Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6657002" data-attributes="member: 82106">We're talking about a poster who claims that many, possibly a majority, of RPGs are &quot;not RPGs&quot; because they don't happen to meet his very specific and rigid requirements for a game. So, while in some contexts your criticism might be telling, it makes utterly no impression on me here. That being said, I'm not implying that [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is stupid, that his opinions are less genuine than anyone else's, etc. He's just clearly stuck to a very small patch of the whole RPG world. If he just said &quot;I like what I like and that's just it&quot; then nobody would have even batted an eyelash. I haven't 'struggled' to do anything. I chose a specific mechanic which precisely illustrated the point I wished to make, which was that there is a great deal of abstraction in all of these games and that any attempt to reduce even the LEAST abstract of game elements, in a game where the assertion was that its elements are highly concrete, to some concrete reality is doomed to failure. The fact that you can quickly reel off 4 mechanically different approaches to roughly the same concept without breaking a sweat only tends to reinforce my point, doesn't it? If you can represent how well-armored someone is in such diverse ways its hardly advocating a very concrete interpretation for any one of those. Shall we instead inspect that most central and, to some, concrete element of D&amp;D, the ability score? We could go on and on...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6657002, member: 82106"] We're talking about a poster who claims that many, possibly a majority, of RPGs are "not RPGs" because they don't happen to meet his very specific and rigid requirements for a game. So, while in some contexts your criticism might be telling, it makes utterly no impression on me here. That being said, I'm not implying that [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is stupid, that his opinions are less genuine than anyone else's, etc. He's just clearly stuck to a very small patch of the whole RPG world. If he just said "I like what I like and that's just it" then nobody would have even batted an eyelash. I haven't 'struggled' to do anything. I chose a specific mechanic which precisely illustrated the point I wished to make, which was that there is a great deal of abstraction in all of these games and that any attempt to reduce even the LEAST abstract of game elements, in a game where the assertion was that its elements are highly concrete, to some concrete reality is doomed to failure. The fact that you can quickly reel off 4 mechanically different approaches to roughly the same concept without breaking a sweat only tends to reinforce my point, doesn't it? If you can represent how well-armored someone is in such diverse ways its hardly advocating a very concrete interpretation for any one of those. Shall we instead inspect that most central and, to some, concrete element of D&D, the ability score? We could go on and on... [/QUOTE]

Verification