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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9334275" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm pushing against your 'landscape' concept, which is describing, mathematically, a continuum of possible game elements, which implies they can simply be juxtaposed and you could then assign a 'coordinate' in your landscape to each one like it has X amount of A, Y amount of B, etc. It is much more accurate to portray games instead as being like, say, watches. Sure, there are MANY arrangements which could function, but only specific discrete arrangements of gears will make a watch, all the other random assortments of gears which happen to mesh, or variations in the size of the different gears, leads to non-functional or misfunctional outcomes. Now, RPGing being a primarily aesthetic exercise involving a lot of creativity, I will caveat that to a degree. Many games could 'work' in some sense, but not produce results that are particularly interesting. In many cases the definition of 'works' cannot be agreed upon and we can only say 'works for some, not others', etc. Honestly, I don't think these sorts of analogization, yours or mine, are really worth much. Play of specific games, and the specific experiences garnered from that play is fundamentally the only useful standard. Again, as I have said before, this was the 'Forge Rule', you HAD TO talk about actual play, or Ron et al would just kick you off the forum. It was a powerful rule, instead of the EnWorld 20 years of endless kvetching about this or that spherical cow, an entire genre of games arose out of that discussion in a matter of 4 or 5 years, and most modern RPG design still references those ideas heavily.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9334275, member: 82106"] I'm pushing against your 'landscape' concept, which is describing, mathematically, a continuum of possible game elements, which implies they can simply be juxtaposed and you could then assign a 'coordinate' in your landscape to each one like it has X amount of A, Y amount of B, etc. It is much more accurate to portray games instead as being like, say, watches. Sure, there are MANY arrangements which could function, but only specific discrete arrangements of gears will make a watch, all the other random assortments of gears which happen to mesh, or variations in the size of the different gears, leads to non-functional or misfunctional outcomes. Now, RPGing being a primarily aesthetic exercise involving a lot of creativity, I will caveat that to a degree. Many games could 'work' in some sense, but not produce results that are particularly interesting. In many cases the definition of 'works' cannot be agreed upon and we can only say 'works for some, not others', etc. Honestly, I don't think these sorts of analogization, yours or mine, are really worth much. Play of specific games, and the specific experiences garnered from that play is fundamentally the only useful standard. Again, as I have said before, this was the 'Forge Rule', you HAD TO talk about actual play, or Ron et al would just kick you off the forum. It was a powerful rule, instead of the EnWorld 20 years of endless kvetching about this or that spherical cow, an entire genre of games arose out of that discussion in a matter of 4 or 5 years, and most modern RPG design still references those ideas heavily. [/QUOTE]

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