Hey Paul,

Heard you on the +1 Podcast today and found your take on Clocks fascinating. My best distillation of the mechanic is the following: clocks are abstract trackers of progress. they can represent obstacles, enemies, steps, tug of wars, or any number of things [needed to complete the mission.]

Though I think that might bound the usage to the immediate, rather than the front-orbiting pressure you allude to when talking about Apocalypse World.

With regards to your term Trindie and the greater design trends of the last five years – I think the further abstraction time into montage and ramification is a space where a lot of designers will be playing more and more with. There seems to be a fun give and take in looking at the before and after, and there’s really no inherent granularity within the framework of “You do it, but with a complication.”

Our latest game, Time Force, plays a lot in this space (and with Clocks) under a FITD framework. I wrote about what we learned making the game on the Gauntlet Forums:

https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/t/time-force-save-the-world-change-the-past/5448/2

Hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Ray