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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7605051" data-attributes="member: 42582">This post is a follow-up to some of [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s posts in this thread, and to the idea - mentioned in the OP and taken up a bit since - that consequences can be implicit rather than express. I'm not sure how coherent it is, but it is trying to convey a thought I have.So, here's something from <a href="http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2011/05/apocalypse-world-guide-to-hard-moves.html" target="_blank">John Harper</a> about making hard moves in Apocalypse World; I've bolded one sentence for emphasis:[W]hen it's time for a hard move, look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition. And speaking of consequences, a hard move doesn't automatically equate to severe consequences. The severity of the threat is a separate issue, depending wholly on the fiction as established. The hard move means the consequences, large or small, take full effect now. It's not about being mean, or punishing a missed roll, or inventing new trouble. It's about giving the fiction its full expression. Setup, follow-through. Action, consequences.I'm going to compare my experience with two systems: Burning Wheel, and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic. Based on that experience, I think that BW is better at giving the fiction its full expression.In establishing consequences in BW - especially consequences for failure - the GM is constrained by: (i) the established fiction; (ii) the player's intent in declaring the action; and (iii) the "meta" elements that are part of the at-the-table context, like PC Beliefs, the agreed-upon genre/theme for the game, and the GM's own sense of the "big picture" of the campaign. Constraints (ii) and (iii) don't create pressures to depart from the fiction, but rather contribute to a sense of what might, in this context at this table, follow from the fiction.Consequences can be purely fictional elements - your brother is dead - or can also have mechanical components to them - you have an infamous reputation among demons as an intransigent demon foe. They can't be purely mechanical without fictional weight.In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, every check is opposed, and hence consequences are established as GM-side results of what is often a fairly complex set of dice pool manipulations. It's quite possible for elements of the fiction to be merely colour - ie they have no representation in any dice pool. But consequences typically are expressed as a descriptive effect rated by die size (eg d8 Emotional Stress or d10 Wrapped in Webs Complication). Taken together, this is something like the opposite of BW: unlike BW, there are purely mechanical constraints on what fiction can factor into resolution, and how; and unlike BW, there are no purely fictional consequences.This doesn't (and I think can't) produce consequences that are at odds with the established fiction. But I think it does put a limit on the extent to which consequences give the fiction its full expression. The mediation via mechanics means that the potential for "full expression" is always limited by how the dice rolls turn out. Two situations might be narrated similarly in their framing, but the details of the dice in the GM's pool and the way these come out in the check will have a big impact on what adverse consequences can result.This makes the game more light-hearted overall (though particular moments can be grim), and it helps the emulation of comic-book heroics, which involve frequent reversals of fortune and relatively few permanent consequences. The focus of the action tends to be on the here-and-now, with a sense of character history or arc being driven not so much by the nuts-and-bolts of action resolution, but by the XP system (which rewards the player for pursuing a thematic trajectory with his/her PC, in many respects independent of the details of the ingame situation).But I think it blunts the force of the fiction in establishing consequences.</blockquote>

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