Search results

@Agemegos It might just be that different people have different tastes, yet some people have a very good sense of their own taste…and limited time for exploration after they’ve already sampled some variations.

@Fenris-77 I edited my post; hope you don’t mind.

Mostly yes, but some campaigns are more like a web of events linked by continuity of setting. In fictional terms I forget what you call that. A “matter” or “cycle”? I’d say not necessarily. It can be just a bunch of stuff that happens.Which isn’t to say it couldn’t be grist for stories, but...

He’s very much around—I see a post by him on the ‘site just a couple weeks ago.

I’ve seen this argument, but I don’t think it’s particularly important except when the world has a known history that can’t change. I mean: if the setting is World War II, then the players know what will happen, and even if they have the means to change things at some level, the GM may be in a...

It depends on the meaning of “story”. If story is a description of events, that is a narrative, then an rpg session isn’t a story because it isn’t a description. If a “story” is the raw materials, the events themselves, then RPGs do create stories. I’m not sure if that is a sense of story...

@Urdlen's best boy About your “fantasy” vs “fiction”. It sounds like “fantasy” is something like “theory of how the made-up world works”. While “fiction” is “asserted fact of how the mechanics work”? At least that’s what I get from your example but it doesn’t seem to jibe with the rest of the...

@Urdlen's best boy You take Merriam-Webster, I’ll counter with: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fiction “the type of book or story that is written about imaginary characters and events and not based on real people and facts”...

That definitely doesn’t seem like a hair split. This is a hair split: 1. There is the actual activity around the table or among the people using Zoom/etc. 2. There is some imagined sequence of events that occurs. It is not a narrative, though—it’s more like a projection of item 1, a...

@robiswrong Yes, I think it’s better to have a term that isn’t used in other fields, precisely because if you borrow, you either import meanings that don’t translate, or you get a conflict between two or more external fields. (Diegesis or at least diegetic seems to means different things in film...

It definitely is! Partly because of who I first heard using the term in an RPG context; also because, even without that, it sounds like (IMHO) a deliberate reach for definition 5 of a word that most “commoners” understand as definition 1. So it’s a gate on understanding by the masses. We won’t...

I’ve been told that platypuses can kick ass when they feel like it, so that’s probably wise. Terminology is a minefield, and trying to add a new term is like that xkcd comic about developing a new standard, but I’ll expand on my pitch for “the simulata”. Unlike SIS, it’s fairly transparent...

It’s when someone tells me I’m making a story, because all RPGs create stories, or mine does because I care about the characters…and therefore my reaction to someone’s favorite story-based mechanic is irrational/reactionary, that I get itchy.

@robertsconley That’s my point. Narrative does indeed have a more limited range of meanings, but some of them are still off the mark when it comes to rp gaming.

Ok, so German has “Vorgeben”, but my sense of German is shaky and and I’m not sure English speakers would accept it. I rather like the Latin “simulata” (neuter plural), since it doesn’t quite evoke “simulation” the way that “simulatio” does. “Simulata” could easily be explained as “all the...

At this point I think “the pretend” or “the make-believe” would be good, but people probably wouldn’t accept them unless we translated them into German or Latin.

@FlagrantOpossum “Story” does not imply anything more than “narrative”, unless you pick a particular definition of “story”.

@Urdlen's best boy first, I would like to say: consider the platypus. And when you’re done with that, the echidna. As for “the fiction”, “plot”, “story”, although I appreciate what you have to say, it’s indisputable that all these terms have multiple meanings with very important differences...

People keep slipping back into saying “immersion”, but I’m fairly certain that most of the people in this thread would say “in character point of view” is what they mean by it, technically. So for them, any idea of immersion that is outside of their character’s point of view is an oxymoron. I...

I’d say for me, personally, if it’s apparent that the volcano’s eruption was triggered by us finding the treasure (and there’s no in-game-world explanation such as a magical ward), then disbelief is almost unavoidable. In literature or film, there’s more leeway since they’re more passive media...