thread: 2012-12-26 : Positioning: what about Resource and Effectiveness?
On 2012-12-26, Josh W wrote:
So building on that, using apoc world (there's bound to come a point where you're bored of people using this for examples!), effectiveness is highly based on the cue-mediated mechanical elements, because moves just reference hard/cool etc and the various carry forwards and holds, rather than circumstances, whereas positioning is heavily fictionally based, in that what moves you can do when is set by judging the fiction.
When trying to think of the inverse, I come up with something surprisingly similar to d20, where certain activities are declared to be possible, but the effectiveness is dependent on reading the situation. This can lead to a kind of bizarre "yes but no" behaviour though, like "yes you could try to walk on clouds, but you cannot actually achieve it."
I think that might be an example of where this breaks down though.
"Ok my character walks out over the ice to the next outcropping of rock"
"Ok the dc is 90 because it cannot support your weight, roll!"
"there's no way I can make that!"
"yeah, you fall into the water, it's icy and cold, someone rescue him!"
vs "hang on, that ice couldn't support your weight"
"oh right, ok, lets get some wood together to spread our weight or make a raft."
Sometimes the outcome of an action is a part of it's legitimacy.
And maybe that's ok; positioning has a broader roll here, if it's about how the real history of the game, including the fictional history of the game, contributes to credibility.
In that case effectiveness must be a part of credibility, because if the effect part of IIEE is a part of the SIS.
To put it another way, someone has to add the activity of your character doing whatever to the fiction. Effectiveness conditions how that happens, and so what is legitimate, and so according to the new definition, it is positioning, whatever else it is.
I've found that a little broad, but if you take the big model definition as implicitly exclusive "that positioning that is not also effectiveness", it shakes out fine.
This makes JMW go "Hmm, I missed out a few things here.."
Like the second half of the third paragraph, and all trace of self doubt!
