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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8135726" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm sure that is the case for these people you describe just like I'm sure that play priorities and aesthetic preferences and turn-offs are something of a Rorschach Test (which is what I was alluding to above) just like Hit Points are. I believe you're fairly new, but these issues are at the heart of many, many discussions that we've had over the years (which is why I alluded to this all being fraught upthread).But this is also why I brought up "hostility to analysis" upthread.  It is ok to occupy a duality of mental frameworks that are entirely at tension.  You (not you, people) have a problem with this thing, but that thing (which, from first principles seems to occupy the same space) you have a problem with.  A person has been abused for a long time by someone who has power over them but inhabits an emotional space (due to myriad reasons) that manifests as Stockholm Syndrome and an empathic bond results.  That same person sees another person in the same place two decades later and is utterly confused by their incoherent behavior and ends up having contempt (not understanding) for them. We are extraordinarily complex social animals capable of all manner of oddities, paradoxes, post-hoc justifications, and rationalizations.But allowing for that, it seems particularly unhelpful (when analyzing resolution mechanics and their games for actual agency) to describe something that is unequivocally, objectively a continuum as a binary because a certain mental framework feels less good than they would like to about a thing that is fundamentally not able to be placed on either side of a distribution.  And due to that discontent, the thing therefore gets binned on this side of the distribution (vs that side of the distribution or...better yet...where it should be, inside the tails of the distribution).I mean, it tells us a biographical fact about those parties, and it may (or it may not) allow us to extrapolate like cognitive positioning for them when it comes to continuums broadly; they're all or nothing people, glass half-empty, defeat/rejection sticks with them far/far longer than it should, they have a purity test for themselves or others that is stark and possibly lacking prospects for redemption if it isn't met, etc etc. Or, again, none of those things could be true.  And it doesn't matter to the analysis because it doesn't tell us if a core mechanic does what it set out to do.  In this case:1) A bell curve of results with Success on one end, Success w/ Cost/Complication in the middle, and Failure + Mark xp on the other end.2)  Success (moving you closer to victory in the present conflict) but Cost/Complications (interesting decision-points and a dynamically evolving threat/situation as an outgrowth) is the "best" result (for the system's aims) because "trouble (with a trajectory of victory) is where the fun of the game happens!"Now that is where the rubber meets the road with these games.  There is (a) trajectory of victory (on a per conflict basis) but (b) a virtually perpetual state of dynamism and trouble until (c) the conflict is resolved (and the on-going, emergent narrative evolves with a new gamestate).This is a fact and this was the design intent.  They accomplished this. Whether some folks don't like (b) as a design intent because they feel that a perpetual state of (not going to include dynamism here as I'm sure everyone wants dynamism...the question is how to achieve it and is a system capable of it and to what degree) trouble leaves them in a "negative cognitive workspace (lets call it)" is orthogonal to the questions of (i) design vision and execution and (ii) agency therein.The only thing left to say about that is (actually try them first to be sure your intuitions aren't deceiving you and then if they suck) "don't play those games!"ADDENDUMThe PBtA and FitD games are trivially hackable to change the distribution of results.  PBtA - 7+ is Success, 4, 5 is SwC, 1, 2 is Failure.  FitD - 4, 5, 6 is Success, 3 is SwC, 1, 2 is Failure.  And/or change the default Position to Controlled and default Effect to Great!  Decision-point stakes decrease and suddenly "a virtually perpetual state of dynamism and trouble" gives way to endless "bubble gum and ass-kicking and you're all out of bubble game!"</blockquote>

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