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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9249728" data-attributes="member: 71699">Your interesting thoughts here made me reflect on my own impressions of where difficulty lies in GMingSandboxes - for me are very in the moment - "in-situ cognitive agility and of integrating multiple axes of information at all times in your framing and consequences is extreme". Runequest can be played like this.Freeform / FKR - also very in the moment and probably the most difficult GMing to sustain over an extended campaign - takes an acute sense of what the world is like, accurate sensitivity to who player characters are and what they care about, ruthlessness (it's all on you, no fallback to "the dice made me do it") and sincerity (you have to mean it), strong commitments on how you resolve what and why. For extra difficulty, formulate your own ultra-light principles and/or rules. Storyline - I think you summarise quite well, although I've moved away from labelling "trad" as that seems to bucket a number of distinct play styles; I also notice a vector of high difficulty around exploiting prep to reveal implied stories. Call of Cthulhu can really show off this (e.g. Masks of Nyarlathotep)Storygames - I find it matters whether the players at the table understand the paradigm, so it's not solely down to GM, although I agree that "in-situ cognitive agility and of integrating multiple axes of information at all times in your framing and consequences is extreme". Getting Avatar conflicts just right requires a lot of skill, as one example. Games about a subject - requires deep knowledge of subject, down to systemic appreciation (not just what, but why and how; not just "it's like this" but "it goes like this because of these factors, and knowing this you can take it to new places..."), and the ability to breath life into it... making immersion effortless, depending on subject, can be extremely technical and especially demanding on memory. For some reason games set in Asian history or analogies thereof, like Bushido or L5R often exemplify this. "Clockwork" games - this is my label for games that rachet shared assets fueled by currencies paid out from scenes, with background cycles to exploit and mitigate. At any moment there's a lot in flight! So again - "in-situ cognitive agility and of integrating multiple axes of information at all times in your framing and consequences is extreme" OR a group can take it slower and really amplify the rigour and complexity. Blades in the Dark has an element of this (in the extended crew game.) Map and key - the set up takes high rules-knowledge and creativity, and for the in-the-moment playing out of the set up (particularly if ramifications will ripple across map) is extremely demanding, because it's typically four fierce minds to one GM! I feel like Dolmenwood could be an example of high-end play of this sort. Although there are countless great examples.There are probably yet more distinct styles of play and syntheses between them, so leaving the list there... I strongly agree with your sense that differing styles of play emphasise different talents, and every style of play is open-ended in terms of difficulty. The can absorb as much talent as GM can invest in them. I'm not in love with the "training wheels" analogy, but a central goal of design is accessibility: can players access the crucial game play? So your observations resonate.</blockquote>

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