioritises exploration of the mechanical system itself (and RM is a poster child for this sort of play) - I think this mode of sincerity is important. Everyone at the table is committed to treating the mechanical system as accurate.In my Rolemaster group, when we found the system produced results that we couldn't all commit to, we would change the system.  Sometimes that was in favour of accuracy/realism; but often it was more about making the system hang together in a way that we could all accept as coherent, and hence that wouldn't strain our commitment to accepting the outcomes it produced.</blockquote>

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