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Is it fun to plan a heist?
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<blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9334379" data-attributes="member: 7040941"><p>I think a question thats more to the point is does there <em>need</em> to be specific mechanics for it. </p><p></p><p>This is one of those things where one might be trying to mechanize what humans are already good at doing on their own: leadership, teamwork, learning, and so on. </p><p></p><p>Given enough tools to interact with the gameworld, and a gameworld thats concrete enough to interact with for that matter, and you can easily leave these aspects to emergence rather than explicit mechanics. </p><p></p><p>This I think tends to be the root of why the flashback isn't always a revelation and can feel unsatisfying; the gameworld is wishy washy and you can't really interact with it. You can interact with the "fiction", but the thing about fiction is that it too becomes wishy washy when you emphasize story telling as a game over story making. </p><p></p><p>Its a common thing in fiction writing that characters never actually struggling with the unexpected is, well, bad fiction writing. The flashback, as a stand in for planning fiction, pretty much dips into that issue. It can feel inauthentic and predictable, and it makes conflict too easy to avoid, particularly in a game style thats supposed to be about conflict. </p><p></p><p>You could then point to Stress or complications or what have you, but these don't resolve the root issue with the mechanic. A meta currency is a meta currency, and having complications spin out of a flashback is just swapping one issue for another, so the entire point of the flashback from a gamefeel perspective is kind of wasted. </p><p></p><p>You might have done the cool thing, but now none of it may as well have happened. It became superflous to the story. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In the same way DND players don't have to be Casters to be useful on adventures. /s</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Emberashh, post: 9334379, member: 7040941"] I think a question thats more to the point is does there [I]need[/I] to be specific mechanics for it. This is one of those things where one might be trying to mechanize what humans are already good at doing on their own: leadership, teamwork, learning, and so on. Given enough tools to interact with the gameworld, and a gameworld thats concrete enough to interact with for that matter, and you can easily leave these aspects to emergence rather than explicit mechanics. This I think tends to be the root of why the flashback isn't always a revelation and can feel unsatisfying; the gameworld is wishy washy and you can't really interact with it. You can interact with the "fiction", but the thing about fiction is that it too becomes wishy washy when you emphasize story telling as a game over story making. Its a common thing in fiction writing that characters never actually struggling with the unexpected is, well, bad fiction writing. The flashback, as a stand in for planning fiction, pretty much dips into that issue. It can feel inauthentic and predictable, and it makes conflict too easy to avoid, particularly in a game style thats supposed to be about conflict. You could then point to Stress or complications or what have you, but these don't resolve the root issue with the mechanic. A meta currency is a meta currency, and having complications spin out of a flashback is just swapping one issue for another, so the entire point of the flashback from a gamefeel perspective is kind of wasted. You might have done the cool thing, but now none of it may as well have happened. It became superflous to the story. In the same way DND players don't have to be Casters to be useful on adventures. /s [/QUOTE]
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