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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8498248" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, on this stuff I follow Baker pretty closely.And <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">here is Baker on the role of mechanics</a>: Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.The rules of a game may reference cues - eg roll a die - on a 4+ your PC succeeds in what they were attempting. They may not do so - eg one of the rules in Apocalypse World is that if everyone is looking at the GM to see what happens next, the GM should make a soft move. They may do so, but not in ways that involve any die-rolling process - eg a default rule of D&D play, especially low-level play, is that if a map indicates a wall, and a token on the map represents a PC being on one side of that wall, then the player can't just move their token to the other side of the wall.Which rules we call mechanics, and which we don't, seems to me a fairly arbitrary matter. But the rules/mechanics are not cues. Cues are physical things in the world that we can touch - maps, tokens, dice etc. Rules/mechanics are normative processes - like if the cue is such and such, then such-and-such-else becomes part of the shared fiction.Hence why, as I said, there are four elements in Baker's model: fiction, cues, participants, and rules/mechanics. The lattermost are put into effect by the participants, who collectively imagine the fiction in part by making reference to the cues as the rules/mechanics dictate.I'm not sure what you're questioning. In the fiction the participants collectively imagined a cliff. They created a cue - a map with cliffs marked on it - perhaps following a rule that obliges them to do so, or perhaps following a permissive rule. Later on, the cue serves as a reminder and constraint on the shared imagining - Hey everyone, remember those cliffs? <points to map> We're going to have to descend them to get away! But the cue is not the fiction: when I play Mystic Wood (an old Avalon Hill tile-based war/boardgame) or Middle Earth: the Wizards (a now-defunct mid-90s CCG) there is a map, indistinguishable in its physical and pictorial character from a RPG map. But in those games there is no fiction except for epiphenomenal flavour text - "mere colour".Whereas in a RPG, the cues figure in rules/procedures/mechanics for establishing what it is that everyone is obliged to collectively imagine.Here you seem to be stating one particular rule that might relate cues to fiction: the GM prepares certain cues (eg maps) in advance of play, and refers to those cues as part of the process of action resolution.When you say  changing the cues changes the fiction I think you are eliding the participants. You are treating the fiction as if it exists independently of the imaginations of those who imagine it. But this is precisely what Baker's model rejects: changing the cues triggers/activates/enlivens certain rules, which state that the fiction is to be changed. Whether the fiction actually changes depends on whether or not the participants collectively follow the rules - and as the Baker-Boss Clare/Lumpley principle states, that is a question of empirical fact about the behaviour and consensus of the participants. It does not follow just from the rules themselves.We can see this in everything from GM fudging, to the table agreeing to allow a redo if something was forgotten (eg When we started the combat, everyone forgot that my hp weren't 10 at all, but were 100, due to that well of healing we found earlier), to the GM telling the table When you get back to the place of awful cliffs, you now find it is a flat plateau as far as your eyes can see! That may or may not be a desirable move for the GM to make, and it may or may not be permissible in accordance with certain rules - but if everyone at the table accepts it then the cue (ie the map) will be change to reflect it, not vice versa!Dungeon World is not a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" system. The key principle for action resolution in DW is if you do it, you do it. And any action declaration that does not trigger a player-side move simply requires the GM to make a soft move in response (or a hard move, if the action declaration hands the GM a golden opportunity on a silver platter).In any event, I think [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and I have already explained what dramatic/narrative stakes are, in the context of a game like Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant or 4e D&D. They are stuff that responds to the dramatic needs of the PCs, as defined implicitly or explicitly within the game system in question.In BW, an action has (is that the right verb? maybe gives rise to) dramatic stakes if its success or failure would be relevant to a PC's Beliefs, or - less clearly and more contextually - if it would speak to a PC's Instinct or trait.In 4e D&D, an action gives rise to dramatic stakes if its success or failure bears directly upon a PC's Quest.In Prince Valiant, there are no formal mechanisms for establishing PC dramatic needs. But they are established implicitly and informally. Here are some examples from my own play, which show "say 'yes' or roll the dice" at work. I've edited them to highlight the application of the principle in the context of overland travel:We have a relevant cue - a page of photocopied maps from <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-new-penguin-atlas-of-medieval-history-colin-mcevedy/book/9780140512496.html" target="_blank">The New Penguin Atlas of Mediaeval History</a> - but its only function is to provide colour for narration. You can see from the above that the checks that are called for, in order to determine the success of the PCs' journey, are the ones to do with fighting the pirates, to see how exhausted they are after crossing the Balkan peninsula, to see how they are received on the Byzantine frontier, and to see how long it takes their scout to find the Huns at night. These are all things that bear upon the stakes of their journey - travelling to Byzantium and the Holy Land to undertake a crusade.But there are no checks to see if they get lost, or to determine whether or not they make it at all. There are no random encounters.You say it's not my experience that my D&D groups act for reasons that are not dramatic but say 'yes' or roll the dice is not a principle that takes, as input, the reasons for an action declaration. It takes, as input, the relevance of the possible consequences of the declared action to some already-given goal or purpose or dramatic need. If failure would produce anti-climax, or push play onto a focus that is irrelevant to the dramatic needs of the PCs - as would be the case, for instance, were the PCs in my Prince Valiant game to fail to make their way to Constantinople - then no check is called for. The GM just says 'yes'.</blockquote>

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