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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9237629" data-attributes="member: 70468">My assumption is a fairly traditional delegation of responsibilities (with GM being responsible for scenario, world, opposition, etc). As soon as one starts tinkering with those things, the assumption doesn’t really hold up very well, but that’s presumably the point.In an RPG context, I’m using “referee” in the historical sense: as a party (ostensibly neutral) responsible for determining how a situation is resolved. It may involve applying rules, it may involve making rulings, or it may involve applying judgement independent of rules.I find the idea of answering questions to tell me which mechanics I should be using pretty strange. It feels exactly backwards compared to established methodologies (e.g., MDA has you start from aesthetics, figure out and model dynamics, then decide on mechanics). A set of patterns and the problems they solve (plus commentary, citations, and examples) would be more useful. That’s essentially how I came to use conflict resolution in my homebrew system (being familiar with Baker’s writings on it and having played games using it, I had an idea of how it worked and how it could be applied, though how I’ve implemented it is different from both AW and BitD).Another thing I fear from the question-driven approach, aside from being at risk of going out of date quickly and falling behind the state of the art, is that the questions could lead you in the wrong direction. There are some aspects of my homebrew system that may seem anachronistic compared to what indie games are doing. I handle time (and money) concretely. I have crunchy-ish combat. If I plug that into a questionnaire and get, “you should follow an OSR pattern,” that’s the wrong answer. I’m starting from there, and that doesn’t do what I want. (Otherwise, what’s the point? I could play one of the games that already exist and save myself a lot of effort.)It seems like the “why” should already be known at this point.</blockquote>

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