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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8530941" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I look at it as enablement. Its softer than a hard constraint which says "you cannot do X" but it has basically the same role. This is how tactics can arise within the game's fiction, by taking a certain path, you can achieve cognizable benefits. "move to the high ground, we will get +2", or "surprise them from behind and get advantage", etc. I'm curious why you would feel it needs differentiation from "occupy the door so that only one of them can attack at a time." which is a hard constraint impossed by the fiction of a doorway. Notice how they both lead to tactics.</p><p></p><p>I think calling it color sells it short. Its PLOT, its the driver, the engine of the game. IN A SENSE though it is more enablers and constraints. Or if you try to get away from that, then you're into DRAMA, which is a different category.</p><p></p><p>I don't call the later "S > F". You have a bond, which a mechanism in DW says to examine, and it provides a process, you make a choice, if you resolve it, you get XP, etc. Creating a new bond is PARTLY mechanical as well, but both resolving and creating are heavily fictional. Once you resolved a bond, only fictional considerations go into creating a new one, same as creating your initial bonds. You simply decide, purely on the basis of fiction what they are. No mechanics informs this or influences it in any way (I guess you could construe some cunning plan to make the new bond especially easy to exploit as a 'tactical' choice, but as we saw above, even tactics are heavily fictional).</p><p></p><p>Currencies like this seem like pure mechanics in terms of their accounting, but it isn't easy to see SPENDING them as leaving the fiction uninvolved. I guess it depends on the game system, but I think the classic design pattern is that something in the fiction has to at least lampshade the expenditure. More often the expenditure itself provides the spender with a chance to amend the fiction in some way. So, "I see a situation X, it is mechanically unfavorable/fictionally undesired. I spend a plot coupon. I invoke some other fiction, Y, to explain how X is ameliorated in some fashion." </p><p></p><p>HoML has an analog of 5e Inspiration called Fate. If you have a positive aspect of Fate, you can alter the fiction by invoking one of your character's traits in a positive way. A canonical example might be "I am a meticulous planner, therefor I foresaw the need for a compass, I pull it out of my backpack." You can do the inverse and hand yourself a setback explained by some trait you have too, which will move your Fate aspect to positive. That could come in handy, though we have been playing that it resets at the start of each session to positive anyway, so it isn't a trick that comes up too often.</p><p></p><p>It establishes fiction in DW. The GM is mechanically constrained in terms of the fiction they must now introduce in response. The information gained must conform to the parameters of the question. I'm not sure why this would be a separate class of fiction. Let me go on to say that some fiction is 'immediate' in scope, that is it is 'in the scene' and thus has a direct impact on the players choices. Other fiction may not be in immediate scope, "there are almost impassible mountains to the north, we should veer west in order to bypass them if possible." The constraint is still there, or goal, etc. You can approach these non-immediate fictions in the same way as any other, they are just not likely to play the role of a direct modifier to an immediate task. I'd finally note that this is 'scope dependent'. So, if the current scene is "Dangerous Journey" then maybe the mountains DO directly modify things, as they could shape the available options for the trip, and this is because the scope of a journey is larger than a typical 'encounter' type scene.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8530941, member: 82106"] I look at it as enablement. Its softer than a hard constraint which says "you cannot do X" but it has basically the same role. This is how tactics can arise within the game's fiction, by taking a certain path, you can achieve cognizable benefits. "move to the high ground, we will get +2", or "surprise them from behind and get advantage", etc. I'm curious why you would feel it needs differentiation from "occupy the door so that only one of them can attack at a time." which is a hard constraint impossed by the fiction of a doorway. Notice how they both lead to tactics. I think calling it color sells it short. Its PLOT, its the driver, the engine of the game. IN A SENSE though it is more enablers and constraints. Or if you try to get away from that, then you're into DRAMA, which is a different category. I don't call the later "S > F". You have a bond, which a mechanism in DW says to examine, and it provides a process, you make a choice, if you resolve it, you get XP, etc. Creating a new bond is PARTLY mechanical as well, but both resolving and creating are heavily fictional. Once you resolved a bond, only fictional considerations go into creating a new one, same as creating your initial bonds. You simply decide, purely on the basis of fiction what they are. No mechanics informs this or influences it in any way (I guess you could construe some cunning plan to make the new bond especially easy to exploit as a 'tactical' choice, but as we saw above, even tactics are heavily fictional). Currencies like this seem like pure mechanics in terms of their accounting, but it isn't easy to see SPENDING them as leaving the fiction uninvolved. I guess it depends on the game system, but I think the classic design pattern is that something in the fiction has to at least lampshade the expenditure. More often the expenditure itself provides the spender with a chance to amend the fiction in some way. So, "I see a situation X, it is mechanically unfavorable/fictionally undesired. I spend a plot coupon. I invoke some other fiction, Y, to explain how X is ameliorated in some fashion." HoML has an analog of 5e Inspiration called Fate. If you have a positive aspect of Fate, you can alter the fiction by invoking one of your character's traits in a positive way. A canonical example might be "I am a meticulous planner, therefor I foresaw the need for a compass, I pull it out of my backpack." You can do the inverse and hand yourself a setback explained by some trait you have too, which will move your Fate aspect to positive. That could come in handy, though we have been playing that it resets at the start of each session to positive anyway, so it isn't a trick that comes up too often. It establishes fiction in DW. The GM is mechanically constrained in terms of the fiction they must now introduce in response. The information gained must conform to the parameters of the question. I'm not sure why this would be a separate class of fiction. Let me go on to say that some fiction is 'immediate' in scope, that is it is 'in the scene' and thus has a direct impact on the players choices. Other fiction may not be in immediate scope, "there are almost impassible mountains to the north, we should veer west in order to bypass them if possible." The constraint is still there, or goal, etc. You can approach these non-immediate fictions in the same way as any other, they are just not likely to play the role of a direct modifier to an immediate task. I'd finally note that this is 'scope dependent'. So, if the current scene is "Dangerous Journey" then maybe the mountains DO directly modify things, as they could shape the available options for the trip, and this is because the scope of a journey is larger than a typical 'encounter' type scene. [/QUOTE]
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