Development Stage

The development stage gives us the cyclic principle, “Defer answers.” Players will keep asking all kinds of questions, including attentive questions that demand substantive answers. These two might seem to contradict one another — “defer answers” tells you to withhold meaningful answers, and the rules for attentive questions tells you that when a player spends a moment of awareness to ask one of these specific questions, you have to provide a true and meaningful answer. How do you reconcile these two? You might come up with more creative solutions in the moment, but as a default, try providing a true and meaningful answer, but one that introduces new questions.

“Defer answers” doesn’t mean the same thing as “Draw lines,” so in this stage you should not add new divisions. But it does mean that you should show efforts to address those divisions failing or falling short. This stage focuses on exploring the complexities of the situation, whether by showing the difficulty in addressing it, or simply by learning more about it.

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