Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8935269" data-attributes="member: 42582">If you're asking, what is the evidence for my prediction? the answer is the many, many posts and threads I've read on these boards, over decades, which illustrate the proposition. The details can take different forms - "Schroedinger's <whatever>", "quantum ogre", "living, breathing world", treating "sandbox" and "railroad" (ie two different approaches to the use of a map-and-key) as establishing a spectrum for all of RPGing, etc, etc, etc - but they all point in the same direction.If you're asking what explains the struggle these RPGers will have with the idea of framing situations, and resolving actions, without resort to a map-and-key, that is harder. The most immediate reason that I would conjecture is that D&D leans very very heavily into map-and-key resolution except for some elements of combat resolution; but the way the combat resolution is presented and typically thought of (which is basically in accordance with wargame norms) makes it very very hard to see how those non-map-and-key elements might be generalised. This is compounded by the relative lack of importance of the fiction to D&D combat resolution except to the extent that the fiction is mediated via map-and-key (eg the positions of the combatants on a grid or other diagram).Look at Apocalpse World as [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has neatly summarised it:Two things that stand out, for someone who is familiar primarily with map-and-key resolution:There is no provision for relying on the map-and-key to sidestep the player's declared action fits a defined move; and there is no provision for making a hard move because that's what the map-and-key tell you to do.This is the fundamental difference between AW threats and fronts, and D&D map-and-key. As I posted upthread, I predict - based on the sort of experience I've mentioned in this post - that many RPGers whose familiarity is mostly with D&D struggle to accept these features of the AW "play loop".I don't know how close BitD/FittD is to AW as sketched by [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] and elaborated on by me.I'm curious if your challenge in coming to it connected at all to the absence of reliance on map-and-key ("notes") at key moments, which is a hallmark of both framing and resolution in much D&D but is foreign to AW and (I suspect) to BitD.I agree they're fundamental. I don't have a strong view on how helpful the notion of "play loop" ultimately is, but if we're going to use it, it then seems pointless to posit additional constraints as (i) external to it and yet (ii) fundamental to play. If they're fundamental then they're not external to the play loop, they're (at least partly) constitutive of it.The bit about holding back is interesting. I think it can be teased apart in this way: I can (and do) play RPGs in which there is no "hidden gameboard", no map-and-key determining framing and resolution, and yet still have trouble bringing home hard consequences. The fact that the players bought into it doesn't, for me, necessarily make it easier.</blockquote>

Verification