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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9319393" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Sure in the same way that we don't have to be playing a game. RPGs are not just conversations, and that false assertion goes to the heart of what I'm talking about when I describe PBTA style games as having shallow gameplay loops. Yes we're exploring a gameworld. Thats how it works. As I deftly predicted, we appear to be at a stage where the GM simply describing a room is problematic if the players don't get first dibs, and I can't describe how I feel about that without getting modded so I'll just stop there. What I will still say is that the apparent devaluation of the gameworld and relegation of it to mere "fiction" is telling, given even improv has a gameworld. Hell, in a more charitable discussion you could actually argue the gameworld is the fiction is the gameworld, but the sheer distaste that comes with denying the whole point of one existing betrays any chance of that particular consensus being reached.Which is why Setting Books and Adventure Paths are a thing. Masks of Nyarlathotep, to pick one out of the proverbial hat, is huge and has more than anybody is gonna need to handle how any group plays. And I'm sure you'll chirp those still aren't acceptable because its "someone elses fiction", but then you're just contradicting yourself because you just stated you don't want to make anything up yourself. And then we move on to you pointing at the players doing it too, but you're still fundamentally contradicting yourself, as no game you'd prefer doesn't still have the GM making something up. Many of them hinge upon that, in fact, a lot more than other games do. Then you just don't get COC, for one. And for two, as has been exhaustively argued, de-protagonisim is phoney jargon and you'd face a lot less scruitiny if you just said "i want to collaboratively worldbuild" and not jump through all these hoops to pretend thats anything else. Following the procedure of play, unless I somehow missed it when I originally perused the book before hopping into a game AND did it again when I re-read the whole book yesterday, would have you handing a piece of paper with the Signs written on it to the leader and then they read it and thats that. That's fine for fulfilling the mechanical purpose of getting some possibly novel behavior to come out of how the leader thinks about it. But it is so, so, so dull. For one, as stated, these islands do not have much to actually do, as they're only a tad above being purely linear experiences. This works against the mechanic because most leaders, unless they go out of their way to ignore the obvious, are going to interpret them in very similar if not identical ways as they run into the trials. What I was relating was the much more clever idea of not just sliding the signs over and having them be a non-diegetic thing, but integrating them into the gameworld. Even reading it now, I can't remember how we did Apollo's sign, but on Nimos Artemis wasn't revealed to the leader until we were about to slay the Serpent, which was described as a vision before handing a card over with the Sign. Given what happens when that Serpent dies, that was an excellent time to reveal that and wouldn't have been near as effective if they were just alreadly known and half forgotten by the time were elbow deep in whats going on.</blockquote>

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