A Story over on RPG Gazette

 It's always interesting to read other people's perspectives.

Here's a review of GNS theory after a generation of games have been and gone, and have been influenced by it in different ways.

I generally agree with a lot of what the post is saying.

Example of a three-circle Venn diagram. The figure of interest for this... | Download Scientific Diagram

A lot of the premise with GNS indicated that the three styles of gaming were mutually incompatible, and any any to reconcile two of them (or heaven forbid all three) was incoherent, and implicitly doomed to failure. However this article recognises that there is overlap between the concepts, and having two goals doesn't necessarily make for a diluted session experience, but just combines flavours for a different experience. 

I've posted a few times about the theory (I think most of those posts have "The Forge" as a tag), and have designed with it in mind for decades now, trying my hand at different focal objectives (to varying degrees of success). It's interesting how influential it's been in the hobby, as a niche of a niche, but has probably been made more mainstream with the adoption of various elements from it's influence pool across D&D as much as it has made impact via PbtA and FitD games. 

Complex thoughts on this... but I have to get to work. I might revisit this later. 

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