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="clearstream" data-source="post: 8524518" data-attributes="member: 71699">On the one hand, I'm confident the play is fiction-first. But we also rightly look at the text (which is what I think you are referring to by "game".) For you, it seems a text is only fiction-first if it has mechanics that mandate change to the fiction. But what if such a game is run differently, as some believe possible? Does it not then fail to be fiction-first?As I noted, I do need to reflect on further examples to address this complaint.And yet, it weightily impacts the valid choices for the players. Generally, however, you desire to see mechanics - pervasively - explicitly pass constraints back into fiction, right? (That is something you keep coming back to with your examples.) DW hack and slash doesn't have that.Hack and Slash When you attack an enemy in melee, roll+Str. ✴On a 10+, you deal your damage to the enemy and avoid their attack. At your option, you may choose to do +1d6 damage but expose yourself to the enemy’s attack. ✴On a 7–9, you deal your damage to the enemy and the enemy makes an attack against you. [Which is resolved as part of the move - per the canonical examples.]Where is the constraint passed into the fiction from this mechanic? One has to bring in other principles to get past - it did damage, reduce your HP - and deliver consequences back into the fiction. "Every time you turn to a player, you're highlighting some thing that can cause them strife, and asking how they deal with it." 5e* is lower key (or at least, does not urge so strongly toward constant pressure), but it wants results to matter all the same.Huh? Those "distance requirements", the hostility between parties, what's at stake - it's coming from your fiction. We don't just start the characters like Chess-pieces in fixed positions and they go!That's one (fairly abstract) way to define "meaningful." The cycle N has its strongest, most immediate and obvious meaning when it feeds into framing and resolution of N+1. But it may feed into the ith cycle N+i.I find that odd, but if that sort of thing doesn't impact on your fictional positioning that's up to what you have agreed. Some of the most consequential things my NPCs do in battles is speak some words. From surrendering to fleeing to negotiating to threatening and so on. I think if I had to choose between pretend-combat and pretend-conversation for narrative power, it would be the latter.Sophistry, I'm afraid. It tells us as nothing about what means will be better or worse other than in terms of power to secure agreement, and yet this entire debate seems to rest on the possibility of judging and disagreeing about what will be better or worse means, and differences in play experience due to means have been cited and exemplified.</blockquote>

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