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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8237476" data-attributes="member: 85870">Wasn't trying to be provocative or denigrating at all. What you describe is nigh identical to a mindset I once held. I believed it was both important and necessary that the game world in RPG play had some sort of "existence outside the players." That in order for RPG play to work coherently, that the game world needed to exist as an "externality".But ultimately I couldn't refute a simple syllogism:All fiction is constructed by one or more authors. All RPG play operates within a fiction. Ergo, the fictional space of RPG play is constructed.The game world doesn't exist independently as an externality, it's constructed. Even if the construct is generated for particular purposes, needs, and agendas (usually good ones), it doesn't change its nature as a construct. Pulling a piece of that construct out, setting it aside and declaring, "This thing here, this piece of the fiction, it exists independently and externally to the rest of the fiction," doesn't turn it from fiction into not-fiction. Applying the "externally existent" descriptor to the game world is a category error.Under scrutiny, eventually I had to recognize that those advocating for player-facing mechanics had a point---all RPG play starts as an idea in someone's head. All of it. It's something that somebody, somewhere, woke up one day (or over hundreds of days) and constructed. And the verb constructed was the tipping point.I have no issue with your game style, or that it's enjoyable to you. At some point, I'm going to play in that style again myself!But setting apart the "game world" from the rest of the shared fiction doesn't make it less fictional, it just means that I-as-GM have privileged that part of the fiction more than other parts.But I completely understand the justification for privileging the fiction pertaining to the game world. It's a very useful conceit if the agenda is to limit "experiencing the game world only through the view of the character." And I get why that agenda exists. It's driven by the desire to provide pleasurable gaming experiences---the unfolding of mysteries, the experience of exploring the unknown, of exploring an alternative ego / mind to better understand the self. It's driven by a desire to provide some of the really deep, valuable, and pleasurable outcomes that only RPG play can produce.I have zero problem with you wanting to privilege the game world fiction for your own play. Just don't turn it into a category error.</blockquote>

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