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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9114241" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't want to point out flaws. But want to point out that - if I've followed you - there seem to be two things going on in what you've described here.(1) The coordination function of background information. Apocalypse World uses this too.(2) The use of background information to work out what happens. This is the bit where different processes of play make a big difference! In AW, there are rules - including rules about when the dice are rolled and what the result is - that tell the GM when and how to use that background information. (Eg the GM can't just declare a failure because that's what the background information might seem to imply. There are procedural constraints around this.)But in a lot of what many (not all) posters in this thread have called "trad" play, the GM can use the background to decide what further play process will be used - eg they can declare a failure before calling for a dice roll. (Eg maybe the notes say "This guard cannot be bribed.) As we saw upthread with the Noble background in 5e, some posters even reserve the right to use that background to override what seems, in the rulebook, to be a clear conferral of a power on the player to generate a particular in-fiction result.I think these different ways in which background information is used by the GM, in relation to other play procedures, is where a lot of the action is in different approaches to RPGing.Though they're not all the action. There's also stuff like what I pointed to upthread with a Torchbearer example: if a player declares that their PC goes off to do some research, and the dice roll succeeds, who authors what it is that the PC learns? Torchbearer approaches this differently from Burning Wheel, and both are different from Apocalypse World.Overall, I think the way that background info, and its coordination function, and the way other procedures of play are connected to this, can be quite a subtle matter.</blockquote>

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