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

[Thomas Shey]

It’s a currency, but not one that’s fully meta like idk Hope and Fear from Daggerheart or Fabula Points or whatever. It’s certainly less meta then Spell Slots or HP in that you can, as a human in our world, understand why doing the thing you’re spending stress on would be stressful to body and mind.

Arguably from the sound of it, it just reverses the cause-and-effect process, but that sounds like it still has largely the same result.

 

[Nytmare]

In the context of flashbacks, they represent the stress of making things line up perfectly so they’re just-so in the moment now. That character had to put extra work in smuggling those bombs they’re about to set off, or bribing that guard, and you’re tense and on edge and everybody is relying on you.

Which would cement it even more solidly in the camp of metacurrency, since the character was not stressed at all between the point where the flashback occurred to the point where the flashback... flashed back(?) from, right? I mean, I hate the fact that meta-anything in RPG circles has effectively become a shorthand for "thing I do not like" but the mechanic is well to one side of the actual definition. The character isn't making a decision to become more stressed to make something happen. The player is making a decision to retroactively announce that the character spent a resource in the past so that they can change the current narrative.

 

[zakael19]

The player is making a decision to retroactively announce that the character spent a resource in the past so that they can change the current narrative.

The GM is assessing the cost of doing the thing that's worn you down between when you starting planning for the score and the current moment. The flashback is generally within the bounds of "since our last downtime," and it's pretty trivial for me to look at the game and go "yeah, that's measuring the fact that a) I've already put some hard work in and b) Im now in this moment when the entire crew is relying on me really hoping it worked."

Cause that's the actual fiction of a flashback, right? IT's saying "dont worry guys, I already bribed the guard/arraigned for delivery/etc" in answer to a fronted obstacle, and your character is praying to the dead gods their confidence here is true. I dont know about you, but when I've been in situations like that there's been a fair bit of stress on my mind!

Again, if something that has a fairly solid diegetic connection to human experience like "reflecting how hard it is to be on edge and push yourself beyond limits" is a metacurrency then, like, dang near everything in games is?

 

[Pedantic]

Which would cement it even more solidly in the camp of metacurrency, since the character was not stressed at all between the point where the flashback occurred to the point where the flashback... flashed back(?) from, right? I mean, I hate the fact that meta-anything in RPG circles has effectively become a shorthand for "thing I do not like" but the mechanic is well to one side of the actual definition. The character isn't making a decision to become more stressed to make something happen. The player is making a decision to retroactively announce that the character spent a resource in the past so that they can change the current narrative.

The issue is always causality and character decision making. Is the player decision to deploy the resource directly analogous to the character decision to apply the resource, and does that decision precede the resulting action?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Which would cement it even more solidly in the camp of metacurrency, since the character was not stressed at all between the point where the flashback occurred to the point where the flashback... flashed back(?) from, right? I mean, I hate the fact that meta-anything in RPG circles has effectively become a shorthand for "thing I do not like" but the mechanic is well to one side of the actual definition. The character isn't making a decision to become more stressed to make something happen. The player is making a decision to retroactively announce that the character spent a resource in the past so that they can change the current narrative.

Although I come down on this closer to @zakael19 I think it’s important to point out that Stress is not used solely for Flashbacks. Its other applications… to Push, activate abilities, or to Resist Consequences… are far less “meta” than Flashbacks might be categorized.

So I don’t think “metacurrency” is the best label for Stress given the far more common applications of it don’t perturb timing or cause/effect concerns like Flashbacks do.

 

[Fenris-77]

Although I come down on this closer to @zakael19 I think it’s important to point out that Stress is not used solely for Flashbacks. Its other applications… to Push, activate abilities, or to Resist Consequences… are far less “meta” than Flashbacks might be categorized.

So I don’t think “metacurrency” is the best label for Stress given the far more common applications of it don’t perturb timing or cause/effect concerns like Flashbacks do.

The breadth of application is actually what has me keeping it close to 'meta'. Not quite meta, but pretty close. The thinnish diegetic index gets thinner the more things you apply it to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The issue is always causality and character decision making. Is the player decision to deploy the resource directly analogous to the character decision to apply the resource, and does that decision precede the resulting action?

With a flashback mechanism, that's always going to be an issue with people who are bothered by that sort of thing. Given where that's usually used, I tend to think of it in that context as an allergy to a genre convention, and I can only develop so much sympathy there.