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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7421088" data-attributes="member: 16814">Well, for me, it does follow.&nbsp; Games that use many daily abilities encourage a more strategic form of play, and strategic play requires the ability to gain knowledge about future events so you can plan. This can also be served by knowledge of past events that can be used to predict future possibilities. That kind of knowledge is poorly served in games that use narrativist techniques, as the &quot;now&quot; is the focus, not the &quot;later&quot;.&nbsp; This means that games with more daily ability uses will tend to favor more worldbuilding as a feature rather than a bug.&nbsp; Games more encounter based have much less need of worldbuilding because of the 'now' focus of play and lend themselves to narrativist techniques.To me, analysis of action balance points does display some things about worldbuilding.I'm going to pimp on Blades again to discuss a subset of this:&nbsp; worldbuilding as a game mechanic.&nbsp; In Blades, the mechanical order of play reinforces the worldbuilding - a dark, magical, corrupt city that will push you around and down.&nbsp; It does this using the downtime cycle which first starts with a check to see what this dark world does to your gang.&nbsp; I love this mechanic, as it pushes the game's theme and tropes through an unavoidable game mechanic.&nbsp; It mechanically uses the worldbuilding of the setting to great effect in generating new conflicts.&nbsp; But, it does this without engaging any player ability/resource mechanics -- its outside of that analysis.&nbsp; I bring this up to say that ability mechanics, while an interesting discussion point and a useful tool in evaluating game rules and their most applicable playstyles, is not the sum or best method of game analysis -- there are aspects that don't fit that paradigm.&nbsp; So, while ability mechanics are useful, it's important to not become wedded to an analysis that depends solely upon them.&nbsp; And this goes for GNS/forge theory -- it does not address the sum of game design, but instead a facet (a large facet, but a facet).&nbsp; Using it uncritically leads to unwarranted overconfidence in your assessments.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7421088, member: 16814"] Well, for me, it does follow. Games that use many daily abilities encourage a more strategic form of play, and strategic play requires the ability to gain knowledge about future events so you can plan. This can also be served by knowledge of past events that can be used to predict future possibilities. That kind of knowledge is poorly served in games that use narrativist techniques, as the "now" is the focus, not the "later". This means that games with more daily ability uses will tend to favor more worldbuilding as a feature rather than a bug. Games more encounter based have much less need of worldbuilding because of the 'now' focus of play and lend themselves to narrativist techniques. To me, analysis of action balance points does display some things about worldbuilding. I'm going to pimp on Blades again to discuss a subset of this: worldbuilding as a game mechanic. In Blades, the mechanical order of play reinforces the worldbuilding - a dark, magical, corrupt city that will push you around and down. It does this using the downtime cycle which first starts with a check to see what this dark world does to your gang. I love this mechanic, as it pushes the game's theme and tropes through an unavoidable game mechanic. It mechanically uses the worldbuilding of the setting to great effect in generating new conflicts. But, it does this without engaging any player ability/resource mechanics -- its outside of that analysis. I bring this up to say that ability mechanics, while an interesting discussion point and a useful tool in evaluating game rules and their most applicable playstyles, is not the sum or best method of game analysis -- there are aspects that don't fit that paradigm. So, while ability mechanics are useful, it's important to not become wedded to an analysis that depends solely upon them. And this goes for GNS/forge theory -- it does not address the sum of game design, but instead a facet (a large facet, but a facet). Using it uncritically leads to unwarranted overconfidence in your assessments. [/QUOTE]

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