Great piece; well-rounded and directly attacks all the important angles of the concepts presented.
A (very minor) critique:
"I have mentioned Questing Beast’s concept of T.U.N.I.C. (Time Until Next Impactful Choice) before, but it bears re-mentioning here, as it is a useful metric."
It is with great pleasure that I countersignal the Borrowing Beast here on this point. In a spotlight-sharing mono-party adventure where we imagine players are rifling "live" through the loot in dungeon, this notion makes a lot of sense; after all, we want to spread that spotlight around evenly and judiciously.
However, in modes of play outside this narrow scope, the landscape of decisions & consequences is messy, highly non-linear, and fraught with more peril and meaning. For example, consider the process of planning for a defensive skirmish. We must assemble units, take into account placement & positioning, provide for safe lanes for supply and/or VIPs, cover/control key terrain, and so on. All of these decisions are made in an abstract "planning" time, unconcerned with spreading spotlight to any players.
And when the time comes where we are running the battle "live", there is a question of what orders to submit. The referee sees them, rolls initiative, and we "merely" find out what happens, at length! But this can be 100x as engaging, nerve-wracking, and campaign-defining than "deciding" to backstab a guy within 15 seconds or less. And the temporal distance between decision points can be very long! Borrowing Beast's heuristic does not account for the joy of finding out or the satisfaction of a well-laid or -executed plan. If we were to follow his design guidance, we would ruthlessly eliminate these things from our game's structure.
Great piece; well-rounded and directly attacks all the important angles of the concepts presented.
A (very minor) critique:
"I have mentioned Questing Beast’s concept of T.U.N.I.C. (Time Until Next Impactful Choice) before, but it bears re-mentioning here, as it is a useful metric."
It is with great pleasure that I countersignal the Borrowing Beast here on this point. In a spotlight-sharing mono-party adventure where we imagine players are rifling "live" through the loot in dungeon, this notion makes a lot of sense; after all, we want to spread that spotlight around evenly and judiciously.
However, in modes of play outside this narrow scope, the landscape of decisions & consequences is messy, highly non-linear, and fraught with more peril and meaning. For example, consider the process of planning for a defensive skirmish. We must assemble units, take into account placement & positioning, provide for safe lanes for supply and/or VIPs, cover/control key terrain, and so on. All of these decisions are made in an abstract "planning" time, unconcerned with spreading spotlight to any players.
And when the time comes where we are running the battle "live", there is a question of what orders to submit. The referee sees them, rolls initiative, and we "merely" find out what happens, at length! But this can be 100x as engaging, nerve-wracking, and campaign-defining than "deciding" to backstab a guy within 15 seconds or less. And the temporal distance between decision points can be very long! Borrowing Beast's heuristic does not account for the joy of finding out or the satisfaction of a well-laid or -executed plan. If we were to follow his design guidance, we would ruthlessly eliminate these things from our game's structure.
Thanks for the complement!
You make an excellent point, and I have to say after reading your comment that I agree.
Mind if I reference this comment in an edit to the article?
Feel free.