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I find MOSAIC Strict interesting, but I feel like not many others do. Some hypotheses as to why:
* Many people have never even heard of it
* Looking like a system sends "that's not for me" signals to the uninitiated
* No play culture
* Indie TTRPG culture of hacks, etc, leaves little room for other design approaches
* Too atomized and diffuse to have momentum
* Many modules too idiosyncratic, don't seem usable
* Not enough big names/influencers
Thoughts?
@DanMaruschak I confess that I thought MOSAIC Strict was a programming language.
Googling around, it looks interesting. Would you say this is a current and accurate overview?
http://blog.trilemma.com/2021/02/nothing-at-bottom-mosaic-strict-rpg.html
@martinralya That's the original "spec" for the idea. So I'd say it's current for defining what it is. I'm not sure I'd call it an overview, but that may be semantics.
@DanMaruschak Looking at the http://blog.trilemma.com/2021/02/nothing-at-bottom-mosaic-strict-rpg.html post linked elsethread, I really don't get the point. What I want as a GM and a player is:
- Aesthetic/thematic/narrative goals for a gameplay experience, and
- Tools to help the game get there.
Like, even for an explicitly modular supplement like Sneakthief - https://unclevova.itch.io/sneakthief - I don't see any benefit to asking that there be no core system, no ... heart, no defining what we're about. I don't want mechanics, I want games.
- Packbats 
@DanMaruschak Also, like, building /games/ instead of disconnected pieces helps explain what the pieces do. Like, we never understood what the deal was with the stress/vice/trauma system in Forged in the Dark games ... until we read the original Blades in the Dark system and went, "oh, this is for telling edgy villain-protagonist stories!"
A mechanic being in a game helps you understand what it /does/. And doing stuff is, for us, the point.
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