The 4th Category

Highlights

the phrase that we “play in” an adventure as op- posed to playing a board game wherein we just “play it” separates the two forms as distinct concepts
An open system can create, animate and inform a multiplicity of extensible systems while this is never true with a closed system.

directed play with mutable rules intimately leagued with open play forms with no conceptual boundaries.
- It brought with it a need to create resources for it to be played, either in pre-game design sessions or during the game itself by way of its participants being able to instantly extrapolate upon what was being conceptualized.
merger of conceptual and mechanical systems
- resulting “super-system” is in systems theory parlance comprised of non-linear and linear (and/or isolated) systems that have standing relationships with each other.
- mechanics often come into focus when there is a need to ascertain the probabilities for success of a player’s interactions within the fantastic surround

predominated by mechanics and hard-fast and immutable rules.
growing presumption that GM-created game matter was now the province of “professional creators”
- users were being incrementally disfranchised from D&D’s original creative crucible as mere consumers of those creations.
whatever the GMs proposed to their players was being ignored by the latter for scaling up their characters to defeat more and more powerful adversaries
a game’s mode delineates the expression paths for its participants.

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