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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8665307" data-attributes="member: 82106">I really have no idea. My impression of the way 'incoherent' is really meant to be used, or most usefully employed, is simply to label play as having more than one agenda without any real attempt to bring them together into a coherent whole. (and this definition of incoherent, as the antonym of coherent in its sense of 'having a single unified purpose and direction' is the one that the podcasters seem not to have grokked, they seemed to only want to use the definition which is a synonym for 'unintelligible'). So, that would be my contribution to any discussion of the term, it is merely a way to say &quot;there are multiple agendas and they are not integrated into some sort of unified game process.&quot; Now, that may result in something 'unintelligible', but I don't think that's intended and it would be a rather extreme way to describe play of an RPG! I mean, in that sense of the word, no play I ever saw was incoherent, not even close. Yet I think Edwards' use of the term is acceptable once you parse out the different meanings. There are other words that might be used, like 'inharmonious', but they don't really sound that good to me. As for 'hybrid', if you have blended multiple approaches into a single smoothly working whole, then it seems like a decent word for it. I don't know anything about the history of using this term in 'Forge Speak' myself. My understanding is that Edwards at some point wrote an essay or made some posts pointing out that it was not impossible to have multiple agendas, but that games catering to such would want to do so in a conscious way. This is not a surprising, given that the whole thrust of what was being hashed out at The Forge seems to be summarized by &quot;RPGs should be consciously designed to achieve specific ends in light of XYZ.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8665307, member: 82106"] I really have no idea. My impression of the way 'incoherent' is really meant to be used, or most usefully employed, is simply to label play as having more than one agenda without any real attempt to bring them together into a coherent whole. (and this definition of incoherent, as the antonym of coherent in its sense of 'having a single unified purpose and direction' is the one that the podcasters seem not to have grokked, they seemed to only want to use the definition which is a synonym for 'unintelligible'). So, that would be my contribution to any discussion of the term, it is merely a way to say "there are multiple agendas and they are not integrated into some sort of unified game process." Now, that may result in something 'unintelligible', but I don't think that's intended and it would be a rather extreme way to describe play of an RPG! I mean, in that sense of the word, no play I ever saw was incoherent, not even close. Yet I think Edwards' use of the term is acceptable once you parse out the different meanings. There are other words that might be used, like 'inharmonious', but they don't really sound that good to me. As for 'hybrid', if you have blended multiple approaches into a single smoothly working whole, then it seems like a decent word for it. I don't know anything about the history of using this term in 'Forge Speak' myself. My understanding is that Edwards at some point wrote an essay or made some posts pointing out that it was not impossible to have multiple agendas, but that games catering to such would want to do so in a conscious way. This is not a surprising, given that the whole thrust of what was being hashed out at The Forge seems to be summarized by "RPGs should be consciously designed to achieve specific ends in light of XYZ." [/QUOTE]

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