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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8657285" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I appreciate the thoughtful response. I think we are mostly in agreement. As a general rule, I think it is more valuable to be descriptive that prescriptive- to look at games and find the ways that they overlap (sets) as opposed to come up with typologies and try to jam games into a limited number of them. Generally, this also has the benefit of empiricism- which is also the best approach when looking at what players want, etc.This goes back to the numerous <a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/30/practice/" target="_blank">variations of an old joke</a>, which I will provide the version of I learned-A (Y) engineer is visiting (X) and sees that there are two small towns separated by a river. He proposes building a bridge between them, and is told by the engineers there that they have been looking at the problem for 20 years, and it can never get done. "It is impossible!"The Y engineer doesn't understand, as he has seen these types of bridges before. So he gets a team together, and over the next six months, builds the bridge. Proud of his achievement, he shows it to the X engineers.They turn their backs, saying, "Well, maybe it works in practice, but it will never work in theory." So, a few things. I apologize if I might have conflated two separate things (in my longer posts in the past, I made sure to ... well, to quote the Offspring, Keep 'Em Separated). Evan Torner wrote the part about how the same rhetorical tropes w/r/t player and system typologies keep getting used; that's in the book Role-Playing Game Studies. That's the part I keep referencing, and goes through the history, and then provides an example from (2010 I think) of yet another typology. This is how I described it previously-First, however, I'd like to start by summarizing Evan Torner's work in the book Role-Playing Game Studies- in noting another attempt to provide a coherent RPG theory, Torner correctly notes that the same rhetorical tropes are consistently used- first, the person provides it in a semi-professional form (zine, on-line BBS, personal blog, forum, wiki, etc.). Second, it continues the same debates we are all familiar with (e.g., realism versus playability; task resolution; game design and play advice etc.). It will almost always do so through the utilization of player and system typologies (what players enjoy about different games and how different games accommodate those preferences). Third, the author will almost always claim to be a "big tent" and unbiased observer of the typologies seeking only to end the prior debates, while actually looking to continue the debate and, more often than not, delegitimatize other methods of play through the seemingly-neutral goal of helping people design and play 'better.' Fourth, and finally, the author will inevitably make the act same points that were made years or decades ago.That's the source of that, not Peterson. Peterson is provides the history (with numerous sources!) of how TTRPGs were played and how they evolved in the 70s and into the beginning of the 80s- it's more a history of how wargames evolved into roleplaying games, and the push/pull of different influences. What is fascinating about reading that book is that you see how the debates we keep having now are echoes of the debates they were having then. It can be frustratingly reductive to keep hearing people say that OD&D and the 70s games were just "dungeon crawls," after you read the actual people debating and arguing about the games, and see the types of games people were playing back then. But this goes back to Torner's article- the reason that we keep seeing these same debates repeat is because of the hobbyist nature of them. People don't learn from the past. There hasn't (until very recently) been a foundation to build upon. Which is why it can be frustrating at times.To use some examples from this thread; on the one hand, you have people complain that we need to use jargon because we should take the subject seriously, and (to use some analogies others have used) you wouldn't have Einstein explain his special theory of relativity without jargon, and you wouldn't learn how to mountain climb without learning the terms! Which is fair ...But ... Einstein and physics use real defined terms that people agree upon, not confusing made-up hobbyist terms. Right? So it can be bizarre when I see responses like the one from [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] who just wrote above you-And what makes anything that Tomer says in any way shape or form any more authoritative than anything I say? Hell, I started playing D&D literally when the first 1974 books showed up in our FLGS. I've written all sorts of material of all kinds for dozens of different games, written a couple of my own games, and several wargames too. Talked to plenty of people, including a number of those that are considered influential and played with them too. I'm not CLAIMING to be some great expert, not at all, but surely I have plenty of reason to be able to stand up and be counted. What about all these academics? Did they run 10,000 hours of RPGs? I have!...it's Evan Torner. But why listen to him? Well, because he publishes his work in academic settings so you can actually choose to disagree with him. Because he has numerous publications (some of them co-authored with William J. White, who wrote the book on the Forge) regarding roleplaying games. It's the same with Peterson- the reason I trust the history in the The Elusive Shift is not because Peterson is saying, "Trust me, I started playing in 1974. My experience is emblematic of the experience of everyone else in the game." It's because he cites the sources! He did the work! I feel like I keep circling back around to this point- it's the Goldilocks argument. The jargon used by some people is "just right," because ... reasons, I guess? People who do not want to use that jargon aren't taking the game seriously enough, and people that want to look at what academics or people in the last 15 years have been doing ... well, that's too serious? All that said- when I use the phrase, "re-inventing the wheel," I want to stress that I don't mean that there is nothing new that comes out. I think it should be obvious that the games of today are different than those of the 70s and 80s and 90s. I try to keep reiterating that vital work gets done from these movements that react to what is around them. But, just like other areas (computer games, for example). It's about how the hobbyist community doesn't recall that these debates already occurred. It's like seeing someone post something on enworld, and not realize that it's been done before. Except ... for fifty years. However, I do agree with you that the debate gets re-contextualized when the debate occurs at different times. It's just that in most fields, the people that are re-contextualizing the debate are aware of the prior debates. I mean ... imagine having a PhD candidate in English say, "Hey, I have a new idea no one has ever had before. Imagine if ... we didn't worry about the author's intention? I know! Totally new, right?" It's not that the debate can't be re-contextualized, so much as it's helpful to know that the debate already occurred.Anyway, appreciate the response.</blockquote>

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