On Aug 14, 11:52 pm, John Morrow <mor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Here is a thread from 1998 that I still reference as a fantastic example
> of the harm that assumption clash and style clash can cause in a game:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.advocacy/browse_thread/t...
Brett leaving r.g.f.a was a significant event for my own relation****p
to r.f.g.a in general and the threefold specifically. While he and I
were very different in just about every way, one thing we did share in
common was the feeling that the Threefold badly mislabeled our style
of play (his being story focused and mine being game) with terms that
we felt were off the mark at best and dysfunctional at worst.
One of example of this was his claim that a story focused campaign
required a firm simulationist element, this mirrored my own thought in
respect to Gamism. Yet in Threefold terms this was rejected (as the
model defined the corners as exclusive), and any accepted post on
Drama rejected it as a basic assumption.
The result was that the Threefold didn't speak to Brett or myself (and
any number of others who came and left over the years), but it still
stole terms we'd like to use for their original meanings- and made
them the private property of a few core posters here- who would then
label us with them, thus we'd have to bare their baggage.
The stealing of common terms was perhaps the Threefold's worse crime.
If they had names like the Champions player types talked about here
recently (World Explorer instead of Simulationist for example) I think
things would have been different as that method implies a more
specific view of approaching games than the Threefold, which implies
by both it's form and practice (i.e. the rejection of any expansion)
that three styles is all there is. Saying I'm not a much of World
Explorer is a lot easier than saying I'm not a Simulationist because I
know for a fact that Simulation is very im****tant to my gaming style.
Often someone would point out that the Threefold terms were specific
and unrelated to their common meanings, but that did nothing to alter
one's instinctive reaction upon seeing the term, and was worse than
ineffective for anyone new to the group as we flamewarred our way
through the same old points upon each arrival.
Even granted all that, that view was completely undermined by the
rejection of expansion. Ok, so Gamist means this very narrow slice..
can I have a term to cover.. "NO! It covers everything that needs to
be covered!". Sigh.
I've also come to reject the claim that the Threefold was useful in
understanding other styles. Warren has spent what seems a significant
degree of effort understanding mine- but often notes that he still
doesn't. Mary burned *years* trying to run a good gamist campaign, and
can only produce broken illusions of the same and rants about her
failures here. I think part of the problem in both cases is that the
Threefold is limiting their vision too much for them to succeed.
The Threefold basically made it impossible for people to define
themselves in their own way, and thus it was completely counter to
what is often claimed to be it's original goal.
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