Recent entries

Man-Suits of the Flatboat People When Entering a Polity… Split Initiative Mentorship Applications Open Traveller Animals for the Jungles Prison Planet Review Men Sag River Extreme Cold Research Facility, Alaska. Pariah Hexfills Inhuman Violence 2 Supplement V: Carcosa Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Retrospective 2 Clerics Wolves 3rd Party Shit Writing NPCs Haystack, Oregon. Mentorship 4 - Retrospective Alternative to Boasts Pariah Session 9 - Play Report Lime Bullet Points vs Prose Pariah Session 8 - Play Report Pariah Session 7 - Play Report Pariah Session 6 - Play Report 2. The Screaming Rock Pariah Session 5 - Play Report USER.LOG Belgic Wickermen The Toothed Wind Pariah Session 4 - Play Report Pariah Session 3 - Play Report
May 3, 2021 invective theory

Mechanisms as Abstraction

Mechanisms abstract the thing they describe or simulate.
This can be done to speed up play, or to make something complex more easily grasped.

  • The number of factors that go into a fight are too many to simulate or describe - so we abstract.
  • Buying many individual items takes time which isn’t always going to be fun - so we abstract.

Abstraction requires the loss of detail.

The things you don’t abstract are the meat of the game.
This is why games* aren’t about what their mechanisms are about - or, if you insist, don’t have to be. Leaving the gap for something to be approached in more detail and nuance gives that thing more primacy.

*In truth, this is talking about game books - the game, the thing that happens up to the table, is an entirely different thing which encapsulates and supersedes the book.

Previous post
Postcards from Cable Street Released For the rare ones who come here without also using Twitter - The antifascist charity zine I’ve been a part of organising and submitted to is finally
Next post
A Tomb A mound of earth, grown over with grass. With a shovel, you could reveal the stones beneath the earth. With a pick, you could remove the stones, to