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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8272986" data-attributes="member: 82106">LOL! Yeah, I cannot literally remember exactly which posters had what opinions 8 years ago, precisely, but there was a block of 'D&D traditionalists' who certainly said those things back then. Some people in this thread were probably there then too. I am more sure that you, me, [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] and some people who don't seem to post anymore were there. The general consensus was as you say, that SCs were this weird imposition of structure onto the sacred 'mechanics exactly and only reflect game world stuff' canon. So, for instance it was considered unconscionable to have a mechanism like "when there are 3 failures, then that signals the gig is up on this challenge" because either A) that set of 3 isn't strictly linked in some direct causal way to a specific failure condition in the fiction, and/or B) it would be necessary to create such a linkage and doing so for all possible permutations of failure paths in the SC would be exceedingly hard, at best. My understanding at least of the theoretical game-design aspects has improved a lot in the last few years. I might not be totally clear on some of the details of how the process was understood to be structured back then. I don't think I would have, for instance, talked about the weakness of basic checks in terms of structure in as much depth or with as much understanding. Particularly PbtA games were only starting to appear then, like DW. Playing that, and some other less common games, has refined my understanding of process and principles greatly. Back then I seem to recall just talking about SCs as a 'gauge of when you had required enough rolls', though I guess that does capture the essence of things.</blockquote>

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