2009/2/21 Bruce Mason <mason.bruce_at_8k0NrM-r41hxzwt_jj26so12IVvjha6zdMDX0s3woKKh_K6rZwMwb_2gC8j6OJ7pKiqTt-txxv18Bo4tvg.yahoo.invalid>:
> You could possibly compare the two approaches to Macs and Windows (just
> considering this out loud.) A Mac, like a relative description, tells you
> what you need to know and no more. It tell you the the cavern is "really
> wide" which means that if you want to jump across it you need to be able to
> jump across really wide caverns. In the end, who cares exactly how wide,
> let's just got in with the jumping and see if we fall to our death. Windows
> tells you the cavern's width in millimeters and lets you compare that to a
> bunch of other rubrics and suggests you run the jumping skill program with
> the appropriate parameters. After much calculation you jump and, sometimes,
> the system crashes half-way through anyway so the GM makes up the result.
Oooh, I don't think I like the analogy, I am sorry. Thinking that
roleplayers already have a robust symbolic set for communications and
wanting to play OD&D are not the same thing.
The particular jargon of our pastime is a preselected vocabulary that
we all tend to understand. It makes some sense that it is used to
convey information to us. The primary audience is still roleplayers,
presumably; if it were anthropologists, or architects, or
sea-captains, we would use different vocabularies.
--
John Machin
"Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."
- Athanasius Kircher, 'The Great Art of Knowledge'.