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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8123307" data-attributes="member: 6785785">While I agree that reading for pleasure was very common throughout the 20th century, I don’t think that it has negatively impacted the imagination. And the same goes for other media. They have impacted imagination, to be sure, but to claim some kind of diminishment just seems a bit of a stretch.As for the shift in how fiction tends to portray imagery, I think it’s more an increase in the basic level if knowledge that people have. A writer doesn’t need to describe general scenery in as much detail precisely because most readers will have a greater capacity to do so themselves. Someone in 1920, for example, will have less exposure to geography beyond what they experience daily. A desert? A jungle? A canyon? Their capacity to understand these things relied on the author being able to suitably explain them. A reader in 2020, however, will have an understanding of these things based solely on the words. The specific image they picture in their mind will vary from person to person, and yes it may be influenced by media....but so what? Isn't that the author’s goal in 1920? Writers today write with the expectation that their reader has a wider understanding than one in 1920, generally speaking.  No, I don’t think this idea has much merit. I also don't think that this is the relevant area for examining imagination in RPGs. The GM is an imperfect substitute for the author in this comparison.  To me, how a game allows or facilitates a wide array of actions by the players and what those players choose to do with those actions would be a better metric. I don’t think it requires a lot of imagination by a player to choose between casting a pre-defined spell or declaring an attack, for example.</blockquote>

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