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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7411541" data-attributes="member: 16586">On Heresy: I am not certain religious language is the best way to frame it, but I have encountered a certain sense of orthodoxy  or at least attachment to the mainstream in our shared hobby. There is a certain sense that there is one way to play a role playing game instead of many ways. It also feels like more leniency is provided to use of less mainstream techniques when you do not specifically set yourself apart from the mainstream of the hobby. I am not particularly wedded to this way of framing the cultural zeitgeist, but the overall sense of resistance I have gotten in the past when I have tried to explain why I have experienced deep dissatisfaction in gaming before I discovered Sorcerer, Apocalypse World and Moldvay B/X. It feels like instead of having conversations where we actually analyze and discuss play techniques and how they shape play we often forced to defend our right to even share our perspective or forced to use language that makes it  entirely too difficult to draw meaningful distinctions to the things that are personally very important to me. A lot of the terminology including things like world building over setting design or game master over referee are inherently skewed towards mainstream techniques. Beyond that it often seems to me like discussion often seems to consist of merely attacking the framing of analysis over actually discussing the substance behind the analysis.That all being said as I have discussed elsewhere discussing agency generally without regard to what it is over is something that I have little interest in. In fact discussing how games work based on power relationships is not all that interesting to me, particularly from a stance that seems far more interested in theoretical power dynamics over real ones mediated by social expectations. I think it far more interesting to speak in terms of responsibilities and expectations that shape play. That conversation is often more difficult to have, often due to strong shared but unspoken assumptions that underlay much of mainstream play.I'll have more later.</blockquote>

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