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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8734629" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Look at you being all demanding! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />But yeah, (as you know) I agree that HP are obviously not regarded as railroading and nor should they be!What I'm wondering is how that squares with various forms of conflict resolution (eg 4e Skill Challenges), mechanical architecture and process, being (a) railroading and (b) irredeemably unassociated with the imagined space.Alright, let me pull up your crux:I don't think I agree in total...maybe in part...but not in total.  I think both of your above apply to both games in some portion (in a rough sense).  Take a look at my example above.In the Blades example, there are several intersecting parts that serve to model (in some rough sense) the objective difficulty of the task at hand before I get to Clock implementation in a Social Score.  They are:* What has led up to this Social Score to date.  This includes a host of features:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the present state of the Crew and resources they can bring to bear</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the accreted and complicated fiction/gamestate to date</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the nature of Factional Statuses related to the impending conflict (and how they will be perturbed)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the immediately preceding Info Gathering Scene that actuates the Score archetype (Social), provides the Score Detail, and modulates the Engagement Roll (which tells us how troublesome/threatening the initial scene framing should be for the scene)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">what is the prospective Payoff & Heat and Faction and Crime Boss situation of this Score</li> </ul>* Tier and Quality of the adversary with respect to Tier and Quality of the Crew (and if the PCs have Scale - numbers - here or not).* The Master status of the NPC Threat Level (this is basically action economy...Master Threat NPCs can just straight up put the equivalent of Hard Moves on PCs...they can Resist them at the potential cost of Stress...but I can go hard at them with straight up Ticks on these Clocks or alterations to the fiction that make the situation more threatening/troublesome).* The mechanics of Position (how troublesome/threatening the obstacle/situation is) and Effect (what you can get done with this particular Action Roll) and all of the intersecting mechanics/resources (go back to Tier/Quality disparity above).[HR][/HR]So the combination of the above does the heavy lifting for "objective difficulty" or "placing this in the imagined space."But going with the Clock array I proposed above (the Linked Mission to Tug of War Clocks and their values)?  I'll use that arrangement regardless of all of the stuff above so its independent.  That is mostly about putting into effect the genre aspects of a social conflict generally, these sorts of high stakes social conflicts in particular, and the architecture to thematically and mechanically pace and provide budget/structure to the gamestate and fiction of a particular Score (so overwhelmingly metagame reasons).So, by my reckoning of it, you've got a large space of overlap on the Venn Diagram (no its certainly not complete overlap...but plenty of it) when it comes to 4e SCs/certain types & implementation of Blades Clocks and that coincides simultaneously with a huge amount of technical prowess (as both a GM and a player) overlap that you're leveraging in the exact same way whether you're running or playing Blades or running or playing 4e.Again, not the same by any stretch, but a good chunk of overlap.</blockquote>

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