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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9633610" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I think that will run too long (more time than I have certainly in terms of writing things out).  Let me try this.I'm imagining a game of Dogs in the Vineyard.  In Dogs in the Vineyard the players know the following:* The premise is a "Wild West That Never Was" where young, not remotely ready, gun-toting paladins of The Faith perform their hierarchical stewardship, as the Bridal Falls community navigates a (real and metaphorical) wilderness of Sin large and small, and possibly even Sorcery and Demonic Influence.* The GM has very specific demands and constraints.  This is fully known.  They generate a Town, ripe-to-bursting with relevant situation, actively reveal the Town through play, thereby provoking the players to mete out council, mercy, ceremony, or swift judgement.* The GM should be escalating affairs to conflict and the players should be responding in kind.  There is no turtling.  There are clear stakes, there is escalating, there is folding, and there is fallout.* The conflict resolution procedures and the attendant Fallout + Reflection schemes (attrition and advancement) are all table-facing entirely.There is no veil, there is no obscurant decision-making.  There is clear, distilled premise, clarified stakes, council, violence, adjure & rebuke (for all values both material and spiritual), and aftermath.  And folks know how situation-state and attendant gamestate moves at every moment of play.Now let us take all of that.  Veil or mute it incrementally until the guiding principles for each moment of play for each participant become sufficiently opaque that various parties don't know why what is happening is happening and don't know exactly how to achieve some alternative situation-state and attendant gamestate from the one they're currently afflicted with.  Imagine:* Is this Town pregnant with Sin or is this just a mundane session of 4 hour play where we mill and saw and shovel and engage in benign council untethered to shepherd and flock, sin and malign influence?  Don't know.* Ok we're just talking?  What does that mean mechanically?  What if they don't seem apt to give?  What does that even look like mechanically and what work will escalation to physical do in order to get them to calm the eff down and concede?  Don't know.* Ok, I know Heresy when I see it.  This is it.  Does the GM agree?  Don't know.  Ok, Heresy is 3d10 add, right?  Don't know.* What kind of Fallout am I taking if I have to Take a Blow (put 3 or more dice in to See a Raise)?  What value?  Don't know.  What are the implications of that value fiction-wise and procedure-wise?  Don't know.I hope it is clear that as "Don't know(s)" accumulate, the problem I'm describing amplifies along with that accumulation.  At some point (and very quickly for me), the proverbial Rubicon is crossed.  As the gameful space reduces, my signature upon play reduces and at some point (very early on imo), I'm just impotently requesting the GM change the situation-state to my desired state (likely with only social coersion/pressure as my operating means) rather than actually playing a game where I'm a potent actor aggressing a fiction and an attendant superstructure to achieve my desired ends.[HR][/HR]That is all I have for today.  I've gotta go.Be well.</blockquote>

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