clearstream
(He, Him)
So reiterating, it's a design manifesto. It's about what the game designer is doing. The "Six Cultures" blog post speaks to OC as a culture of play. Hence it's reasonable that the author accepted "OC" as a better label for what they were getting at. My starting point is the post linked from "Six Cultures", which is about neo-trad design.Sure, but I'm not sure I'd attach all that to a 'culture of play'.
Absolutely. So on the one hand the design intent is to in fact use them. And on the other hand, as in my post #1,179, I'm arguing that using them goes deeper: it has ramifications. The use and the ramifications together are what I'm characterising as the neo-trad design trend or manifesto... yielding recognisably related game texts."Neo-Trad" to me signifies a high degree of focus on player-curated character arcs and a focus on enacting player-envisaged plots and action based on that. Certainly a clock/SC could be useful there in terms of structuring how the GM approaches enacting her side of that. However, I think it would potentially be equally useful in trad play as a way of constructing a gamist structure for challenge development. I'm not sure how useful it is in a more Sim sense, but undoubtedly there are situations where it is a useful tool in the box.
So, I see these mechanics as being broadly applicable to a wide variety of types of game, though not every technique will work well in every case (clocks might, for example be pretty awesome in classic Gygaxian gamist play as an alternative to things like wandering monsters, but I think SCs would generally be a bit rigid there).
So this is quite right. It's just what I'm getting at. I think "momentum mechanic" is a good label for the class, but in the end the labelling is an unimportant side issue. We both can recognise the class of mechanics and call out design decisions made to serve each game.Well, I interpret SCs and Clocks as being more BINDERS ON THE GM than anything else. The problem I see with 5e (as an example) is that there's really nothing like that in place. Not only does the GM get to present any sort of situation she desires to the players, but she also gets complete arbitrary say over what the win cons are. Its not even a 'game', it is simply "when I feel like I've made you roll however many dice I feel like, then I'll tell you if you won or lost and what the consequences are."
So, 4e SCs in particular, exist to defeat the above. The GM must declare "this is a level 5 complexity 4 challenge" and from that moment onward the win cons and stakes are set (I'd say the players may, informally in 4e, have ways to up the stakes, but the GM is bound). I don't think 'momentum' as such is central to this, though the way you have just described it above may be consonant with what I'm talking about. Still, our evaluation criteria are probably rather different, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure why 5e has jumped in here, but you're right. It's lacking a general "momentum mechanic" which means that - outside of Social Interactions and some kinds of Downtime - there are no binders on the GM. A referee can follow good practices, but they're not constrained or compelled by game mechanics. That wouldn't even make sense, because referee is part of lusory-means, not a player. I'd love to see 6e contain a momentum mechanic, although I haven't noticed one in the playtest material. One might conclude that neotrad design trends will have a limited influence on 6e, which - even though I understand the commercially-driven motivations - I find disappointing.