Learning
Some ideas resist better than others.
That does not turn them into laws of Resonance. They become things that would now be costly to ignore when designing.
Removing a rule does not necessarily remove the work
A rule can disappear and return as improvisation, preparation, memory, negotiation, or implicit expertise.
The useful question becomes:
Where did the function of what I removed go?
See Burden distribution.
Simple does not mean poor
A few relationships can generate many consequences.
A lightweight form is only interesting if it preserves or increases enough generative power for the intended experience.
See Generative simplicity and complexity.
Freedom without a handle can become a burden
“Do whatever you want” can open a world. It can also create a blank page.
Fictional freedom and the ability to find an action are not the same thing.
The work on Situation looks for handles that do not decide in the player's place.
Explaining is not always the same as making accessible
A person can know a great deal about a culture or universe without knowing what to notice or how to act from within that position.
Glorantha Perspectives suggests that it can sometimes be possible to act with partial understanding, then learn through consequences.
This result is more fragile than the previous ones.
The apparatus can carry meaning
Regard shows that fictional sentences can remain directly operative.
Unmind goes further: hidden fragments, silence, loss, or a material gesture do not merely represent the system.
They can be the system.
A solution that works is not yet a law
Regard works. That does not mean Resonance games should resemble Regard.
Unmind was especially useful because it forced a distinction between what Regard had actually taught and what might merely have become a design habit.
A solution that works is a result. Not yet a law.
Tools for distinguishing
Some distinctions are useful without becoming principles.
The design axes separate phenomena that are often confused: where player attention goes, what continuity exists between fiction and manipulation, how a perspective becomes operative, and what the mechanics affirm about reality.
They do not define what a Resonance game must be.
They help reveal what a design is doing.