The referee's mental capacity is limited. Compared to the complexity of a (real) TTRPG, it is EXTREMELY limited, even for the sharpest and most experienced refs. It is already a big task just to come up with useful/healthy inferences between generated events. Asking referees to ALSO generate those events will either
a) require an insane amount of man-hours of preparation or
b) result in a factory-floor over-simplified pattern for event construction
Neither of these options is desirable, naturally. It is unthinkable to me that TTRPG design has steadily moved AWAY FROM the game itself generating events, especially in a time where e.g. roguelikes and other procedural games are widespread and proving their worth by strength of demonstration.
And of course this chain of questions leads to the realization that the PROCEDURES create the identity of the gameworld. In a TTRPG, those procedures are mostly contained in tables/matrices. The designer builds the character of the implied setting through these tables.
This all seems so obvious that it's difficult to believe anyone would make serious arguments against it, but I'm glad you took the time to spell it all out. Great article and very well put.
The referee's mental capacity is limited. Compared to the complexity of a (real) TTRPG, it is EXTREMELY limited, even for the sharpest and most experienced refs. It is already a big task just to come up with useful/healthy inferences between generated events. Asking referees to ALSO generate those events will either
a) require an insane amount of man-hours of preparation or
b) result in a factory-floor over-simplified pattern for event construction
Neither of these options is desirable, naturally. It is unthinkable to me that TTRPG design has steadily moved AWAY FROM the game itself generating events, especially in a time where e.g. roguelikes and other procedural games are widespread and proving their worth by strength of demonstration.
And of course this chain of questions leads to the realization that the PROCEDURES create the identity of the gameworld. In a TTRPG, those procedures are mostly contained in tables/matrices. The designer builds the character of the implied setting through these tables.
This all seems so obvious that it's difficult to believe anyone would make serious arguments against it, but I'm glad you took the time to spell it all out. Great article and very well put.