Limitation & Penalty vs Complication and Consequence
This post was written by Alexander Williams (@squidlord).
An Exchange of Tweets
Last week this question was floated on Twitter.
David Onion Ball (@ongoingworlds)
If you allow characters in your RP to cast magic, do you always make sure there’s a penalty for using it? – Mar 18
To put it mildly, “a conversation ensued.” You can go to the linked Twitter procession if you want to read it in full, but the core conflict is that David espouses a position in which the actions of a character have a “price,” and I believe if you charge a character – or their player – for engaging with the story, you get what you reward: less engagement with the story.
I think that’s bad. Your opinion may differ.
Read More
Wonder how we do our jobs? Wonder who we actually are? Whether we’re robots,human hybrids, or aliens? What we like to do in our spare time or just general boring questions? Is Dave really a tea powered robot? Well! Now you can! 
Just had an email from someone who’s lost a post they spent time writing, and then lost it all when they computer crashed. I would have been so angry! Luckily this person wasn’t the aggressive type, or had at least calmed down before emailing me to let me know that it might be broken.
Yeah, don’t ask me why the thumbnail to this is a picture of me really pissed off. I finished the thing and made this around 12:13 am and I have to work the same day so I was tired and cranky [pic’s a bit sloppy too]. But, long story short [trying to stride past my pissed off self] I wrote the first edition to something that could help you [or someone you know] with the in’s and out’s of the wonderful world of writing. 
