So ultimately what separates a story from a documentary or some other kind of mere information media, is the narrative of a normalcy - conflict - normalcy cycle. The meat of the story, is the conflict and it's resolution. No big news there, but it does bring to mind a way to frame a design principle in my mind for story games of all kinds.
Going back to Jared Sorenson's three questions for game designers:
1) What is my game about?
2) How does my game do that?
3) What behaviors does my game reward and punish?
The first question is not about the setting, but rather the theme of the game. So D&D actually is (at least in most of it's older incarnations) about killing things and taking their stuff. Star Wars the rpg is not about a galaxy full of aliens and spaceships, but it does begin to tell us something meaningful when it gives us the fairy tale cues "A long time ago" and "a galaxy far, far away", and when we begin to understand it through the sub titles (A New Hope). Star Wars, is about not giving up living, breathing hope in in the face of an oppressive mechanistically ordered system. It is about the personal war between choosing Life vs. The Machine.
The second question is identifies the things that the mechanics need to address or ignore in more detail. D&D (old school) has lots of rules for combat, physically damaging things, surviving physical damage, and advancing with more and better equipment purchased with lots of treasure. Alternatively, Star Wars is a story centered on moral and spiritual choices, the rpg, to really capture the essence of that story, needs to have strong mechanics for the morality of choices, and mechanics that address temptation and corruption. Because it is not a piece of military techno-fiction, nor a story about the clever advances of scientists and engineers, any mechanics regarding the finer points of tactical advantages or power to thrust ratios of engines is actually superfluous to the game... Star Trek is the next game over on the shelf.
The third question digs deeper into how you actualize the types of important mechanics. D&D offers experience points for killing monsters, and for gathering treasure, which put into the player's hands, allow upgrades and bonuses to the character's abilities which make them more effective at fighting and surviving. Star Wars should have some measure of where the character stands in relation to the light side or dark side of the Force, as well as some kind of way to measure in play changes in status depending on actions taken in the story.
This gets me to my refinement on the second and third questions (is that 2.5? or 3.5?...). My question is:
??) What is the Conflict Currency?
Whether the kind of conflicts that are important are sword fights, star ship battles, social brinksmanship, or pitching woo in hopes of enduring love, the meat of any story is about those basic literary questions:
1) What does (character X) want?
2) Why can't they have it now? = CONFLICT!!!
3) What is at stake if they don't get it?
The Conflict Currency then, is what mechanically represents the things that are important to the kind of conflict in the story the game is telling. It is safe to say that most rpg's include some king of physical combat. This is one of the common kinds of conflict then, and needs some kind of conflict currency. This is often represented by accumulated hit points in some way that are paid as the price for being hit, and weapons with some kind of rating in how many hit points they can cause to be spent. Another kind of conflict currency is used for the use of magic. Whether there is a budget of magic points (a.k.a. a "mana" system) or a budget of slots for pre-packaged spell effects (e.g. a "Vancian" magic system, a la D&D), these get spent and are recovered in some cyclic fashion like hit points, in order to get effects in the game.
To be sure, virtually every rpg has multiple conflict currencies, as there are multiple kinds of conflicts that are available, or at least multiple strategies for confronting and overcoming the arch conflict. It gets to be problematic if you are playing a game for which there is not any conflict currency, or for which you have some currency that feels undervalued in that economy. This can be a way to focus a game of course, but it can also make some kinds of play feel short changed.
Not to bully D&D, but I will use it as a case in point (and it is not by any means the only one, and in fact provided the foundation economies by which many game designs have been built). D&D has a varied and interesting economy for conflicts that are at their core, about killing creatures that you wish to pillage. There is the basic attack action with weapons that costs the opponent hit points. There is also a host of magical and magical-like effects that likewise either improve your likelihood of making a successful attack action, or increases the amount of hit points that are expended for a hit. There is a multi-stage cycle of die rolls that shape the outcome. However, if the players should instead want to play a battle of wits and cunning, there is a much more simplified pass/fail mechanic for that kind of conflict, generally resolved with a single die roll. Should the player want to play out the advancement of a romance that sparks, smolders, and ultimately blazes into a bonfire, there are no mechanics whatsoever. D&D is really not a game for rom-com conflicts then, which is neither here nor there, as that is not the stories that it is designed to tell.
But it does demonstrate why thinking about conflict currency matters to game design. So if I am designing a game of grand, sweeping, dynastic conflict, I need to ask myself, what kind of Conflict Currency I need for that game. Fate is a really great toolbox for this as the same basic mechanical blocks can very easily be re-skinned or re-named to match the themes of the story in question. Does a dynastic political game need rules for the common procedural elements of adventure games like sword fighting and sneaking? Not really, or not in the normal sense. But there does need to be some kind of conflict currency for diplomatic treaty resolution, the wax and wane of public opinion, and the strength or weakness of succession faces and factions. This phrasing makes it a little sharper when deciding how to answer or refine the answers to Sorenson's questions 2 and 3.
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