#ttrpgtag

one subtype is: this choice will affect the game going forward in ways that i am roughly betting on now; how it plays out in practice remains to be seen, but i'm tipping the scale in advance. making a character with a high strength stat or specific backstory, making them a paladin, choosing a scifi setting, choosing a game with rules that facilitate horror, etc etc.

the other subtype is: i am seeing a specific outcome looming in front of me that i don't like, and i am going to change it (or try to). these are your rerolls, your brindlewood bay crowns, your abilities that you activate to turn a fight your way, and so on.

and like... it's pretty normal to have both of those baked into a game with, say, crunchy combat rules and pass/fail scenarios. not every game fitting those parameters has them, but it's pretty common and a good way to make the game fun by letting you strategize toward an outcome you want, and you're unlikely to have people lecturing you about being flexible and listening to the dice if you use one of the rerolls or abilities afforded you by the rules.

the thing is that there largely just... isn't any such thing for games where the outcome you're looking for, or trying to avoid, isn't necessarily a matter of pass/fail? there's either 'if you don't like it then just ignore it,' which--while good to have as a backup--can erode the enjoyable parts of the structure and kind of suck the fun out of trying to play a game, or there's 'just take whatever the dice give you and consider it a challenge to roll with it.' and unlike the advice and support given for pass/fail-type outcomes, which tend to have a big emphasis on the failures a) giving successes meaning and b) making for a fun story in their own right if you're willing to embrace them, the failure mode of 'this part of the story doesn't gel with me' is... part of your story not being fun. not just not being fun, even, but being wrong. your reward is 'this sucks now i guess. if i'm lucky it might grow on me, but in all likelihood it'll probably just be a rock in my shoe for the rest of the game.'

and the real bitch of it is that it's not always easy to see it coming, either. you can generally avoid doing stupid stuff that's likely to get you killed randomly to no reward, if you don't want to lose your PC in your average adventuring game (at least when that isn't the whole point), but it can be hard to know when some assumed detail like 'the PC's cousin is outgoing but mysterious and thinks they're pretty cool' is load-bearing to your game in the same way until a random oracle roll wipes it out. there's no contingency built into the rules for that, no real way for you to plan ahead: any random dice roll could do the equivalent of turning your PC to a smear on the floor without any warning or opportunity to avert it.

and some people enjoy playing games like that, sometimes or all the time! but like. if that's not your jam then that is the stuff DM horror stories are made of. i do not enjoy playing games that are like that about the fleshier, more individual bits of a narrative.

(in particular i am reminded of the kind of grace and leeway you need to be willing to give the continuity of, say, a tabletop session/campaign, and the magic that happens when you strike the right balance of working with what you've got vs retconning or moving away from what doesn't work.)

but with starb they AREN'T being done in good faith, and they AREN'T an unavoidable necessary evil of the game's medium, and they AREN'T being honest about the fact that that's the approach they're taking.

starb isn't going 'hey so we're trying to find our footing here, and we might change things up a little if something fun occurs to us or we realize we fumbled the direction we were going, bear with us. :)' it's trying to pretend the things it retcons were The Plan All Along, either as a way to discredit criticism of its previous writing (see: 'noooooo you've got it all wrong that bit wasn't about hating jews, it was about hating capitalism!'), or warping the symbols it's using to obfuscate the nature of the commentary it's making on them (see: the constant, CONSTANT bait-and-switch between symbols of oppressors and symbols of the oppressed, in the style of 'actually the homeless guy this cop beat up was ELON MUSK IN DISGUISE planning to SIPHON ALL THE JOBS OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, and the cop is Akshully a saint and tireless champion of queer and worker's rights who spends all his time off the clock running a soup kitchen, and he turns off his bodycam before beating up homeless people because he respects their digital privacy. bet you feel like a real idiot right now for jumping to conclusions instead of waiting for the information you didn't have (because i just now made it up to run PR for cops) uwu').