thread: 2011-04-12 : A background in Principled Freeform
On 2011-04-22, Vincent wrote:
The PTA thing is: sometimes surviving the dragon is given, and the dice or cards are there to deal with what's really at issue. PTA is really good for this, if you've played it to its specs. Buffy's issue is love, not killing vampires, so we play cards to find out whether she can kill the vampires in time to keep her date with the handsome boy, not to find out whether she can kill the vampires (because of course she can).
Same with the dragon episode.
Now there IS an important piece to the dice we used that we haven't talked about, which is escalation. Each round of rolls was an escalation, with (a) no backing out and (b) no jumping ahead allowed. The escalation wasn't mechanical like it is in Dogs in the Vineyard, say; it was informal, principled only. But we three have the skills and outlooks necessary to make principled-only escalation reliable.
Where you see only pacing, I see orchestrated escalation.
