Keys · By Problem

Find an article by the problem you are hitting.

pacing-failure

drags, sags, stalls, spikes, or never climbs

content-cost

authoring/prep/reset burden outweighs payoff; burnout; single-use waste

unfairness

outcomes the player can’t earn or trust: luck spikes and GM fiat, or unearned twists

voice-drift

tone/register/voice/canon/world-state slip out of consistency

immersion-break

the spell snaps: non-diegetic intrusion, pasted-on theme, dissonance

dead-end

a hard stop with no path forward: bottleneck, single point of failure

degenerate-play

collapses to one line: a dominant strategy that solves the game, or analysis paralysis

false-agency

choices that don’t matter: railroading, illusory branches

exclusion

players sidelined, idle, eliminated, locked out: watching not playing

prose-failure

the writing fails: info-dump, told-not-shown, on-the-nose, author intrusion

unsolvability

a challenge that can’t fairly be solved: unverifiable, pixel-hunt, ungated

disorientation

the audience loses the thread: can’t track state, space, structure, ending

domination

one player/team controls the table or outcome (alpha-play, quarterbacking, runaway)

flat-character

people in the fiction lack life: interchangeable, unmotivated, monoculture

safety-failure

play harms participants: unsafe pressure, missing consent, uncontained bleed

coordination-failure

group machinery seizes: can’t coordinate, isolate, or lack a counterpart