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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9198751" data-attributes="member: 7040941">The Intent section covers it, and as related, what you're reading are examples of the pattern in practice, specifically the factually most common form it takes. They are not an exhaustive listing of every form the pattern can take. If we step out of that specific one for a moment, lets take a look at another:[ATTACH=full]331799[/ATTACH]This is relatively straightforward (energy here is just an abstract Resource of some kind that acts as currency for a given Action), and it can take a lot of different forms, but this is the mechanic that makes Action economies in TTRPGs work well. In PF2E, the multi-attack penalty is such a mechanism. In a narrative game, there's typically some kind of enforced dramatic turn that directly results from actions (success with a cost in PBTA, for example). That too is a stopping mechanism. And the list goes on. Most games have tons of different variants of these all over the place for obvious reasons, and when one "cheats", most of the time they're basically just turning all of these mechanisms off. The book itself, for reference, references Warcraft III's (the RTS) lumber harvesting mechanics as well as the board game Power Grid, where the price of fuel acts as a stopping mechanism to prevent leading players from snowballing. So with all that said, it should follow then that we can look a given pattern, like playstyle reinforcement, and realize that it can apply as a generalized pattern that describes the overall mechanics of many different kinds of games, as well as different mechanics within the same game. That is actually a completely fair point; Id have to actually set up and run ODND myself to verify, but that doesn't seem to be too farfetched a hypothesis. And Id also grant that how the pattern listing was set up in the book is wanting, which I still think makes sense given the audience the book is aimed at. Most video game people aren't going to care about the specifics we've been chewing on unless they're among the ones trying to build emergent storytelling systems. Like, Id wager the Shadow of Mordor devs had this pattern in mind, even if they don't specifically use this methodology to guide their mechanic design. But even so, I am providing only screen grabs of relevant sections. It is textbook, and there's entire chapters here that Im basically paraphrasing or otherwise neglecting to cover. Reading the whole book (and treating it as textbook and doing the exercises it recommends) provides a much clearer picture than reading screen grabs basically out of context. As far as the Undertale example goes, as Im not familiar with the game, Id ask if playing a Pacifist style results in feedback from the game. I would assume the game is harder playing that way, and that in of itself is feedback, but from your posts it seems as though the game responds to Pacifism more directly than that, for good or bad, and if it does, then it is reinforcing that playstyle. It may be positive or negative reinforcement, but that doesn't necessarily matter to the pattern.</blockquote>

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