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Mechanic Monday: Threat Population and Movement in BURN

Must type quickly, as I’ve been working on grants stuff and have run out of daytime.  So the non sequiturs are going to hit hard, and they are going to hit fast.  One thing that’s been rattling around this spent candy shell of a skull that I have, is the half-finished thought “Every lesson is incomplete until you teach it”.  Gonna keep tinkering with that particular cookie fortune but I really cannot deny that teaching my playwriting class has been so tremendously helpful in terms of getting my thoughts in order.  Not that they are, in fact, the best thoughts, nor is the order entirely quite right! I’ve been listening to podcasts at 1.5x speed, and when I get nervous, I certainly teach at that speed as well.  But it’s true: the more I have to articulate, instruct, and tailor the lesson to the student, the more questions I have to answer, the more challenges to my understanding, the better grasp I feel on the subject.  I’m dissecting my own assumptions better and thinking more critically about things, and on more levels.  Am I braggin? Maybe a little! I don’t know why I do these intro paragraphs, literally no one wants them, the Internet hates when recipes do them and if I ever try and publish the useful bits of this blog in any way they’ll all have to go.  And yet!

Threat Population and Movement in BURN
In BURN both players draw from a shared deck of cards, each of which shows threats or resources that can be found in a location.  The cards are also one of three suits; Fox, Rabbit, or Mouse.  Each turn, the players examine their hand to evaluate which direction is safest for the Agent to move; the Handler can take actions to send a message to the Agent (recommending a specific direction) or remove cards from their hand (mitigating threats) but ultimately the decision must be made by the Agent.  Once the Agent has settled on a direction, both players reveal the cards of that direction/suit - these are the threats and resources that populate the space the Agent has moved to.  The Agent then takes actions to contend with the options and hazards in that space.

So this is my solution to the old Battleship style approach to threats that each player could see but the other could not.  In classic Fin fashion, I’ve taken board information and put it on cards.  I’m incorrigible.  What this also achieves is that it creates a decision that acts as a hinge between two active phases; both players are taking in information during the first phase, but the only actions taken are by the Handler, culminating in a decision made by the Agent, after which the Agent must take actions that, naturally, have consequences the Handler must track and make plans for in the next turn.
Alright it’s 6 o’clock here and I need a bath and time out of this study.  Take it easy, [no audience found], catch you next time.

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