thread: 2009-04-09 : cloud-to-cloud
On 2009-04-09, Jonathan Walton wrote:
What excites you about referring materially to the fiction? It offers a place where the rules can shift to reflect non-mechanical things?
Seems like, in practice, it might be dangerous, especially in situations where players were strongly invested in one character or another winning, rather than investing in a more meta "tell and interesting story" level. Because, if there are mechanical advantages that can be gained by making declarations that have no mechanical cost, sufficiently driven players will seize them immediately and often.
I've seen this happen in Agon play, for example. In Agon, you can gain an advantage over a future adversary by finding out information about them and making appropriate preparations. I've seen at least one group push to make a ton of preparations so they would have an overwhelming advantage against the adversary they were going to face, because there was little cost to doing so. It's kinda like those folks who play Final Fantasy or WOW and grind their level up way higher than it should be, so they can waltz past obstacles.
