Recent content by Pedantic

I think there is something here, depending what the metacurrency in question does. Especially when it's a system layered on top of a heavier game, the function of metacurrency is often to let the player alter the gameplay loop. You could deal with the difficult to climb walls, or you could spend...

Gameplay requires a goal, so you can structure your actions to try and achieve it, and a condition that triggers evaluation of that goal, so you can know if you were correct in your structuring of actions. Without those two things, I don't think an activity can be a "game." This is a semantic...

I love this example! It's a very clear presentation of why it's necessary that the world be treated as an independent entity to give the player ludic agency. The GM making directorial/pacing decisions necessarily devalues the impact of player decision making.

I've tried to express this difference as "narrative" or "creative" agency vs. "ludic" agency. The latter often constrains the former. My test for ludic agency is "how could a player, trying to do well, play badly, ideally in a non-trivial way?" If you can't present a case of poor tactics or...

I've come to believe you can't evaluate agency, in the sense of gameplay, without explaining the goal and the evaluation of victory. Agency doesn't exist without a purpose it can be applied to; if there isn't an evaluable goal, then the question is meaningless. You have to want something for any...

Yeah a lot of "meta" currencies are really just an abstraction for "spend extra effort" with some unusual uses outside of trying harder tracked on.

Actually, I think the first example about the ears is a great case for precisely this kind of undesirable influence. In the kind of game, it might be given to a player to know that information, but not to establish it, and especially not to establish it as part of gameplay. You can imagine that...

This is the same line I tried earlier, suggesting it was incorrect to present modifiers that would be used this way as representative of "skill." That didn't seem to go down well, but maybe you'll sell it better. D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

I think it's best practice to use "they" until the matter is clarified, both to avoid getting it wrong and also to avoid assumption from uncertain secondary characteristics.

As apprehensive as it makes me to throw the term into any of these conversations... This is exactly why I've pushed for a mechanical understanding of immersion; of we understand immersion to be about actively trying to achieve the conflation you're discussing here, to push character decision...

I'm drawing a parallel between dismissals of player guided exploration as "mere color" and the no true Scottsman dismissal of simulation, and claiming one cannot justify both arguments. I'm not sure this is relevant, in that the exact threshold of necessary detail about the situation is capable...

It's a question of the level of fidelity/resolution into the fictional setting. I don't think there's universal agreement on what precise label of retail is necessary for sufficiently shared fictional understanding; I generally find 5e much too imprecise about this, but the popularity suggests...

Color can't be both a criticism of the insincerity of player added detail, and also the reason simulation is impossible. The rocks are below the level of granularity of the abstraction. As long as the action of climbing is fixed, the ability to determine the difficulty of the climb from the...

I've never found this argument persuasive, and I don't like the camps it sets up. There's no need to cede the grounds of system to other agendas.

Honestly, I find the scholar fills the same space more comfortably anyway.