Nathan Paoletta I’ve heard that before but I’m skeptical. Are you saying designers can’t explain why a rule/procedure is designed a certain way? They can’t talk about their intent?

I can appreciate that unexpected properties can emerge (!) once lots of brains start touching the game, but that happens in wargames as well.

Then again, based on that survey I ran a bunch of months ago, there are plenty of RPG folks who give no shit at all about design intent. Dunno. I do.