Jason Corley absolutely yes to all those things.

Another thought occurred to me.

Exploring a system is pretty high on my own list of motivations. It’s fun and interesting to watch them give me unexpected results, or difficult results, or whatever else that my own brain would not have provided.

A thing that seems to happen a lot, especially with crunchier systems, is at some point someone will discover some amazing, effective thing. A combo, or a novel implementation, or a little shorthand trick we all agree to. It might be emergent or purposeful or whatever. And it’s so cool to see that thing happen.

And then it becomes commonplace.

So like in Urban Shadows, the thing where the ghost never really dies, he just reappears back at his haunted place. Or in Scum, the huge elaborate combos the Mystic can do.

The first time the Mystic pulled out all the stops we’re all like holy shit that’s perfect! Coooool! And then he does it again and again because now we understand the full implications. And then the Scoundrel takes a playbooks moves that synergizes with the Mystic and we’re high fiving each other even more. And then that becomes commonplace.

Like, it’s cool when Obi Wan waves off the stormtroopers outside Mos Eisley. But what player wouldn’t then continuously handwave away all future stormtroopers?

That puts me in the position of finding ways to confront that power, which is me taking away the player’s toy. That kind of sucks. But so does relying on a combo that was cool when it was discovered and now is just game-breakingly effective.

I totally can’t and don’t blame the player, good grief! The game is built to do this. And as the facilitator, I’m kind of left not knowing how to keep that interesting for him or me.

Same with the other playbooks, really. I think there comes a time advancement point where the gigs aren’t where the challenges lie, and then we’re back to Jason’s point about the lack of support for activities outside the gig.

It might be that the game has told me everything it’s going to, and there are no more surprises, and it’s on me that I need more surprises.