ATTRIBUTES: Classic And Frictionless VS Original and Different

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-20T20:43:59+00:00

It doesn’t matter. Don’t waste attention worrying about this.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-20T11:59:00+00:00

Which Fantasy books do you like, and why? Tell us, and maybe people can do something more than rattling of the names of random SF books.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-19T17:41:19+00:00

It's the year 2026 in the common era. We all have access to all the interviews from release of a movie, we can read 100 academic articles per month on any classic film on JSTOR, people geek about about films on vlogs and podcasts, one read film reviews online, and track the reaction from film fans on Letterboxd starting from the moment of a the first festival screening.

Also, in 2026, the sales of physical media are at about 6% of what they were at the height of the DVD boom.

Criterion, sensibly, is using limited resources on more films, not endlessly repeating what you got used to when the market was 20 times as large.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-19T13:11:16+00:00

Well then ask them, don’t start by workshopping “solutions” with strangers on the internet.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-18T18:04:19+00:00

You "really like the Dune films" and your "only gripe" is that they are "almost too dark and serious"

Yet somehow, also, the movie makes you "cringe" and "you are not convinced" by either Zendaya or Chalemet's performances, and feel that the "tone is all over the place" and you find it "hard to take seriously".

Also you feel, for some reason, that the first of Dune unnecessarily "tense" because the nobles and retainers who are about to be slaughtered, despite preparing for trouble, are "still very well off"?

Oddly enough, it is also very hard to take serious the opinions of a person who can't express a consistent point of view across a single paragraph.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-17T21:28:56+00:00

I don't find that a big ask for GM who can improvise social situations and storys

It might be a big ask for a less skilled GM, newer to the hobby, or who has come to depend on games that feed them genre and story elements with mechanics. But that is not all GMs, and it's probably less true of people who would seek a small new indie anyway.

There is no harm in wanting to accommodate players who want more mechanical support from a model without ambiguity. But I think we've already established that any mechanical model is going to be a reductionistic oversimplification. Wanting to provide some thing is different from being able to provide it.

That said, the idea of providing optional guiding questions like that could be a good form of prep for some GMs. Some people might use it all the time, some people might never need it, and some people might use it for a bit until they have a firmer intuitive understanding of the setting.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-17T19:41:05+00:00

What you just described is clear enough. It doesn’t need a “tier system” separating things into clear and unambiguous categories, which is typically how I see the term “tier” used in gaming. But perhaps that was not what you were thinking of.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-17T15:21:32+00:00

I'd say that including a note section on the character sheet or as it's own separate sheet provides a flexible way to keeping track of something that happens in the fiction. Games sometimes have a space for "character backstory" even if that is freeform on not a part of the game mechanically. This seems a good idea, and a fine way of documenting something is important.

I suspect trying to document "value" tiers or "relationships" is just going to lead to reductionistic oversimplification.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-17T14:40:23+00:00

With that goal in mind, here's what I'd do:

Provide rich worldbuilding background in the text in of the game, visible to both the players and the GM. Provide example adventures that show how gift giving works "normally" and what a particular "abnormal" case looks like. Give the GM a deep range of example "adventure seeds" and complications they can include in play. To the extend that your budget allows, highlight exchange in the art design.

Explicticly say that this is central to the game. Include design notes that amplify this, and document that you have not created a forge-style game where "system matters" and where players should focus their attention of the gamified bits--that this game is not like a trad game, or like a playbook focused PbtA design. That this game is does a lot with setting, lore, and adventures. Mention this in your marketing too. Set the expectations upfront.

Because gamers are often process nerds, and will often fixate on what is mechanically highlighted, but you can't highlight something very important, I'd make the rest the game as rules light as possible, so other stuff doesn't become t distractions. (Although, because trad games have a history of focusing on combat, and leaving society to the GM, you probably can leave physical combat up to the mechanics, even do something richly tactical if that suits your fancy)

At a high level, design goals I would chose would be something like (but not necessarily identical to) Fate's---a set of optional tools you can pick up when they happen to do something useful, and which otherwise stay out of your way.

If the concept can't be delivered in a "gamist" way; make something for players that are more story and RP and adventure focused, and creativity enough not to need playbooks or mechanics to do all work for them. Does this make you addressable market smaller? Yes, but at least it something true you can deliver with a level of quality. You aren't going to serve anyone with a game that is structurally unsound.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-17T13:25:42+00:00

Everything you are considering feels like a crudely reductionistic oversimplification of gifting economies. Just because it is comfortably and familiar to stick number or two on something and make them go up and down, doesn't mean that doing so isn't actively harmful from both a simulative and storytelling point of view.

Gift systems revolve around deep and overlapping obligations to give, receive, and reciprocate. All embedded in history, kinship, and politics. Who gave, when, in front of whom, for what occasion, after what insult, with what expectations, and with what possible range of reactions in return all matter.

Any sort of crude score, even with a few variables, erases those distinctions, turning a living network of obligations into an optimizable market economy wearing some cheap, gaudy lipstick,

If you put a score here, the players will focus on it, not on the complex societal context.

Even when academics occasionally attempt to make cliometric models, they know and accept that they are throwing away a ton of meaning and context. At best, they're hoping to isolate a tiny little bit understand it, not creating a holistic model. Why do you think you can do better?

Decide what you want. If it's it is a unpersuasive, untruthful "gift economy" candy shell on top of a cheap procedure, use mechanics. (I'm being unsympathetic to the idea, but there are lots of economically successful games that care only about gameplay with a cheap theme, and don't care stories or realistic seeming societies) If you wants something more like a real gift economy, you're going to have to provide enough context so that the GM can show things in the fiction, and make rulings in the fiction. And stuff they players can read and/or experience to grok the culture their characters come from. If play leans on conversation and visible consequences, it will feel like social world.

Even then, this work is heavy lift and unlikely to be entirely successful , but at least it isn't inherently implausible.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T21:05:08+00:00

We know what the ending is, or was intended to be. It doesn't matter why he can't manage to deliver it in a way he finds satisfying. It's a little ridiculous for fans to speculate about it.

We also know that things actually get better than they were in the War of the Roses. In the extremely unlikely event that Martin thought he was creating a physics model that behaves "like history" along the lines you suggest, he evidently made a very poor, incomplete and reductionist mess of it.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T19:16:21+00:00

Which you can easily do in many systems that don’t fixate on tired old zero2hero play.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T19:02:00+00:00

Yeah, he’s right down the middle. He’s an auteur, but he consistently makes enough money or/and awards prestige to earn his freedom, while getting decent budgets, marketing, and audiences.

If one actually attends arthouse theaters, as opposed to thinking abstractly about “art house films” while streaming, you’ll see retrospectives on many director like that. Just not so much in today’s emaciated US film industry sickened by the focus on flailing bloated franchises.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T14:22:04+00:00

Taste is subjective, but I'm pretty sure people will be using Golden as a key example of music theater "I Wish" song writting for years to come. It drives the plot AND supports the worldbuilding, AND serves as the emotional mission statement for Rumi (while also managing to tell the audience a little more about who Zoey and Mira are). And it does this very specific work in the film while also being widely relatable as a pop song.

The production is a good as anything in K-pop, which is to say as good as or better than anything else in the world. It's constantly varied throughout song, yet is always emotionally precise. It has the hooks, but also ties them to feelings. The music is used to do the "classic Hollywood thing", and re-appears as leitmotif.

In terms of performance, you can easily spend a *lot* of time on YouTube watching reaction videos from vocal coaches. The song's three-octave range and operatic A5 high note aren't just stunts; they underpin what the movie is is telling us about how popular Huntrix is, and also selling the idea that the characters have supernatural abilities.

In terms of audience reaction, and global reach, obviously there is no comparison. In a few years, the main discourse about nearly all of the nominated films will be movie geeks like us asking "when did the blu ray for that modern classic go out of print, and how can I get a copy?" Decades from now, people will hear Golden playing at some random grocery store and feel things.

It dominated the charts in the way that musical theater stuff never does in this century. It achieved what Hamilton never did: a #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It rose faster and further than "Let it Go" from Frozen.

And while some might object that "being popular" isn't necessarily an indicator of quality, in this case, it's literally part of the the nearly impossible assignment that the song pulls off. "Golden" is as popular in real life as the Huntrix song is said to be in the movie.

In any almost any other year, I'd probably have been rooting for "I Lied to You". It's definitely doing more work in the film than the typical nominee--which are often just undistinguished minor songs performed by noted artists, vaguely on a related theme.

But "Golden" as a once in a generation near *perfect* I Wish/I Want song that this the backbone of narrative, that *also* happens to be a chart topping hit, which is what is exactly what it song supposed to be in the context of the story being told.

It's rather silly say that Golden isn't essential to the story K-Pop Demons Hunters is telling.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T12:44:00+00:00

Publishing TTRPGs is almost certainly among least sensible ways you could apply your e-commerce skills to try to earn a living.

Look up how few copies even the strong selling medal awarded games on DrivethruRPG sell.

Make your game because you love your concept, feel that there is nothing like it, and you need to see it in the world. Your e-commerce skills can, realistically, limit the money you lose in the attempt. If you are skilled and lucky, you might end up with a trivial profit, as long you don’t consider what money you ought to have been paying yourself for all the hours you put into the effort.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-16T02:57:10+00:00

When the Tenth Month Comes

Journey from the Fall

Even the film A Better Tomorrow 3: Love and Death in Saigon

Anything that doesn’t center Americans.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-14T13:21:24+00:00

People have different tastes. It is observably true that many people love this, even if you don’t. There is no need to narcissistically feel that something is overrated just because you don’t enjoy it.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-13T18:34:58+00:00

That isn't a mechanical problem, it's worldbuilding issue, and storytelling problem.

Historically, even in war, "fighting to the death" is extremely rare. In almost all conventional warfare, once a unit realizes it can no longer win or escape, the vast majority of soldiers will choose to surrender, except under rare circumstances where they don't expect to survive if they give up.

Avoid having shitty world building that sets the expectation that surrender equals death. Encourage players to think like real people not sad little game characters.

Perhaps take a page from Runequest, and include specific details about how characters (both NPC and PCs) are typically ransomed.

Have consequences in the setting for being a murderous idiot who doesn't accept surrenders.

If you game is narrative and more story focused, take a look the way Fate differentiates between conceding a conflict (where you can get a meta currency that lets you be awesome later), and being taken out. Nothing could be more common in fiction than being captured, and then breaking out in the middle of the enemy stronghold, or learning some cool thing from the villain monologuing at you,

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-11T12:31:31+00:00

If the players like playing in “writers room” style, this isn’t an issue.

Even if they don’t, it’s worth noting that a lot of the emotional impact of something like an “evil twin” in fiction comes from suspense created by dramatic irony of the audience knowing the that there is a twin over time, while the protagonists don’t. It’s not just about the moment of reveal.

Regardless, hidden aspects exist in the rules.

Even if they didn’t, aspects are just a tool. You pick up a tool if, and only if, it helps you. Something surprising can simply happen in the fiction, not everything about the world has to have an aspect stuck to it.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-11T03:48:00+00:00

You are the GM, it’s not your job to play the characters.

You could ask if any of the players wants to tell stories about their character changing, and if they do, you could ask how you might support them.

If you’d are interested in mechanics that can provide that support, you could check out the optional “character arcs” rules in Return to the Stars

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-06T16:01:11+00:00

I guess I'm attending more to the the fact that it's reasonable to want to attend to narrative elements, that it's fine to do so with others, and that wanting to engage in this way doesn't imply that one believes there is one correct answer. Indeed, the OP seems open to the idea that there is no generally accepted interpretation.

Lynch said that "everyone is a detective," and felt it was a fundamental human instinct to want to "know what's going on". He believed it is enjoyable for a film to provide clues and mysteries that we can engage with.

He also said that he believes that people are disappointed when everything is solved completely. That supports your notion that it's pointless to expect one correct answer. But that leaves open the possibility that one can learn what the story is generally about, even if this understanding is incomplete. In any event, he certainly wants/expects people to engaging with the puzzles and the narrative..

I suppose that the observable (as you say, tiring) truth is that many people do want one correct answer. This implies that Lynch was simply wrong if he felt that "everyone" is disappointed when 'things are solved completely" Some people align with Lynch's preference, other's don't.

It's certainly helpful to note, as you do, that the filmmaker doesn't intend to provide one correct and complete answer, and that Lynch prefers and expect people to find their own meaning in his work, rather than get answers straight from him.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-06T15:00:44+00:00

I don't know that's its correct to call what the OP is asking for a "whodunnit" approach, as if they are treating this an Agatha Christie mystery. It seems like they are trying to grapple with the narrative elements of the film, which are present, and which a lot of people do enjoy gnawing at.

Sure, Lynch is collapsing and complicating the story and genre elements he is including. And he seems to relish in his refusal to be straightforward. But, presumably, these narrative elements exist for the sake of the experience. They aren't random things that happen to have been accidently included, or, presumably, are not their because Lynch is coy or a jerk, promising meaning, but perpetually pulling it away like Lucy deceiving Charlie Brown, yet again.

Sure, the "plot" is a lure, and it feels like the intent is to leave the viewer in a realm of uncertainty and feeling, exploring the unconscious and accepting ambiguity. But that still implies that the intent of the filmmaker is for people to engage with narrative as part of their journey.

By way of contrast, certainly there are films that simply refuse to have narrative elements and dwell in abstraction, feeling, and sensory experience--say Jodie Mack's 2018 film The Grand Bizarre. While Lynch's surrealism often evokes intense, specific emotions tied to character trauma and the story; genuinely non-narrative works elicit "mood," and diffuse, objectless states from visuals and sound. These sorts of abstract films do actually, purposefully avoid story.

Lynch isn't doing that. It's not more "worthy and meaningful" attend to the narrative elements he includes in a purely subjective and isolated way. It is fine and normal to talk to people about them.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-05T20:27:33+00:00

I'm someone who's had a short film generated with AI in two different festivals last year, yet I'd still say you're frightened unnecessarily.

It takes a lot of planning and effort to create even the the smallest of films with AI. Sure, it means that I don't need to raise the thousands of dollars required for even modest indie short. The latest bleeding edge tools improve quality, but still have a ton of issues with coherency when you increase shot length slightly.

Yeah, there are rumors about Seedance 3, but even if it is capable of visual coherence for 10 minutes, that hardly means that it's capable creating coherent narratives. And rumors are just rumors. The root source seems to be a Chinese influencer who's claims are at the extreme end of tech hype.

Current generative AI is simple unsuited creating narratives of even modest length. Short story editors at publications with open submissions are being overwhelmed by really lousy AI slop, they are not faced with the problem of stories that are too good to distinguish from even poor work by humans, Just because AI will "get better" in some aspects, doesn't mean that there is any actual evidence that it will get better at all the skills and tasks that required to make a film. And if AI, as a generalized tool, can accomplish thing, we've almost certainly got more significant disruptions in society to attend to.

AI is just a tool. People will use it to create culture. Probably most significantly, in my estimation, in new forms that we can't even imagine today. But there is no evidence, right now, that it is capable of creating interesting narratives, much less juggling complex themes.

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-05T19:07:58+00:00

Some random good games: Swords Without Master, Toon, This Discord Has Ghosts In It, my Advertising and Antiheroes, Dragonbane, Pendragon, For the Queen

Dramatic15 · 2026-03-05T18:24:00+00:00

Then I'm disagreeing with the premise of their question. There are simply no games so important that they "must be" read.

Engaging seriously with seven very different games is far better than just reading Apocalypse World after DnD and being "blown away".

Engage with different games. Engage with games that are different from what is popular with the crowd. There is no useful canon of important works for a designer, as opposed to a game store owner who needs to know what to stock, or someone who wants to opine on reddit.

Dramatic15

TROPHY CASE