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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9145852" data-attributes="member: 7040941">And it isn't terribly good at the storytelling part if the majority of the results are just more drama rather than unambiguous success. Written stories have to be very deliberate, even when they are presented as this constant downhill rollercoaster of failure, twists, and turns, because eventually you need to use that momentum for something and the ride needs to be believable, within the logic of the fiction, that it went that way. How these games do it isn't very deliberate at all; you will generate drama and twists and turns and you have no real choice or even really influence in that matter. And fwiw, Ironsworn/Starforged do have this same issue, but where they do better is in making you feel more immersed and in actual control of your character rather than separated from them. When drama ensues, it feels closer to being an actual consequence of your actions and not just the system demanding that drama happens, and there's ways in the system to actually influence that that feel naturally consequential to your successes and failures. This is something I liken to the fact that both games were designed to be multimodal, with a big emphasis on solo play, and that is what wrenched the system back away from how other Forge heritage games do things. It also helps that both games are much broader in scope of the kinds of stories, settings, and even genres they can convey. I can do a lot of things with Ironsworn, up to and including the typical high fantasy setting of DND (with some help from 3PP content or my own stuff anyway), and how those stories play out physically and thematically isn't really up to the system. When I read and try out a game like Masks, I don't feel as though I could tell any story other than some variant of the one it tries to force.</blockquote>

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