Recent content by Thomas Shey

Same. I'd have said it was endemic.

A lot of metacurrency doesn't automatically come to you either. But I think if you don't understand why the "meta" part of that matters to some people, them trying to explain it is unlikely to get anywhere.

Well, in the case of lot of direct-roll-intervention things, I don't think there's a virtue in having the players wonder at what point the GM will decide its time to let them succeed. That was a complaint I launched at one edition of M&M some years ago.

If that was Hal, this is a guy who got his start as a test pilot. I would put money on them swearing like a 101-year old sailor.

Yeah, I haven't believed in open-ended GM interventionism for many years now.

Ironically, of the two people I ever blocked, both were simply problems no matter what the topic, ableit in quite different ways.

You can have both with the same person, in fact: "They really have a lot of insight when talking about X, but gods above don't get into a conversation with them about Y; it'll go nowhere good."

Most of mine don't fish that far afield; they're usually just exploring a new (but not radically alien) system or dipping into subgenres people are known to like or at least tolerate.

I think recognizing experiments inevitably are going to fail sometimes is one thing, but its another when you have a campaign setup you have every reason to believe will have good lifespan and it--doesn't. Basically, going in expecting a potential failure and--not--are kind of different beasts.

Well, there is a difference: the player was still a watchmaker god when he created the character. You can argue how much he "controls" along the way, but I can't help but think a railroad of your own construction where you don't know the final destination is a bit different a beast than one...

Though I have to note Intergang was Apocalpyse-affiliated from its creation; the times when it haven't been have been the exceptions.

Sometimes I start to a bit toward the end of a long run like that, but I'm very much a completist and have a non-trivial dose of OCD, so...

I think you're being a little blase about how easy it is to come up with a meaningful variety of such things that are equally impactful. I've seen parallel situations where even very experienced game designers struggled here. There's some land between "inconsequential" and "notably less...

I think that's fair to an extent, but I think it risks consequence shopping (i.e. picking the one that rather than being most authentic is simply least impactful).

I also should note that the confused effect was used rather more strongly in the prior edition, so its clearly been an evolving perspective.