Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[zakael19]

Fiction -> mechanics -> fiction. If you're missing that first step, you're doing something other than what the game wants.

It doesnt mean "I need to spend 3 minutes describing what my character is doing;" it means "I need to understand the position of all the elements in the fiction we're arraying before I can tell you your Position and Effect." It means "give me that detail" before we make that engagement roll. It's even as simple as "tell me how you indulge your Vice" before you make that roll.

If your table isn't constantly going "what does that look like? Tell me what that looks like? How are you doing that? What do you say here?" etc, it's very hard to understand the full Position at play and describe the Effect, so that when we roll the dice everything follows naturally.

This is yet another thing I like about the Threat Roll. It's very structured, but it totally avoids the "dreaded 7-9" where the GM needs to suddenly figure out something that doesn't negate the hit but complicates things or brings in a cost/hard bargain/etc.

On the Threat Roll, the player says what they're trying to do (kinda conventional!), I tell them what they'll get (less conventional! I'm not sure I ever knew what was going to happen when I rolled a d20), and what they risk (the Threat at hand). They tell me how they avoid that threat, fictionally, and I suggest what that sounds like Action wise. We the limited mechanical stuff, and roll. On an outcome, we always know what's next. You avoid the Threat, it manifests in full, or it manifests in part.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Fiction -> mechanics -> fiction. If you're missing that first step, you're doing something other than what the game wants.

It doesnt mean "I need to spend 3 minutes describing what my character is doing;" it means "I need to understand the position of all the elements in the fiction we're arraying before I can tell you your Position and Effect." It means "give me that detail" before we make that engagement roll. It's even as simple as "tell me how you indulge your Vice" before you make that roll.

If your table isn't constantly going "what does that look like? Tell me what that looks like? How are you doing that? What do you say here?" etc, it's very hard to understand the full Position at play and describe the Effect, so that when we roll the dice everything follows naturally.

In D&D we need to understand what the fictional situation is before we can decide whether a skill roll is even needed, what skill to use, what the DC is and what the success and failure mean. And same (or similar) is true for basically every RPG. I just do not get what you think you are descibing here that is somehow novel or different.

What most games do not have however is rigid stucture what the play must follow. There is no fictional reson why certain things must be done in certain order or in certain phases, why after every score some bad stuff happens via entanglement or even why that psecific bad thing happens. This is opposite of any normal understanding of the fiction coming first.

This is yet another thing I like about the Threat Roll. It's very structured, but it totally avoids the "dreaded 7-9" where the GM needs to suddenly figure out something that doesn't negate the hit but complicates things or brings in a cost/hard bargain/etc.

On the Threat Roll, the player says what they're trying to do (kinda conventional!), I tell them what they'll get (less conventional! I'm not sure I ever knew what was going to happen when I rolled a d20), and what they risk (the Threat at hand). They tell me how they avoid that threat, fictionally, and I suggest what that sounds like Action wise. We the limited mechanical stuff, and roll. On an outcome, we always know what's next. You avoid the Threat, it manifests in full, or it manifests in part.

I have not tried the threat roll, and I feel I don't quite understand how they are asupposed to work. It might be be better. And yes, the mixed successes are a bit tricky so a mechnic that avoids them certainly has something going for it.

 

[zakael19]

What most games do not have however is rigid stucture what the play must follow. There is no fictional reson why certain things must be done in certain order or in certain phases, why after every score some bad stuff happens via entanglement or even why that psecific bad thing happens. This is opposite of any normal understanding of the fiction coming first.

The fiction feeds mechanics, which feed the fiction.

You did fictional stuff in a score (killed people, tangled with higher tier adversaries, caused serious property damage) -> Heat recognizes that in the mechanics -> We roll an entanglement -> the GM brings it into play via fiction ("you're out at your dive bar when you see a couple of bluecoats enter holding a scrap of paper - when they see you recognition goes over their faces and they clomp over saying "hey you, you're coming down to the station with us.")

You can obviously relax the structure of play as you go on, but the intention at least at first is to get the player into the mindset of "dont plan" and "just say cool stuff and roll" and then gives the GM the fuel to have the clockwork of the game press back hard.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The fiction feeds mechanics, which feed the fiction.

You did fictional stuff in a score (killed people, tangled with higher tier adversaries, caused serious property damage) -> Heat recognizes that in the mechanics -> We roll an entanglement -> the GM brings it into play via fiction ("you're out at your dive bar when you see a couple of bluecoats enter holding a scrap of paper - when they see you recognition goes over their faces and they clomp over saying "hey you, you're coming down to the station with us.")

No, I'm sorry, this is a post hoc rationalisation. We follow this rigid mechanical structure as that's the rules, it prompts us to roll from a bad stuff from random table, then we try to invent how to interpret the result so that it makes sense in with the established fiction. If this is not mechanics first then nothing is!

If fiction was genuinely first, then we would not automatically roll an entanglement; we would instead think whether the fictional situation is such that one should occur. We also would not randomise one, we would think what sort of an event would make sense given the fictional situation, and only then choose the mechanical representation for it.

You can obviously relax the structure of play as you go on, but the intention at least at first is to get the player into the mindset of "dont plan" and "just say cool stuff and roll" and then gives the GM the fuel to have the clockwork of the game press back hard.

Yes, it has a purpose. But the it is not "fiction first" it is literally the exact opposite. I am not critiquing the rule, merely the massively misleading labelling of them.

 

[Lanefan]

The fiction feeds mechanics, which feed the fiction.

You did fictional stuff in a score (killed people, tangled with higher tier adversaries, caused serious property damage) -> Heat recognizes that in the mechanics -> We roll an entanglement -> the GM brings it into play via fiction ("you're out at your dive bar when you see a couple of bluecoats enter holding a scrap of paper - when they see you recognition goes over their faces and they clomp over saying "hey you, you're coming down to the station with us.")

If my character is observant enough to notice the bolded (otherwise why are you narrating it) shouldn't I get a chance for my character to react to that observation - duck behind a table, or flee out the back, or wave hello and smile cutely - before they clomp over to me?

This is an example of something that seems prevalent in this style of play, going by various play reports and examples I've seen, and it bugs me to no end: a lack of granularity - or, dare I say, very small-scale railroading - that denies me-as-player the agency to have my character (try to) do what it would do.

Now maybe the fact that an entanglement was rolled (as opposed to a threat) means the narration here is in error and my character shouldn't have noticed the bluecoats until they got to me and started speaking, by which time it's too late to react to their presence across the room. But I can only work with what's given, which here implies I saw them coming and had more than enough time to react.

 

[zakael19]

If my character is observant enough to notice the bolded (otherwise why are you narrating it) shouldn't I get a chance for my character to react to that observation - duck behind a table, or flee out the back, or wave hello and smile cutely - before they clomp over to me?

This is an example of something that seems prevalent in this style of play, going by various play reports and examples I've seen, and it bugs me to no end: a lack of granularity - or, dare I say, very small-scale railroading - that denies me-as-player the agency to have my character (try to) do what it would do.

Now maybe the fact that an entanglement was rolled (as opposed to a threat) means the narration here is in error and my character shouldn't have noticed the bluecoats until they got to me and started speaking, by which time it's too late to react to their presence across the room. But I can only work with what's given, which here implies I saw them coming and had more than enough time to react.

[deleted a bunch of snark]

Please just accept that my off the cuff example isn’t perfect & that the procedures of the game work. If you want to read the SRD on entanglements I linked it a couple pages back. If it makes you feel better, strike the "you notice" and change it to "their faces scan the bar until they notice you, and if you were looking you'd see ..." blah blah.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If my character is observant enough to notice the bolded (otherwise why are you narrating it) shouldn't I get a chance for my character to react to that observation - duck behind a table, or flee out the back, or wave hello and smile cutely - before they clomp over to me?

This is an example of something that seems prevalent in this style of play, going by various play reports and examples I've seen, and it bugs me to no end: a lack of granularity - or, dare I say, very small-scale railroading - that denies me-as-player the agency to have my character (try to) do what it would do.

Now maybe the fact that an entanglement was rolled (as opposed to a threat) means the narration here is in error and my character shouldn't have noticed the bluecoats until they got to me and started speaking, by which time it's too late to react to their presence across the room. But I can only work with what's given, which here implies I saw them coming and had more than enough time to react.

The entanglements are pre-defined troubles and by the rules come as they are. Which is actually something that has bugged me from time to time. They sometimes offer a choice between two ways for the crew to react (like choosing between paying money or losing reputation etc.) but sometimes it seems that given the fictional situation there could be other ways to handle it.

However, the rules actually say:
"If you want the entanglements to be a momentary problem for the crew, stick to the suggested methods to resolve them, and move on to the next part of downtime. If you want to dive in and explore the entanglement in detail, set the scene and play out the event in full, following the actions and consequences where they lead."

So the option to play them in more detail instead of sticking to the predefined choices is mentioned. I need to point out this to our GM, as we've never done that and I think it would be better if we did. (Like we have sometimes played them as full scenes, but the mechanical consequences were always limited to those in the book.)

 

[Fenris-77]

No, I'm sorry, this is a post hoc rationalisation. We follow this rigid mechanical structure as that's the rules, it prompts us to roll from a bad stuff from random table, then we try to invent how to interpret the result so that it makes sense in with the established fiction. If this is not mechanics first then nothing is!

Again, I think that you're making a kind of category mistake. The result of a mechanical moment - a failed roll, for example - does prompt a re-engagement with the fiction but it's working in terms of a prompt. In your example, where there is a table of specific outcomes, then I'm not going to argue with you, however AW and Blades don't provide any such list. They give the GM a list of possible mechanical effects to hang resolution on but make no gestures toward the specifics of the changes to the fictional state.

Some trad games don't really link the mechanical parts specifically to the game state at all. There's some kind of assumption that this happens, but the rules are far more focused on mechanical elements, like skill rolls, that provide a binary pass/fail without diegetic connection, which is left up to the GM and is also quite often completely ignored.

That's the difference I was trying to explain upstream - AW and games like it keep everything very focused on the conversation and current game state in a way that trad game don't. In some games you might not notice a huge difference if the conventions at a D&D table include evocative action declarations and GM is reliably changing the fiction as a result. What is quite obviously different are those D&D games where the players declaration is 'I sneak' and then rolls her sneak skill. The addition of partial success reinforces the design goal of having player actions change the setting, pass or fail, as do the way fail states are framed mechanically.