Raven Crowking
First Post
Mustrum_Ridcully said:
Perhaps, but evolution and natural selection are not the same thing (although related). Evolution can occur without natural selection (such as where a species evolves due to a change in environment that opens a new ecological niche, but the original species remains to fill the original niche, or when an environmental change seperates two groups of the same species so that their evolutionary paths are likewise seperated).
Natural selection involves so-called "survival of the fittest", where one species out-competes another for an ecological niche, and the outcompeted species becomes extinct.
If by "evolution" you mean "change"; then, yes, each edition includes changes, for better or for worse. "Natural evolution" means evolution not by the hand of man, or not by intelligent design, and I don't think that this concept can ever apply to role-playing games.
Perhaps, so long as we remember that natural evolutionary change is a gigantic crapshoot, where you throw as much spaghetti at the wall as you can and then see what sticks. And it is one in which you cannot predict, prior to throwing the spaghetti at the wall, what will stick and what will not stick.
Personally, I hope for a little more from game designers than one gets from a blind, natural process. I guess, in some ways, that means my outlook toward 4e is more hopefully than yours.
It isn't an evolutionary precept, btw, that "all things change in reaction to an environment"; change is random, and whatever happens to best fit that environment, for whatever reason, even be it blind luck, has a tendency to survive. Certainly, we can agree that environment can spur changes (cosmic radiation nudging chromosomes, for example), but most mutations aren't beneficial. Try telling a two-headed snake, or a frog with extra legs, that this change is to better fit the environment.
I know that you acknowledge this later, but again, I certainly hope that 4e is being driven by more than "spaghetti at the wall" game design?
Ah, well, it would at least be easier if we do it now then after 10 pages of back & forth discussion, so yes, let's do it.(If you feel compelled to answer to anything I posted, I hope I can restrain my urge to post something in response.
Well, you can feel free to answer, too. Just don't expect me to change my mind on this one without some really compelling evidence. Indeed, I find the idea of game design being driven by random Darwinian forces pessemistic in the extreme.
RC
