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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7570953" data-attributes="member: 4937">Sure, but if the strong nuclear force in our hypothetical universe is too weak to support the creation of helium (because the protons fly apart), we still might have a sea of hydrogen awash in neutrinos, free neutrons and a bunch of other detritus left over from the big blow up.&nbsp; Deuterium, Tritium?&nbsp; Agreed, but that goes back to my point.&nbsp; Since to describe the U238 atom we also have to describe the layout of the constituent parts, does U238 have more or less information in it than 92 free floating protons and 146 free floating neutrons?&nbsp; I would have thought they are the same, but I admit that I'm not a physics major and my informational theory normally only thinks about bits and bytes.&nbsp; I agree that the U238 has more complexity (vaguely definable as that is) because the aggregation has properties that are novel and would not be easily predictable from just looking at the components, but I'm not sure where it stands on information.&nbsp;&nbsp; (Not that information is a physical property or conserved quantity... unless we really are living in someone higher dimensional beings laptop.)Agreed to a large extent, though I think number of steps still falls into my idea of computation.&nbsp;&nbsp; There are ways to add complexity to a rules set that don't extend the number of steps, and if you back up to my definition of an RPG, where I define an RPG as a collection of minigames, it becomes obvious where I'm going with that.True, which gets us back on topic.&nbsp; Because while the process of play of an RPG has always owed something to theater games, that wasn't really explicit or intentional until relatively recently.&nbsp; The 'story first' crowd eschewed modeling not just because of the computational burden, but because they eschewed modeling - however computationally efficient - at all.&nbsp;&nbsp; They were essentially saying, &quot;Let's dump all this legacy of wargaming out of the game and get to (what we consider to be) the good stuff.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; I don't know what example you are looking for, but a pure story-telling game example might be 'Montsegur 1244'.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7570953, member: 4937"] Sure, but if the strong nuclear force in our hypothetical universe is too weak to support the creation of helium (because the protons fly apart), we still might have a sea of hydrogen awash in neutrinos, free neutrons and a bunch of other detritus left over from the big blow up. Deuterium, Tritium? Agreed, but that goes back to my point. Since to describe the U238 atom we also have to describe the layout of the constituent parts, does U238 have more or less information in it than 92 free floating protons and 146 free floating neutrons? I would have thought they are the same, but I admit that I'm not a physics major and my informational theory normally only thinks about bits and bytes. I agree that the U238 has more complexity (vaguely definable as that is) because the aggregation has properties that are novel and would not be easily predictable from just looking at the components, but I'm not sure where it stands on information. (Not that information is a physical property or conserved quantity... unless we really are living in someone higher dimensional beings laptop.) Agreed to a large extent, though I think number of steps still falls into my idea of computation. There are ways to add complexity to a rules set that don't extend the number of steps, and if you back up to my definition of an RPG, where I define an RPG as a collection of minigames, it becomes obvious where I'm going with that. True, which gets us back on topic. Because while the process of play of an RPG has always owed something to theater games, that wasn't really explicit or intentional until relatively recently. The 'story first' crowd eschewed modeling not just because of the computational burden, but because they eschewed modeling - however computationally efficient - at all. They were essentially saying, "Let's dump all this legacy of wargaming out of the game and get to (what we consider to be) the good stuff." I don't know what example you are looking for, but a pure story-telling game example might be 'Montsegur 1244'. [/QUOTE]

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