Rulesets as artforms - writing a game never intended to be played?

[flond]

I actually thought of Nobilis first, which is admittedly much more general and probably more playable than the one's you've mentioned. I also get the feeling that weird concepts and unplayable systems have more to do with breaking assumptions than being actually unplayable.

Within tabletop RPGs we have some assumptions that we tend to make in various ways, including a presumed breadth to the simulation and a focus on media emulation. The latter is actually quite interesting to dig into, as it's the entire reason so many RPGs end up defaulting to physical conflict as a focus. When you break that assumption or start redirecting to more obscure media people have less references for how your rules should actually work.

I think you're correct, though as a regular player of Jenna Moran games I never thought of them that way.

Her game The Flood where you farm poetry probably counts too.