Mechanics Microblogging: Lore Bids, Resolve, and Disassociated Mechanics in HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

With the dissolution of so many things I once enjoyed (Twitter, America, etc.), I'm going to try and start doing more microblogging. Too many of my previous thoughts were placed into tweets and became too ephemeral. 

Glossary

Some quick definitions of terms:

Lore Bids: In His Majesty the Worm, you can ask a question of the GM and receive as much information as the GM can tell you about a subject related to one of your motifs. This is called "bidding lore." You can bid lore 4 times per Crawl Phase.

Disassociated Mechanic: A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world. A player character knows that they have six pitons in their backpack. They do not know that they have 12 HP or 4 lore bids left. In a word, non-diegetic. 

What are the goals behind using disassociated mechanics like Lore?

In old-school D&D, you have to rest every sixth turn (that is, for 10 minutes out of every hour of dungeon exploration). If you fail to do so, PCs get a –1 penalty to attack and damage rolls. This is one of the ways that time pressure is put onto PCs, and one of the limited resources that incentivizes the "deeper into the dungeon for loot or retreat" loop.

This loop is something I was interested in evoking in His Majesty the Worm. And as someone who does a fair bit of hiking, it makes sense to me. Dungeon crawling would be scary, exhausting, stressful. It would fatigue both body and mind. How do you translate that feeling into the game design?

Here's my pitch: Players will feel that they are becoming weak and tired when their characters begin to lose resources. But "loss of access to powers" feels different than "takes penalties." I think penalties are less fun. There's something in our ape brain that interprets "You start your day with a +1 bonus!" vs "You must rest or take a -1 penalty" differently.

Also, beyond the simple grind of "rest 1 turn in 6" from old-school D&D, I think that giving players a choice when they use their physical abilities (Resolve) and mental abilities (Lore) feels better. Making choices is what is fun about games.

Why 4?

Well, 4 is sorta the magic number in His Majesty the Worm, isn't it? 

But more than that, I think that 4 is a nice round number that lets players translate the disassociated mechanic into something they could talk about in character because you might feel 25/50/100% exhausted. 

I think this is a lot cleaner than the way we talk about HP. 5 damage means something very different to a magic-user with 4HP vs a fighter with 36 HP. Is 5 HP a heavy wound or not? If a cleric asks how much healing you need, would you say out loud in character: "Well, if I was to gauge my life on an arbitrary scale from 1-36, I would say about 12 points of life would feel good to me right now."

If I can run 4 miles, I know that I've hit 25% of my limit after the first mile. 

If I spend 3 lore bids, I know that I'm getting fuzzy brained and can't think straight. I can use those sorts of words to describe the disassociated mechanics in an associated way. It's like using the word "bloodied" in 4E. It makes sense at a certain level.