Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8287245" data-attributes="member: 6696971">These responses are going to be my off-the-cuff thoughts on how these things you've written above facilitate Skilled Play.  I'm not sure exactly what work you want this to do, but perhaps it will illuminate aspects of first principles and boundaries. 1.  Since you've separated out PC build/resolution mechanics from "written rules", I have to assume there is some purpose for doing so.  Presumably, the work you're intending here is in the "written" aspect of this, so I'm running with that.  Game systems that are both (a) codified, (b) table-facing, and (c) reliably/intuitively actionable (contrast with rules that are GM-facing and encoded in a haphazard/byzantine/obscure/overly loose way...invariably requiring GM-as-cipher and subsequent extrapolation of impacts/interactions) better serve Skilled Play because players are navigating decision-points from a position of strength (strength here meaning all of overall cognitive facility, ability to weight options/extrapolate downstream interactions/fallout, and leverage in disputes).2.  Game mechanics are extremely important, but not just in isolation, but how they affect the overall loop of play.  How this PC build mechanic interacts with that action resolution mechanic which interacts with this gamestate which impacts that downstream gamestate which opens up the movespace for this later decision-point which impacts the risk/reward portfolio of this limited-use resource (on and on).3.  If you're navigating an obstacle course (a dungeon) and the system governs play via granular accounting of resources (including time, varying movement speeds contingent upon action, action economy, Hit Points, encumbrance, equipment loadout, spell loadout and how each of these interact with each other), limited-use or rationed resources (which may or may not be recovered during the effort), and many 2nd and 3rd order considerations of how the present gamestate will interact with all possible future gamestates, the spatial properties of the obstacle course and how it is stocked/reacts to impacts are paramount.  If a GM doesn't have either (a) a pre-play map that is keyed and stocked or (b) a robust procedural generation method, then play is going to risk having the skillfulness of decision-points around each of the above (and therefore the through line of the decisions for the delve at large) be muted.  What is necessary is that all of the relevant aspects of the obstacle course (the spatial dimensions, the number of obstacles, the nature of the obstacles, their theme, their interconnectedness) be attendant to the above aspects of play.  The less attendant they are to the above, the more skillfulness in the navigation of the delve becomes muted.Now, I'm going to caveat something here because it is important.  A different paradigm of PC build, resolution mechanics, resource orientation changes the paradigm of play dramatically.  The more abstract things become and/or if there is a complete paradigm shift in how all of these things interact, the properties of skillful play are going to change.  A simple example is that a zoomed-out action/adventure, thematic crawl without the granular features (and relationships) above might feature no prepped map (or a very abstract map) at all but is governed by some other procedure/mechanical architecture (# of obstacles to be defeated before a delve of x tier is completed) may still be comprised of skillful play...but it will be a different type of skillful play than what is detailed in the first paragraph (overwhelmingly, the skill will be about discrete scene resolution and how you marshal thematic resources to unlock/manage the thematic move-space...with less or consequentially different downstream effects on the "delve-at-large").[HR][/HR]Alright, that is already a lot of stuff.  I'm going to stop there and make sure that makes sense and answer any questions that may have arisen about those 3.</blockquote>

Verification