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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8299286" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm just going to rattle some thoughts out there (everyone is safe from my typical bullet-point massacre so have no fear):(As you know) I agree with you that skilled play is a matter of agenda.  When you're designing a game (and certainly playing it) you need to know the first principles that underwrite the design and the play of the game (here I'm not talking about the principles that undergird individual moves made by participants...I'm talking about the founding document/mission statement/the substrate etc upon which a gaming edifice is erected).However, while the moments of play are fundamentally informed by those 1st principles (that agenda), the entire structure should work as a feedback loop, continuously responsive to and integrated with what came before it (and what it will feed into).  The entire loop of play is made up of moments, entangled and integrated with each other (the preceding moments and the moments these moments feed into) and the throughline of agenda. Finally, forget whether one feels that the trajectory of a by-the-book DW game is informed by (at least in part) a skilled play agenda.  I am certain that Torchbearer, Blades in the Dark, and my 4e games are "challenge-based games where gamestate and PC trajectory is inextricably wedded to theme and premise."  Despite my Forge support on the bulk of its analysis and hypotheses, this is where I diverge from Forge Incoherency Hypothesis (Gamism and Narrativism can be functionally married).  Step on Up and Story Now agendas cannot be disentangled from one another in the cases of these games.  To attempt to do so and then accurately describe the play of these games leaves you in a wasteland of insufficient language (which feeds back into a problem of information deficit when future folks try to duplicate what these designs coherently achieved).Pulling this all together, I look at this similarly to the way you used to depict a Paladin At-Will in 4e.<h3>Valiant Strike - Paladin Attack 1</h3>You attack a foe, gaining strength from your conviction as the odds against you rise.At-Will   ✦     Divine, WeaponStandard Action      Melee weaponTarget: One creatureAttack: Strength vs. AC. You gain a bonus to the attack roll equal to the number of enemies adjacent to you.Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage.I'm valiant (the agenda is to make a valiant paladin) because I stand before many foes.My conviction gains strength as the odds stand against me (the theme of the power).The mechanics say so...therefore I'm incentivized to play boldly with thematic coherency (the feedback loop).The agenda informs moments of play and each moment of play is responsive to and integrated with what came before it and will feed into the next...creating a loop.You can have all the agenda in the world that you want, but the design has to work at the "moments of play level" so that the feedback loop is coherent and functional.  Yet another thought:  this is why I fought so hard in 5e's playtest to have its encounter budgeting informed at the encounter level...NOT at the Adventuring Day level.  Because I knew the impact that would be wrought at the "moments of play level" and the feedback loop it would engender.  And folks argued with me like crazy back then about this.  And sure enough, a massive contingent (including many that argued against me 8-9 years ago) have spent the last 5 years decrying various aspects of CR/Encounter Budget/disparate PC ability rationing and how sensitive the game is to Short Rest/Long Rest dynamics.This is a perfect example of a sort of rudderless or incomprehensible agenda (when it comes to intraparty balance and party : Team Monster balance at the most fundamental site of conflict in D&D; the combat) wedded to a somewhat rudderless appeal to traditional and familiar Adventuring Day design (traditional and familiar for traditional and familiar leading to traditional and familiar for more traditional and familiar).  Alternatively, they could have encoded this design with a clear, rudder...ful(?) agenda and then designed at the Encounter Level.  As yet another alternative, they could have just said "you know what...lets balance at the Encounter Level and work up from there" and that would have inevitably led like an implacable divining rod to only one agenda; intraparty balance and Team PC : Team Monster balance at the encounter level for intuitive results for the GM (this is GM-side tech...not player) so they can more easily build dynamic, interesting, diverse combats with relatively predictable, desirable, climactic results for the designer/GM (so if you're designing a combat that is supposed to have all kinds of movement, terrain interaction, hazard navigation, forcing artillery out of fixed positions, a powerful leader who is protected by all the prior + other things like guardians with synergized movesets...and all of this should build and lead to a feeling of  "you're absolutely fighting for your life so if you don't push the accelerator to the floor and skillfully marshal every_possible_resource...you're toast"). So I don't see how functional design and analysis can persist without examination at both the agenda level and the more intricate "moments of play" level (+ the intricate design that informs the granular aspects of those moments of play).[HR][/HR]That is a mangled pile of words.  Hopefully they're comprehensible (even if you disagree).</blockquote>

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