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Message: <blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8626339" data-attributes="member: 71235">This is pretty much what I was going to say (maybe with a <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/220877/rajas-ganges" target="_blank">different board game</a>, though). Mapping is a fair bit like the little lightning-bolt cursor in original Myst that let you go someplace you'd already been and skip intermediate screens (which took minutes to load on CD-ROM drives of the time). Or teleport nodes in MMOs like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. You have to find them first, but once you do, you get to skip everything in between. Pure convenience to get to new challenges.More generally....All of the genre/setting emulation in this system is, as [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] stated, a veneer—which the GM and players are free to lay on thinner or thicker and spend as little or as much time describing as they want. But, the rules are not concerned with such things. They do offer content in the form of classes and races and such that fit the genre & setting, but those ultimately wind up being bundles of rated attributes you use to deal with challenges, for which there are rules, and rules, and rules (and seemingly an exception to every rule, sigh).A lot of the mechanics (Belief, Creed, Goal, Instinct, Traits, twists) look like narrativist tools, but their uses in the game are blatantly about gaining bonuses to tests or aquiring one of the game's several currencies that are used for...gaining bonuses to tests, or introducing a new challenge to be resolved by tests, or being able to transition from one game phase to another, thereby enabling different kinds of activities (which are resolved via test and for which there is another currency! so many currencies, sigh). Again, the GM and players are free to spend more or less time talking about the narrative impact of these things, but the primary purpose is overt: to define a complicated state machine you have to master and work through to overcome challenges.Does this mean Torchbearer completely lacks simulation or narrative elements? No; the game—like many modern boardgames with their thematic art and fluff text—would be dead boring to most players if the veneer were stripped. But its priorities are clear.</blockquote>

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