Borgstromancy

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Revision as of 18:35, 5 October 2005 by 24.241.121.216 (talk)
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The ability to understand a complex, outlandish, or badly explained setting or system well enough to run a game based on it.

Taken, possibly unfairly, from the name of the RPG authoress Rebecca Borgstrom (also known as R. Sean Borgstrom) who is notorious for writing games, such as Nobilis, with spectacularly original premises and intriguing supporting fiction that are sometimes said to be almost impossible to understand well enough to actually play.

Harsher critics claim that Borgstromancy is in fact the ability to create a game system; that books requiring it are simply masses of florid and cool-sounding prose written essentially at random, lauded only due to the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect and the ability for those who do successfully play the games to feel more intelligent, or otherwise superior, to those who do not do so.