Very good points here. Reminds me of similar points from Kate's OSR blog. The one about NPCs being independent. The difficulty I would say s the cognitive load of it all. I think most people want an interesting and engaging NPC but keeping up with that can be quite draining and is a skill I dont think everyone necessarily has. They might be able to do it but it's not easy for them.

I would say a fourth layer that you don't know exists until deeper in the game isn't bad in and of itself so long as you're kept busy in the meantime.

This is what I'm talking about in the above comment. Except, of course, this is in reverse. It highlights how the so called negative effects can be thematically appropriate.

I think a little bit of shrinking of scope is appropriate. But I suppose you could say that if you do it right, it's only really shrinking in the sense that. You are effecting the theme of the game effectively.

Really it should be an amazing exception, not the rule.

Iwould argue that the issue here is that the term 'realism' is more like 'internal consistwncy' or 'verisimilitude'. When we have an event that happens and breaks verisimilitude it breaks us out of the game. Whereas accepting the initial premise of warp drive means that a ship warping into space next tk you isn't braking the expectation. Whereas dissassociated mechanics are breaking those expectations because there's no reason why the character ahould only make a one handed catch per game.

I like the idea of discovering something random that gives you a boon.

On the other hand I also like the idea of a caravan saving you energy but making an encounter more likely. I suppose the most logical would be that the scale shifts and your're unlikely to ckme accross a smaller encounter bht quite likely to come accross a larger oneI wouldn't want to up the likelihood too much more the result if you do get an encounter.

This is an excellent method for any kind of challenge. Not just a boss fight.

This solution seems to revolve around the following

• Loot being constant but not generous. This menas the player will always be picoing things up but everything matters.
• Loot being losable. So that everything they have muat be guarded but of course that playing the game is inevitably risking losing it.
• Interdependent. This means that there's no 'win button'. Very little will actually win you the game and as such you're looking for something thatauits your needs. And when you don't find it you're doing your best to use what you have.
• Indirectly supportive og your goal. The racing game here is an excellent example because going faster won't help you win if your turning circle is rubbish. So the core challenge or test must require an interaction of different abilities to overcome.

One solution might be to. Have NPCs use the mechanics in ways that teach the player how effective they are. Similar to the way that Pokemon uses mechanics to teach people how to play the Pokemon game and helps them to avoid the trap of simply getting large damage moves and using only them.

Resource dice are an excellent idea.

Very good enounter tables to use.

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It's actually acceptable to tweak as the game matures and people find new ways to play it. Don't think you have to get it perfect first time.

While I agree that rolling for things you want them to succeed at can unecessarily stunt the narrative, when combined with the idea in this article of rolling to see how well or poorly you do it could be used to give you narrative fodder. Like this example of the door. You don'tneed to roll but rolling might give you a nice connecting moment so you'renot skipping through the adventure to the 'good' stuff not having any fibre in amongst the sugar.

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You could also make the roll a part of the solution. i.e. if they'retryong to do something hard it might tilt the balance ratger than it being the focus.

One weakness is trying to fit everything into specific boxes. I woukd argue this isn't persuasion.

I suppose this is what I discovered. What I wasn't doing was the thing I should have been doing. Even though that thing was only touching base and not actually doing anything major it was still what I should have been doing.

See this note front he beginning of the article. and this one