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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8257339" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Alright, I don't have a ton of time to discuss a lot of things.  Just going to pick out some things and discuss them.  [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] and [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] 1)  On Wises (Illuminate/Spout Lore/Study) and Circles (Consort/Carouse + tons of Playbook abilities) in Dungeon World/Blades.  Its unclear to me (from an application within play) why these things are controversial.  These things are present in both games as either orthodox or niche application of base moves, they're heavily distributed among playbooks (Fighters consult the spirits of their sword, Rangers consult animals, Thieves/Spiders consult their underworld contacts, Bards consult whomever the eff they want, Clerics/Wizards/Whispers consult the supernatural), and Blades codifies this w/ Friends/Allies and Info Gathering (where these things see heavy usage) and use w/ Acquire Asset or Longterm Project in DTAs. 2)  I think the conversation/thoughts on hardness of scene framing or "scene transition flow" is interesting.  Its something that I've seen be an issue for some people in various games (4e D&D which is a Action Scene > Hard Transition > Action Scene rinse/repeat was typically called "jarring" by certain folks).  There is a personal litmus test there that is happening which I think is difficult to suss out.  I personally haven't felt this in any scene-framed game, but plenty of folks feel it in some games but not in others."What work is the engagement roll doing in Journey's/it seems incoherent or a poor fit."  On this, I have some commentary and a question.CommentaryThe Engagement Roll serves a dual purpose:1)  It allows player decision-points and resource allocation (who to talk to, what actions to take, what DTAs to devote to this next score if any, who/what to focus on as target) to mechanically impact (Position) the opening framing of the Score and, through that, the fiction/gamestate.2)  Cut to the Action.  It lets us get right to the first serious obstacle of the Score.  This creates a hard transition where we elide all of what happened from the end of the Information Gathering/Free Play scene(s) (which is going to be a fair bit temporally and spatially) to some segment (first serious obstacle) of the Score. Given the above (which you guys both know...but I'm putting it out there to capture my train of thought), its not clear to me why going from Info Gathering > First Serious Obstacle of Score via Engagement Roll is in "feels right" territory but Journey > First Serious Obstacle of Adventure via Engagement Roll is in "jarring" territory.It seems like (a) End of Journey will likely elide similar (or even less) temporal/spatial information in its transition to Adventure than Info Gathering/Free Play will in its transition to Score, (b) its unclear to me why it matters if it was a bit more or a bit less (or even the same), (c) the other option is to rid "in the wild" Adventures of (1) above which means that the GM is extrapolating opening Position for Adventure Obstacle # 1 rather than mechanically instantiating it (its not clear to me how that is an improvement), (d) I still don't see how a 1/2/3 day Journey's contributory effects on the coming Adventure isn't something that should be seriously relevant (and therefore operationalized via +1/-1 to Engagement Roll).QuestionThis is Harper's offering for a Blades Fantasy Hack where a dangerous journey is to take place before a Score (he doesn't give a name for this...but let's call it...Adventure!).  Below he instantiates it as (a) a Fortune Roll which (b) assumes a hexcrawl map with Zones.  I wonder how you guys feel about this procedure in place of the Perilous Journey procedure?This sounds cool.  I like it.First, a thought and a few issues.ThoughtIts clear that Harper still intends an Engagement Roll here because he doesn't say no Engagement Roll (he says "cut to the destination...which is what you do with the Info Gathering > Score transition).  So it appears that he's still systematizing Engagement Roll to determine Position for the first relevant obstacle of the Score (Adventure in the wild).Is this is a problem in the vein that we have above or is the problem lessened/removed because of what he's doing procedurally?  If so, I'm curious as to why?Issues1)  This doesn't capture the Journey mechanics/ethos of Dungeon World/Perilous Wilds (and the aesthetic of Torchbearer).  That is fundamentally necessary to what I'm trying to do here.  This looks more like Cortex+ Fantasy Hack (which is fine...great game...but not what I'm looking for at all).2)  With the above approach (while its a good approach), there is a lessening/subtraction of breadth of decision-points, their individual heft, and their interactions with each other means considerably less tactical & stategic overhead, opportunities for "thematic differentiation in expression of PCs" (via the decision-point > actions/advancement deployment > outcomes loop), and potentially consequential snowballing in the Journey phase of play. I don't want less of any of that.  I want the Journey phase of play to be more chunky, more consequential, more fun, and more Dungeon World/Torchbearer-ey than what would be instantiated in Harper's hack above.Thoughts on any/all of that would be appreciated.  Its a lot of stuff and you've both already contributed a lot so if you want to just give it a pass, no worries!  If nothing else, I'm basically just laying out my thoughts on design here and that is productive for me even if no one interacts with it.</blockquote>

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