Shadowlight's Lighthouse

I've been doing lots of thinking on philosophical and metaphysical topics lately, and one side note of that is this: The threefold or triangle system of classifying gamers could be adapted to people in general, if "how you view the game" was changed to "how you view the meaning of life". Some people are Gamist. They do things to acquire the things that enable them to get the other things that count as trappings of success. I've never understood what sane person would eat brownies lined with gold foil, or needed a fleet of cars for one family...but see, it shows they're "winning" (the filthy twinks. Understand, I don't begrudge people for having money. I begrudge them wasting it. Bad twink! No xp!) Anyway, other people are "simulationist"-equivalents...um, Experiencers? They believe that living life means enjoying the sights, sounds, and experiences in life. They care what a peach tastes like, what their daughter's first word was. Some of them travel to have adventures. Some of them are happy watching paint dry or staring at the full moon for forty minutes at a stretch on a summer night. What they want to experience varies (like different genres of game) but the attitude underlying it is the same. The "narrativist"-equivalents, however, believe that the purpose of life is to fit yourself into the larger, unknown plan of a higher power, and the more you're in harmony with where God/the Universe/Glorynnea wants you to be, the smoother your life will go and the happier you'll be. I'm amused that this makes Rick Warren and his evangelicals the bigger triangle equivalent of the Storyteller system goths. (This would indicate that the coordinates of a given person on each triangle do not correlate. One imagines the separation between real and imaginary, single self and current character, more than explains this. It's one thing to accept that your character has to have setbacks in order to make a better story, but something much more difficult to see that your life is but one thread in a larger tapestry, that every time you meet someone else, it's a crossover or cameo into their life story.) In gaming, I'd say I'm about 60% Simulationist, 20% each Gamist and Narrativist, getting more Narra as I get older. (I keep trying to Simulate the feel of Gamist play without really being Gamist.) In life, I'm 45% each Experiencer and Purposeful, only about 10% Gamist... and I like to Experience *being* Purposeful. but sometimes, I'd like to Experience the stuff the Gamists keep hogging as 'prizes' for being 'winners' (like wearing nice clothes just to look good, going on a date, visiting Australia just to see and hear and feel it)....and the genuine religion the Purposefuls enjoy is spammed and messed up by all these twink Gamists who think they can *win* at religion. No absolution without true repentance, munchkin! and no real God of Love endorses hate! Faith without Works is Dead! I can feel this getting foamy. I think I've made my point, though.