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There's game theory, there's gaming theory and there's theory of gaming. Never forget that. Forgetting can land you all sorts of places you don't want to be.

It seems to me everyone is getting in their say about these massive gaming topics and theories. What I would like to do would be to go through all the posts and arguments, clean up all the dross and get down to the topic as it is a topic, drained of the maggot-like marginalia. That however would take too much time, considering I still have some sixty character packets to pre-produce, produce and post-produce in less than a month for LARPs that could make or break several careers, one of them mine.

Excessive drama? Maybe. I reserve the right to be Gamegrene's drama queen. Luckily, however, I am also the most pretentious writer on staff, so I can barge into a conversation I have had no part in like a drunken yuppie.

So, let me tell you something, little lady.

It's important to narrow down the sort of argument we're having here. See, we could be having an argument of concepts, where there is a strict theoretical gap to be jumped. God, quantum mechanics, these sorts of things are ideas you get or you don't, mostly. If you haven't made the paradigmatic (the only time that world will be used in this article, thank you, you bastards for over-bowling another perfectly good Ancient Greek word, and in a perfectly Kuhnsian sense) leap, if you don't see how an infinitely just God could let bad things happen or how humanity could evolve bereft of one, the discussion isn't going to make sense.

A good sort of argument is one of the details. Did Minos rule over Mycenae or was the arrangement the opposite? Was it some third route? This sort of argument, while people may be taking biased concepts to and from the table, it's mostly about fact and data. Sides focus on different points, detract from others, new evidence is entered and argued - it's all more trial-like in aspect. It's bias, not belief systems that have to be conquered.

The next type of argument is the post-modern argument, and by far the most annoying because it is neither possible to win nor lose a post-modern argument. Abortion is a good example of this one. The argument has transformed itself into a phenomenon, the language is no longer contextual, and the sides have become so twisted into a pattern that, if you handed them victory, they would keep fighting as they don't know what victory is.

Another good example of this is the Arab-Israeli conflict, maybe not of even three years ago, but definitely today, wherein the points of victory are moot to the fighting. Luckily, the gaming world conflict is not as degraded as this, but it is a starting point for looking at things. I would cite the matter as more former Yugoslavia than the Levant, and a manufactured conflict.

Manufactured? What's manufactured about ethnic cleansing? People were killing each other all over the division of Serb, Croat and Muslim! Sure, the conflict was as real as it comes, but the reasons were not. Sure, the area has always been splintery, but never outright divisive. There was no real history of ethnic warfare and contest for rule, but certain individuals took immediate heart at the idea, as a fuel for a more basic need of conquest and killing that bounces around in the soul of every 17-28 year old boy, but which can be appreciated by all levels of society.

It is not that the conflict, or rather the bones of the conflict, did not exist in the past, but they only loom large when the past is viewed in a light of ethic tension. "Town X kicked our asses back in '03" and "the Y's kicked are asses back in '03" fall into that category of mutually agreeable truths. Take a situation with a nebulous outcome, toss in just one charismatic megalo/kleptomaniac with a skewed version of history, add characteristic human propensity to get crazy with the raping and fighting and all that jazz, and you have a situation that requires peacekeepers and a city in Ohio.

Tea in China? In gaming, the camps we can discuss run mainly to those who support quality of numbers and those who support quality of drama. These camps have come about not because of different game systems, not because of different styles of play, but because of the terminology itself.

Okay, style of play had something to do with it at some time, but I think it less than style of play and more of personality. It is not that I do not like deep, soul-wrenching moments for my characters but I am hopelessly inept at playing them out. It is not that I am not a tactical person, but I have a short attention span for imaginary combat regardless of the realism or depth. I am however, a phenomenal strategic number-cruncher; how many chickens do we send to the Karsavgorians so as to win the war, so a role playing game that requires me to keep books for the party always suits my fancy.

What I suspect is there are many people like me in their own peculiar twists. Most of our role playing preferences on these lines are defined by ability or inability, not actual preference. A good gamer likes it all.

Lie. A good gamer likes it done well. A good gamer does not like it done poorly. Slavish advocates of the munchkin line, of the storyteller line, (both of those lower case, mind you, not the products that bear their name) of the free-form line or game line are all seeking refuge for their overall inability to play a good role playing game.

At a certain point, and this was a mutual movement with neither side fully culpable, bad gamers started to take pleasure in their lack of ability. Which ability was lacking depended on the gamer. Nevertheless, it was a perversion akin to (to use C.P. Snow's classic example) a Humanities' professor being proud he did not know what the second law of thermodynamics was. People ate it up, and the lines became drawn in the sand. People ate it up because it was what they wanted to hear.

It was not what they wanted to hear in a Balkans sense of "I know you're having a hard time, but that guy down the street is your enemy so go rape his daughter and take his house and it might make you feel better," but "I know you're having a hard time but don't worry about it because the hard way is wrong." It meant they didn't have to work as hard and could feel better for not. Like both capitalism and socialism, the conceptual existence justifies a near-infinite number of stupid actions. Swaths of game lines and material are created out of an appeal to ignorance!

Lest I seem too pessimistic, it is important to recognize the ultra-important corollary fact to this dismission of the sides as bandages for cheap play. Like bad play is bad play, good play is good play. I believe before the concepts were popularized, munchkins and pathos-prudes got along rather swimmingly. Sure John liked to kill stuff and Stephanie played roles so convincingly that you forgot it was a game, but people did more than comprise, they adjusted. They strived to appreciate and contribute to the game as best as they were able. This is not a praise of the golden years, because there were an awful lot of reasons those years were not so golden. Besides, all it took was for a few people to conceive of the sides and everything went to hell. The seeds were always there, we just didn't know what to make of it.

What a game requires is a good story, solid mechanics and a touch of the dramatic. This isn't moderation, this isn't compromise, this is a withdrawal to the actual basics of the issue as opposed to the wrestled-over terminology. Everyone but a purist would recognize a good game as such, and no one but a purist would mistake a bad game for a good one. Nowadays, we're just all too proud.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong.