thread: 2012-06-11 : Ask a Frequent Question
On 2012-06-18, Vincent wrote:
Moreno: Let's see if I can explain my view on this "peace" you're talking about. It's a good question.
I think that all of those dichotomies are useful for illustrating a breadth of possibility to someone who has never considered it. DFK says "you don't have to roll dice for things, you can also compare who has the fictional advantage and say that that person wins, even if you've never done that" for instance. FitM/FatE says "the dice don't have to be final, there can be rules where you still have decisions to make after the dice hit the table, even if you've never seen them." GNS says "an rpg can have winners and losers, sure! Just because you've never played one that way doesn't mean it can't happen."
Once a person sees that there's a breadth of possibilities there, the specific categories - DFK, FitM/FatE, GNS - they don't matter anymore. And when you're talking about a specific game, they don't matter anymore either.
It used to be that people would say "okay, but what about this complicated game mechanic. Is it Drama, Fortune or Karma?" The answer was, "who cares? Categorizing it is useless. We can talk about the mechanic itself instead."
I think that the peace is because we don't have to use made-up categories to illustrate the breadth of possibility anymore. Now we can use real games. We don't have to say "rpgs can have winners and losers, they really can," because we can say "hey, you know how in Murderous Ghosts, if you escape the ghosts, you win?"
Nobody but us hardcore Forge monkeys ever understood GNS. GNS hasn't reached a wide audience at all, as a way of thinking about games. I think that what's going on instead is that the undeniable, inarguable fact of our games has rendered GNS obsolete.
