thread: 2011-08-01 : The Unreliable Currency series from 2010
On 2011-08-18, David Berg wrote:
I'm with ya 100% on this, Vincent:
"Designing rules that treat fictional causes seriously means, at a pretty significant level, abandoning fairness and equalization, and thus embracing both mechanical risk and social-aesthetic risk. Your character can get unfairly hosed, through no misstep of yours, and your friends can make systemically-binding judgment calls that you don't like."
I wasn't sure what your takeaways for future design were, though. Care to share?
My thinking, for a while now, has been to work on the judgment call end. Communicate the logic from which the judgment calls should be made, show how to make them, and then your players will be able to employ whatever positional mods etc. your system entails without feeling unfairly hosed (99% of the time, anyway).
If that could be sufficient nailed, "treat fictional causes seriously" could be the resolution rules.
Of course, as you've said, designing for players to do a thing means more than just telling them to do it. But that just makes this a worthy challenge!
