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"Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8116935" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Apocalypse World has very clear rules about this:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. (p 43)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">The players’ character sheets, like your front countdowns, are both prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive: changes to the character’s sheet mean changes to the character’s fictional circumstances and capabilities; that’s the game’s experience and improvement rules, following. Descriptive too: when the character’s fictional circumstances or capabilities change naturally, within the character’s fictional world, the player can and should change her character sheet to match.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Bran bolts a machinegun onto his truck. I tell his player its stats.</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>The holding takes in refugees, and some of them naturally gravitate to Keeler’s gang, doubling its size. I tell Keeler’s player to change the gang from small to medium.</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Uncle invests time and scratch in improving his holding, building up and armoring its walls. I give his gang the appropriate 2-armor bonus when they fight to defend it.</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Fair’s fair, though!</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Bish’s ambulance-infirmary gets blown up. I tell his player to cross it out.</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Uncle’s manufactory workers rise up, overthrowing their overseers and seizing the manufactory for themselves. I tell Uncle’s player he’s lost the gig and its surplus.</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>The warlord for whom Wilson runs compound defense winds up at the wrong end of a sniper’s sights. I tell Wilson’s player that he can still work the gig if he wants, but for no profit. Nobody’s paying. </em>{pp 178-79)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p>Marvel Heroic RP is pretty clear the other way round, for instance:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">if you want some kind of gadget, gear, tool, or other trapping that belongs to your field of Specialty, you can spend a PP to access it as a stunt or as a resource die, as long as the situation makes that reasonable. (OM 97)</p><p></p><p>I run 4e skill challenges more like MHRP than AW. A "knockdown solution" is a check within the challenge, but assuming that the challenge remains on-foot (ie that nothing has happened to suddenly make this thing completely uninteresting, thus vitiating the earlier decision about heft/pacing that informed a stipulation of its complexity; and that the PCs aren't just walking away) then the "knockdown solution" can't, in itself, end the challenge. Its success - which might be auto (esp if powered by a ritual or daily power, as per the rules) - doesn't stop me as GM narrating additional complications or demands in the situation or whatever else makes sense to keep the scene alive.</p><p></p><p>These different approaches give a different sort of weight to the fictional positioning/mechanics/consequences interface. (And even AW sometimes uses the MHRP approach, eg it is the most common approach in establishing the parameters for the upshot of successful moves.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8116935, member: 42582"] Apocalypse World has very clear rules about this: [INDENT]Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. (p 43)[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]The players’ character sheets, like your front countdowns, are both prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive: changes to the character’s sheet mean changes to the character’s fictional circumstances and capabilities; that’s the game’s experience and improvement rules, following. Descriptive too: when the character’s fictional circumstances or capabilities change naturally, within the character’s fictional world, the player can and should change her character sheet to match.[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]Bran bolts a machinegun onto his truck. I tell his player its stats.[/I][/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]The holding takes in refugees, and some of them naturally gravitate to Keeler’s gang, doubling its size. I tell Keeler’s player to change the gang from small to medium.[/I][/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]Uncle invests time and scratch in improving his holding, building up and armoring its walls. I give his gang the appropriate 2-armor bonus when they fight to defend it.[/I][/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]Fair’s fair, though![/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]Bish’s ambulance-infirmary gets blown up. I tell his player to cross it out.[/I][/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]Uncle’s manufactory workers rise up, overthrowing their overseers and seizing the manufactory for themselves. I tell Uncle’s player he’s lost the gig and its surplus.[/I][/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT][I]The warlord for whom Wilson runs compound defense winds up at the wrong end of a sniper’s sights. I tell Wilson’s player that he can still work the gig if he wants, but for no profit. Nobody’s paying. [/I]{pp 178-79)[/indent] [INDENT][/INDENT] Marvel Heroic RP is pretty clear the other way round, for instance: [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]if you want some kind of gadget, gear, tool, or other trapping that belongs to your field of Specialty, you can spend a PP to access it as a stunt or as a resource die, as long as the situation makes that reasonable. (OM 97)[/INDENT] I run 4e skill challenges more like MHRP than AW. A "knockdown solution" is a check within the challenge, but assuming that the challenge remains on-foot (ie that nothing has happened to suddenly make this thing completely uninteresting, thus vitiating the earlier decision about heft/pacing that informed a stipulation of its complexity; and that the PCs aren't just walking away) then the "knockdown solution" can't, in itself, end the challenge. Its success - which might be auto (esp if powered by a ritual or daily power, as per the rules) - doesn't stop me as GM narrating additional complications or demands in the situation or whatever else makes sense to keep the scene alive. These different approaches give a different sort of weight to the fictional positioning/mechanics/consequences interface. (And even AW sometimes uses the MHRP approach, eg it is the most common approach in establishing the parameters for the upshot of successful moves.) [/QUOTE]
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