Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5880427" data-attributes="member: 54877">Absolutely.&nbsp; One of my reasons for preferring that such things be handled in dials, is that the range of the dial sets expectations for designer, playtester, and user alike.&nbsp; The presence of &quot;zero&quot; on the dial creates the idea in peoples' heads that you ought to be able to set it there, and it work well enough.&nbsp; That's not always true of things that get added or dropped.&nbsp; Or you can set it to something else.&nbsp; It will be different results at different settings, but each will work as intended.&nbsp;And that's equally true of dials that only handle from &quot;2 to 10&quot;.&nbsp; That says clear as day, &quot;Hey, we made the dial as wide as we could.&nbsp; We maybe even tried it turned off, or turned up to 11, and it broke.&nbsp; You can do that if you want, but this game isn't designed to handle it.&quot;&nbsp;It would be a fairly strange dial that had working options that were presented such that people thought, &quot;we aren't supposed to do that, or choice B is somehow substandard.&quot;&nbsp; It happens all the time with optional material, though.&nbsp; Some will not want to use certain options, but that's fine of course.&nbsp;&nbsp;I'd like to see &quot;system mastery&quot; turn into, &quot;we've tried the various knobs, dials, switches, levers, etc. enough and/or gained enough insight that we know how to set them to get the kind of game we want.&quot; So when someone has an issue with their game, helpful message board members can suggest, &quot;Turn Dial A to 5, and try option B with it. See if that helps.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5880427, member: 54877"] Absolutely. One of my reasons for preferring that such things be handled in dials, is that the range of the dial sets expectations for designer, playtester, and user alike. The presence of "zero" on the dial creates the idea in peoples' heads that you ought to be able to set it there, and it work well enough. That's not always true of things that get added or dropped. Or you can set it to something else. It will be different results at different settings, but each will work as intended. And that's equally true of dials that only handle from "2 to 10". That says clear as day, "Hey, we made the dial as wide as we could. We maybe even tried it turned off, or turned up to 11, and it broke. You can do that if you want, but this game isn't designed to handle it." It would be a fairly strange dial that had working options that were presented such that people thought, "we aren't supposed to do that, or choice B is somehow substandard." It happens all the time with optional material, though. Some will not want to use certain options, but that's fine of course. I'd like to see "system mastery" turn into, "we've tried the various knobs, dials, switches, levers, etc. enough and/or gained enough insight that we know how to set them to get the kind of game we want." So when someone has an issue with their game, helpful message board members can suggest, "Turn Dial A to 5, and try option B with it. See if that helps." [/QUOTE]

Verification