NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6798043" data-attributes="member: 6696971">It suspect so as well!I think Burning Wheel manages to do this because it stoutly fulfills 1, 2 and 3 (in my post above yours) so robustly.  Its theme/premise is clear and the PC build mechanics, resolution mechanics, GMing advice/ethos, and reward cycle are all tightly integrated with that "point of play" as fulcrum.  Because it works toward a specific model (Test PC Beliefs > generate new content based on outcome coupled with  "the constant demands of play" coupled with already established fiction > repeat) such that the entirety of the system is tightly wound around producing it (outcome based design), it avoids the issues that stem from typical engines that are conceived toward the goal of achieving (yettypically failing) objective simulation of process (which eschew a focused premise, a tight rewards cycle, integrated PC build mechanics + transparent/strident GMing protocol).  "The constant demands of play" is key.  If this priority is central to play procedures, then you're never merely simulating causal logic (as if anyone had the computing means to do so anyway!).  Whenever generating conflict coherent with an established theme is central to play, you're inevitably eschewing conflict-neutral outcomes.  This is why people get hung up in these conversations so often.  Having pace-atrophying, conflict-neutral outcomes and moments of play that follow those outcomes is important to ardent process-sim inclined players, even though they seem disinclined toward framing it in those terms.  This is because they feel it better simulates causal process, rounding out the experience of an adventurer's life, and therefore they find it more "immersive" (I find it an abject waste of time to focus any portion of play on this, hence its removal as addition by subtraction).  I think this is why they find systems where outcomes are implacably "premise/principle-guided" and tethered to conservation of narrative momentum/conflict/coherency "railroady."  Being coherently "premise/principle-guided" obviously isn't "railroady" (which is about GM Force subverting player authority and the resolution mechanics by dictating outcomes to keep play on a preconceived metaplot), but they don't have a better term for it so they use that.  It is certainly much more granular with more moving parts than PBtA, Dogs, or Cortex + (or even Mouseguard), but at its core, it has much more in common with those games than it does Classic Traveler!</blockquote>

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