Its All About Intent

[Laurel]

This is a break off of the big Narrativism thread, because I think something is getting overlooked by a few folks that is important in Forge discussions in general.

There is a phenonemonal difference between intended use and application.  

Ron has told us the intended use of GNS: "GNS is all about modes of play, what real people do. "

He's agreed that it can be applied elsewhere. "It is not a stretch of any kind to look at RPG design to see whether their guidelines/rules/text help or hinder that process."

However, the intent of GNS is not to catagorize game systems.  It can be easily applied there.

Analogy Time:
I am about to sneeze.  I can grab up a paper towel instead of a kleenex.  The kleenex is the intended disposable paper product, but I can apply a paper towel and it will indeed fufill the purpose.  

But do I have any right to go out and yell at the paper towel maker because the kleenex is softer in my opinion?  No.  The paper towel wasn't intended to be utilized for blowing my nose, I simply applied it because it was available and had enough of the shared qualities of a kleenex to fill the purpose.  But me beriding the paper towel maker because his paper towel is NOT a kleenex is downright silly.

Classical RPGA Threefold wasn't intended to catagorize game systems either, I've been told.  It was about modes of *GMing* a game, and since then has been applied elsewhere but not necessarily by the people who created it and not necessarily in ways they'd agree with.  

Threefold was intended to be an apple; GNS was intended to be an orange; and there are people (myself among them) who are interested in looking at Game Design and seeing whether their guidelines/rules/texts help or hinder the processes, the different processes, that GNS and Threefold and other models describe.  But any time we apply a model for anything other than its intended purpose, we have to appreciate what we're doing.  We're using tools to do something other than what the tools were intended for- any problems that result will result because of our misapplication, not because the tool is necessarily flawed.    

A tool is flawed when it fails to achieve its intended purpose.  GNS has not failed me yet, in my experiences of applying it to modes of play.