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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8628668" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Some have.I say it means Score-and-Achievement. Score, aka Step-On-Up, is about comparing. You can "play better," getting a higher Score. It may not be numbers. It might be complex. Maybe there are several valuable attributes, but you can't just have unlimited amounts of them all. Regardless, it still compares player success against something. It's where theoretical smarts and planned choice matter.Achievement, aka Challenge, is rising to the occasion. Can you best the problem? Can you save the handsome dragon from the wicked princess? Are you a bad enough dude(tte) to save the President? It's where the action is. It's where practical smarts and dynamic choice matter.Without Score, Achievement can't really happen, because the Challenge isn't overcome.* A fan of this style might mock it as having been "wished away," or as being a fake challenge with no failure condition. Score is the teeth, the bite that allows failure to have a sting, the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff. That means Score has to be "fair" in some sense, otherwise it's arbitrary and the challenge becomes a mere roulette.Without Achievement, Score is pointless. Mere number jockeying without goal. This shows up more in video games. If the victories don't feel worthy, don't feel like they matter, then there is no growth, just change. Watching things change just to change gets boring quickly. Score alone becomes "spreadsheets" without meaning or merit.There is a very intentional symmetry here between my four categories. The first term in each pair (Groundedness, Conceit, Score, Values) sets the stage. It allows things to happen. It doesn't DO things on its own. It may require actions in order to be present, but those actions are like putting out your paints and setting up your easel. They are not "painting" itself, but vital prep so you can paint. The second term in each pair is where the act of play occurs, and where those preparatory steps become useful. Just as one cannot paint if one has no paints to use, and setting up your paints and then not doing anything with them is pretty pointless, each term in the pair is...ineffectual without its partner. Prep and Action. The "Marine Creed" comes to mind.Note that at no point did any of this require competition. That doesn't mean competition will be absent. Competition is a perfectly valid form of Achievement, and some games emphasize it. I, personally, don't care for it much. I value collab and co-op. I find competition for prizes within the group (e.g. jockeying to always get the best magic items) distasteful. But it remains valid. Outright conflict against fellow players is likewise a valid approach, I just don't personally find much enjoyment from it.*This is probably why when I tell people that characters aren't subject to permanent, irrevocable, random death in my game, they think it must be "boring" or that the players "always win." They're so used to death being the ultimate metric of Score—how long did you survive?—that talk of doing anything else immediately makes them question how it is possible to still have any Achievement in the game.</blockquote>

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