Message:If you understood this guy, tell me what's his point?
I could not follow most of it. Use of terms like "diegetic decision-making," "paradigms" or "cohere at the level of value and reflection on what 'excellent play' could mean"? It's very academic and probably uses sociological terms I've never heard nor used.
We once just had a rulebook. People would follow the rules. Those rules set options and tone. A Ref would change rules less to fit player desire and more to discard what doesn't work.
His "taxonomy" (the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms) is also strange. I would think players classified by social interaction, which has been done many times-- power gamer vs social gamer--would be simpler and clear.
Game systems might promote his order of the organisms, but I have just not played many of these kinds of post 2000 storyteller games. Role-play may be a shitty term; adventure gaming may better describe what I do as a hobby. But you can't sell an Adventure game, after marketing guys have labeled everything rpg.
I just know that COSPLAY Sux. Slow, needy, it's cartoonish, it lacks any historic reference, it's hard to move with all the mechanics I've seen. It also is weird in an off-putting way. I have no problem with players using first-person narratives. If that gives someone the ability to articulate what he does, that's fine. First person also works well for dialog and delivering clues in less than a
Here it Is manner. Yet the immersion folks (I've seen) seem more interested in describing the internal dialog, how I am feeling, how I react, rather than any conversation which moves the story, and hence leads to use of game mechanics and produces character advancement.
I truly would be offended if anyone were to tell me I had to DO THINGS in-character. The Ref, Mad Man Morgan, once did this to punish people. Maybe I'm traumatized from begging too often for my life. I mean a character's life. (That's first person vs third person).
Fam Biz w/ accents adds to the fun, but the game still have rules leading to victory (end). I do not role-play to cancel hours or substitute my life for fantasy. These games are not children make-believe as many seem to think. I game for comradery of overcoming challenges, to move to end points and allow characters to earn more options in future play.
Yours,
IronRed
14-Apr-2021