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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9319079" data-attributes="member: 7040941">The question itself doesn't work, was my point, as we shouldn't be approaching them as though they're competing. You might be lost in context here. I can't be bothered back track atm but someone was talking about the idea being consistently brought up in these kinds of discussions, and my OP on the issue was in response to that. There's a clear difference, but the context for why the GM Tyrant is being evoked is based on rhetoric that describes issues that go far beyond just a distribution problem. This is why I've noted with others how over-defensiveness is self-defeating, as you'll start exaggerating what you're talking about without realizing it. (General yous here, not you specifically)Its fine to prefer a different delineation between the player roles, but when we're talking about brand new systems and what they bring to the table, and they're being sold on the basis of what X GM is doing in whatever way, which Y system doesn't do, it very easily leads into the GM Tyrant being a common denominator. Particularly when, after seeing this, others come in and attempt to temper the perspective by, correctly, identifying that the problems being pitched as solved by Y system aren't a system problem at all, they are then met with a double down, and it just continues in that way until somebody eventually comes along and tries to reframe what was said as something else entirely, and then another someone has to come along and recount how the discussion actually went. Thats where we come to the Writer's Room descriptor, which then gets rejected and we go round and round. The gameworld has to exist, one way or another, and a player who doesn't end up participating in a collaborative approach to establishing its existence is, from this perspective, liable to be just as slighted as they would under a more unilateral baseline. Should the Player be seeking a new system, or is the effect of not having a say on what the gameworld is being overstated? As said elsewhere, the only actual thing stopping a more collaborative approach is the GMs willingness to do so, not the game system they're running. If a new system is being pitched on the basis of addressing the lack of a collaborative approach, then the pitch falls flat, and the game then has to try and make up for it in what else it actually does. Hence an argument from yesterday I believe, that much of PBTA style games successes have more to do with just being simple to run and learn because they're not very deep mechanically, and not much to do with what they do narratively. As I said, the game isn't about racking up a high score. You can just exist in the gameworld and proceed from there. In other words, you don't have to play the game to win. You don't have to do anything, but you can do practically anything, within general reason given you are just human in the game. The perspective on COC you're supporting is that the people playing are coming in to explicitly solve the mystery and beat the game. Thats not how it actually plays nor how anyone I've ever played with approached the game, as I related through my experiences with it. When I play COC, everyone there is present for the spooky and the roleplay. The mystery is near entirely incidental. The Keeper will eventually introduce a means to get everyone involved, but thats kind of the point, and no Keeper I've ever played with railroaded us. If we reject the Call, to spin a phrase lol, we proceed with whatever consequences that entails, and we as Players as our Characters, are none the wiser precisely because it'd go against the whole premise of the game if it was different. Call of Cthulu is about the futility of asserting mans ego over the cosmic. That theme runs deep, and is reinforced whether you go after the mystery or you don't. Our agency doesn't disappear simply because, when we step out of the gameworld we're supposed to be in, the Keeper has a general story line that we may or may not be following. It would be futile to begin with to suggest our characters could be anything more than the petty insignificants they are. This is why I picked on evoking COC in particular, as its a game that's actually really well designed from the perspective of a harmonious ludonarrative.  Gameplay and roleplay are indistinguishable.</blockquote>

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