NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6843377" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Absolutely.  Add to this the deep consideration for reward cycle inherent in both. You've often pointed to the inspiration for your D&D pursuits as the Moldvay foreword and OA.  Embedded in those you have:1) The promise of tightly addressing premise/theme, that being of the romantic tropes/conceits of the fearless dragon-slaying warriors fulfilling prophecies or saving x (towns, princesses), Honor (capital H), and the organization of celestial interests.2)  A new reward cycle in Honor has a go at providing a thematic mini-game that incentivizes the perpetuation of romantic values and relationships (family) while de-incentivizing their violation or degradation (which ultimately leads to loss of character).Even at 1984 (when I first started at the age of 7), I was considering reward cycle, how various play procedures, genre conceits, and pacing mechanisms pushed play toward or away from specific play dynamics.  I used an Honor hack in borderline every game I played from the next year (OA came out in 85 I'm pretty sure) onward (for a long, long time).While I didn't run Rolemaster, I would guess that our own ruminations were probably similar, hence formative, hence our gaming inclinations are so similar.I think so.  You need:1)  Explicit premise/theme.2)  A reward cycle and play procedures that engender behavior (from all participants, GMs and players alike) and perpetual content generation which is most likely to address premise or theme in an emergent fashion.  Which leads to...3)  Malleable backstory shored up during play. Fail Forward is interesting.  By its very nature it does two very important things.  It addresses premise/theme (from situation to situation by being "stakes and intent referential").  It has a self-contained reward cycle component to it.  It engenders archetypal action declarations because failure answers a question decoupled from whether you are a buffoon or you are slick, whether you are bold or a coward.  You won't get Paladins acting cowardly in systems that feature (properly deployed by deft GMs) Fail Forward.  You won't get Rogues that more resemble court jesters than they do Sherlock Holmes.  You'll get dynamic fallout that the character won't like, but it won't be fallout that says "you thought you were bold/slick?...nope, you're a coward/buffoon."Add to that the fact that 3) above is inherently mandated (to one degree or another) for the technique to work at all.</blockquote>

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