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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9198993" data-attributes="member: 7040941">What you're pointing to is genre emulation. Thats one kind of storytelling. The story of a Chess game and how its generated is another. You may not be intending to, but you are making a value judgement here by not recognizing that the storytelling techniques here are equals. [ATTACH=full]331952[/ATTACH]So I posted this in the other topic. The point of these Machination diagrams is to abstract gameplay in a given game in such way that one can examine the individual mechanics that generate gameplay. There is no game that can't be abstracted in this way, and I'm actually going to walk back that this can't model aesthetic issues. It absolutely can. For example, in the above example (which is deliberately simplified and incomplete, so don't expect it to be exhaustive) I utilized Ironsworns result model for its Moves. Just looking at it, one can identify an aesthetic issue: 2/3 possibilities are not unambiguous successes, so the overall possibility space of engaging Moves provides a negative feedback loop, and it intuits that this becomes more pronounced the more the Moves are engaged. This is in line with the design intent that holds that the drama that results is a desirable game state. PBTA games typically address the issue of rolling to much through the Trigger mechanic. Ie, Moves aren't supposed to be engaged unless the Fiction triggers them. This is fine in theory, but as playtesting reveals, this isn't a very good constraint, and one can find endless examples of people ruining their own experience with any given PBTA game by rolling too much. Nothing is actually stopping them from rolling too much; the methods used are effectively too weak for some players. So, if we want to fix this, while retaining the overall design intent, there's no strict method we need to follow. My personal idea is a more rigid turn structure for the Fiction, and a roll economy of some sort that gates how often Moves can be triggered. That'd solve the aesthetic issues. Well this may well explain why some are so uncomfortable with what Im saying, as it appears you and others think I'm being reductive in saying the phrase "improv game", as though Im just scoffing at the idea.That of course isn't the intent. Im just being literal in describing the game type; any implication that that means an RPG is any less complex than they are is entirely unintended. RPGs do have a more complex shared reality than improv theater or party games. That doesn't mean that all three aren't still improv games, and indeed, it doesn't mean they don't all share the same fundamental issues. Monopolizing the Spotlight and Blocking for example are some of the biggest pitfalls people run into with playing improv games. Thats the same if you're doing a Try Not To Laugh thing or if you're going for a gritty drama of teenaged angst set against superheroes. As is, for that matter, ignoring, denying, or refusing to collaborate on the shared reality. We can solve all these problems, and it'll be a lot easier from the perspective of them as an improv problem. There's no need to reinvent the wheel with esoteric jargon.</blockquote>

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