stepnix | semantic slippage narrativism edition

My day job (self-employed) includes wandering around the internet and keeping track what people say about PbtA. Occasionally a new one will pop up. Lately I've been seeing "in a PbtA game, you shouldn't be rolling dice that often anyway." I'm like, you shouldn't what now? Where did THIS come from?
— lumpley (lumpley) Apr 16, 2026 at 10:51 AM

vincent baker i am so sorry the world has become this

I can propose a path for the shift in meaning, though. "Narrative" as used to mean "imaginary description of the fictional world" gets positioned against use of rules, and, separately, as used to mean "what's more interesting to me" gets positioned against ludic goals (victory in a combat, character progression (in the sense of accumulating personal power), etc). All of which gets mixed together with Forge or post-Forge narrativism (discussed previously), and people who intuitively understand those first definitions read those games as if they share those priorities.

it's fun to have such a clear demonstration that's just not the case!