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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7346555" data-attributes="member: 82106">True, though I am loathe to cite Ron Edwards, or at least anything that invokes 'GNS'. Its true that we often fall into using his terminology (or some bastardization of it) but I long ago dismissed the theory itself! I think even Ron has...The posts are lost somewhere in the mass of stuff I've posted on EnWorld over the years, but somewhere there's a thread where I demolished the very concept of 'Simulationism' as a method/approach to play, so how can GNS even stand without that? Anyway, I still agree with the thought expressed.Well, I read the 1e DMG, which is basically the UR-source of GM advice. Even in 1979 I was skeptical of much that was said there, but I didn't really have a response. In those days we all thought that if we could make a 'more authentic' game then somehow that would fix our main issues. It was a very naive idea to say the least, but such are 16yr olds... Then I recall our 1e play largely broke down into high level stuff where the character's agendas ARE paramount because they can escape from any railroad (as long as they're spell-casters) pretty easily unless the GM is willing to either invoke ridiculous amounts of force to create a railroad. That pretty well clarified what the options are.Next we played some of the nascent story-driven games of the day, like Gangster! and Toon. I guess you could also include some elements of Top Secret, and you've argued rather well Traveler if you play it a certain way (not to say we did at the time). I remember then STILL attempting to set up one super campaign that would have an overarching meta-plot which I spent some huge amount of time working out. That pretty much didn't work at all (though it spawned a lot of background material to flesh out parts of the campaign world which amused me greatly). The next time I actually got interested in D&D at all was 10 yrs later when 4e finally appeared. After reading and playing some of the newer systems of that era I assumed it would be mostly a throwback to the old days, but it proved to be a great revelation in play...I think RM (plus my one super meta-plot campaign of 2e) is what convinced me that no attempt to make 'better rules for the game world' would ever lead to a better game. Perhaps enduring my brother-in-law's Aftermath campaign helped too (a game with like 100 pages of rules that distinguish every conceivable minute detail about every gun ever made). 4e has the same characteristic, all durations are in 'plot terms' effectively. There are a few places where it talks about '5 minutes' being the duration of a power outside of combat, but the intent always seemed to be 'until you end the short rest in which you invoked this'. I mean, 4e doesn't have a way of measuring time really, or any strong non-narrative reason to do so once you leave combat. Admittedly, 5e is more explicit about this and contains a lot more "exploration focused" details about such things. Of course 4e's agenda just doesn't care about them so much, in the context of an SC all that matters is you expended the resource and got the benefit, a vague statement like 5 minutes or a ritual that lasts 'until you break camp' is perfectly adequate.Well, there's a great bit of sensitivity on certain points. I didn't push the point on the incoherence of the very concept of 'simulation' or 'cause and effect within a non-existent game world'. To do so is to generally invite a flamewar (I think there was one poster that dismissed my one foray onto that ground out of hand without addressing it, that's the mildest it gets). I recall having that debate with the guy that claimed his personal D&D hack that he wrote literally resolved all possible game-world situations in a completely objective causally plausible way rather than admit even the possibility that no such thing exists in RPGs! That was a very strange thread... So, yeah, there's kind of a pall of conceptual smoke over the subject, and it almost seems like you can't try to lift it without the discussion breaking down. I guess you can go to someplace like The Forge, but the little I ever perused of posting there it seemed like it was just WORSE in a different direction... lol.  Anyway, we muddle onwards.</blockquote>

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