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<blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8062024" data-attributes="member: 72555">The players lose if they win or if they lose.If they win, the game becomes gonzo and falls apart.&nbsp; If they lose, the game becomes gonzo and falls apart.That is what happens when you have a positive feedback loop.As the DM you can do fiat-correction to the loop, but the game itself fights against you.&nbsp; And you just nullified the very thing you said you where looking for.---Imagine if finishing X% of an encounter gives you X^2 resources.&nbsp; And &quot;typical&quot; is 50% for 25% of resources.Parties that hit 10% end up with 1% of resources, and are starved and the next quest they go on ... is also screwed.&nbsp; They have no resources, so they can't manage more than 10%, so are on a starvation track forever.Parties that hit 100% get 100% of resources.&nbsp; Now they have 4x the resources for their next adventure, which makes hitting 100% trivial.---If the reward matters to your next adventure success and it is a positive feedback loop, then the game rapidly diverges into 100% and 0% branches.To have variable reward like that, either the reward doesn't matter (is trivial next to other stuff), or there are external controls that dampen the feedback loop (the DM by fiat gives the players high-ROI trivial fights to recover from their bankruptcy, or otherwise adjusts it -- when they diverge, the DM starts providing gonzo difficulty as well).Control theory doesn't care how the feedback is dampened.&nbsp; If it is in the assumptions of the encounter/adventure building, or fiat by the DM itself.But it does say that if you don't dampen the feedback, the situation explodes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="NotAYakk, post: 8062024, member: 72555"] The players lose if they win or if they lose. If they win, the game becomes gonzo and falls apart. If they lose, the game becomes gonzo and falls apart. That is what happens when you have a positive feedback loop. As the DM you can do fiat-correction to the loop, but the game itself fights against you. And you just nullified the very thing you said you where looking for. --- Imagine if finishing X% of an encounter gives you X^2 resources. And "typical" is 50% for 25% of resources. Parties that hit 10% end up with 1% of resources, and are starved and the next quest they go on ... is also screwed. They have no resources, so they can't manage more than 10%, so are on a starvation track forever. Parties that hit 100% get 100% of resources. Now they have 4x the resources for their next adventure, which makes hitting 100% trivial. --- If the reward [b]matters[/b] to your next adventure success and it is a positive feedback loop, then the game rapidly diverges into 100% and 0% branches. To have variable reward like that, either the reward [b]doesn't matter[/b] (is trivial next to other stuff), or there are external controls that dampen the feedback loop (the DM by fiat gives the players high-ROI trivial fights to recover from their bankruptcy, or otherwise adjusts it -- when they diverge, the DM starts providing gonzo difficulty as well). Control theory doesn't care how the feedback is dampened. If it is in the assumptions of the encounter/adventure building, or fiat by the DM itself. But it does say that if you don't dampen the feedback, the situation explodes. [/QUOTE]

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