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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8659849" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think Edwards is very interested in a wide range of games. His account of purist-for-system play is excellent. (I don't know how much RM he had played, but obviously he is drawing on deep experience with Champions and RQ.) His account of high concept simulationist play seems to me to pick out key features one sees discussed in relation to CoC, 5e D&D, etc: how to manage scene transitions, how to manage differences in character capabilities, how to make sure the "adventure" unfolds "as it is meant to".I think you're referring to <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/2/" target="_blank">this</a>:Why "genre" is not part of the lexicon I do not recommend using "genre" to identify role-playing content. A "genre" is some combination of specific setting elements, plot elements, situation elements, character elements, and sometimes premise elements, such that by hearing the term, we are informed what to expect, or in role-playing terms, what to do. On the face of it, the concept would seem to be useful. The problem is that genres are continually being deconstructed and re-formed, with elements of one being re-combined with others. This is occurring as a non-planned or non-managed historical phenomenon throughout all media. Therefore "genre" may be a fine descriptive label for what is or has been done, but it's not much help in terms of what to do or what can be done. In many cases, a given genre label will convey to a close group of people a fairly tight combination of values for these variables. However, the same genre label loses its power to inform as you add more people to the mix, especially since most labels have switched meanings radically more than once. And even more importantly, new combinations of values for the key variables may be perfectly functional, even when they do not correspond to any recognized genre label. Therefore when someone tells me that a game (or story, or whatever) is based on a certain genre, I have to ask a few more questions - and sooner or later, I get real answers in terms of Character, Setting, Situation, or Color. Only then can an initial Premise be identified, and then the next step toward functional, enjoyable role-playing may occur.(By "premise" here, Edwards means "whatever a participant finds among the elements [character, setting, situation, colour, system] to sustain a continued interest in what might happen in a role-playing session." That is, it's what we're having fun imagining. Later on he uses "premise" more narrowly, to mean the theme that is addressed/at issue in narrativist play.)While Edwards caution is helpful - genres are slippery - I don't think it does any harm to say that high concept simulationism is concerned to provide a RPG experience that reinforces the experience of "being there" inside the genre, that is, one or more distinctive sorts of character, setting and/or situation.It does the same in the context of gamism: the way that competition is (or is not) implemented, and the way that this relates to the presentation of challenge both to the players and in the fiction; and in the context of narrativism, looking at different approaches to prep, and to player vulnerability.Agreed. "Market segmentation" is important from the point of view of commercial product design, including commercial game design.But we don't distinguish (say) different schools of painting, or different sorts of music, by reference to how they made the "market" feel: we know that the Impressionists shocked Paris, but we don't classify them as we do because they shocked Paris.Yep. As you know my favourite is actually Burning Wheel, which predates AW, but I agree that AW is the "pivot point". Well, I quoted from some of the chapters in the Routledge collection upthread. As I said, to me they don't seem to be across it. They have definitions of "system" and "setting" and "adventure" that don't seem able to capture the development at all.</blockquote>

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