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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8257627" data-attributes="member: 85870">From where I sit, it's becoming clear that the &quot;living world&quot; descriptor is apparently about the same as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity---&quot;you'll know it when you see it.&quot;There's some arbitrary time frame in which a GM must have prefabricated some significant percentage of the world, but there's no firm definition of what percentage has to be prefabricated to cross the line from &quot;improv&quot; to &quot;living world.&quot; Furthermore, elements cannot be introduced to the players any earlier than 10 business days after being prefabricated, otherwise you're just &quot;improv-ing&quot; and not &quot;staying true to a living world,&quot; and abandon all hope, ye who enter therein.And of course, any GM who isn't attempting to live up to the arbitrary standards of &quot;living world&quot; play is having shallow, trite roleplaying experiences, and GMs playing those hippie-dippie, baloney &quot;Story Now&quot; games (which barely qualify as RPGs at all, if even) should just go away and leave the purity of the &quot;living world&quot; experience alone, and stop ruining gaming groups and causing contention with all of this &quot;game theory&quot; nonsense.Listening to &quot;living world&quot; proponents try and describe actual play processes reminds me of a scene in the U2 concert movie Rattle and Hum, where the movie director is interviewing the band.Phil Joanou (the director): &quot;So what's the film about?&quot;Larry Mullen Jr. (the drummer): &quot;It's sort of a musical journey, really . . . you know . . . .&quot;&lt;The whole band giggles and scofflaws at the pretentious inanity of Larry's comment&gt;Adam Clayton (the bassist): What the movie is about . . . is, when a band is developing, it goes through certain stages. And for us, we're not the same band as we were when we recorded the War album, for instance, and that was . . . we captured that with Under a Blood Red Sky. And we just wanted to capture this period of the band to . . . oh f*** it, I don't know . . . .&quot;&lt;Band laughs and banters&gt;Phil Joanou (more insistent): &quot;What's the film about?&quot;Larry Mullen Jr.: &lt;already giggling&gt; &quot;It's a musical journey!&quot;So until we get a better definition, the programmer in me is going to define it as,const livingWorld = &quot;It's a musical journey!&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 8257627, member: 85870"] From where I sit, it's becoming clear that the "living world" descriptor is apparently about the same as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity---"you'll know it when you see it." There's some arbitrary time frame in which a GM must have prefabricated some significant percentage of the world, but there's no firm definition of what percentage has to be prefabricated to cross the line from "improv" to "living world." Furthermore, elements cannot be introduced to the players any earlier than 10 business days after being prefabricated, otherwise you're just "improv-ing" and not "staying true to a living world," and abandon all hope, ye who enter therein. And of course, any GM who isn't attempting to live up to the arbitrary standards of "living world" play is having shallow, trite roleplaying experiences, and GMs playing those hippie-dippie, baloney "Story Now" games (which barely qualify as RPGs at all, if even) should just go away and leave the purity of the "living world" experience alone, and stop ruining gaming groups and causing contention with all of this "game theory" nonsense. Listening to "living world" proponents try and describe actual play processes reminds me of a scene in the U2 concert movie [I]Rattle and Hum[/I], where the movie director is interviewing the band. Phil Joanou (the director): "So what's the film about?" Larry Mullen Jr. (the drummer): "It's sort of a musical journey, really . . . you know . . . ." <The whole band giggles and scofflaws at the pretentious inanity of Larry's comment> Adam Clayton (the bassist): What the movie is about . . . is, when a band is developing, it goes through certain stages. And for us, we're not the same band as we were when we recorded the [I]War[/I] album, for instance, and that was . . . we captured that with [I]Under a Blood Red Sky[/I]. And we just wanted to capture this period of the band to . . . oh f*** it, I don't know . . . ." <Band laughs and banters> Phil Joanou (more insistent): "What's the film about?" Larry Mullen Jr.: <already giggling> "It's a musical journey!" So until we get a better definition, the programmer in me is going to define it as, [I]const livingWorld = "It's a musical journey!"[/I] [/QUOTE]

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