from the Forge thread Meaning at the beginning, middle and end. It’s about social expectations and authority.
The thread describes three types of resolution– Meaning at the Beginning (MatB), Meaning in the Middle (MitM), and Meaning at the End (MatE). Meaning at the Beginning is about consistent causality, strongly influenced by precedent. Meaning in the Middle is about moment by moment decisions, stretching precedent to fit new cases. Meaning at the End is about justifying or explaining why past events occurred, retrofitting explanations in later.
Later in the thread Simon Marks comments:
So, Kell hates his father (a fact)
In this hypothetical system, we can look at what this translates into.It will lead to certain ‘predefined’ effects – So, it will grant +2 to any attempt to harm his Father. This is MatB, as it is Judged once the fact is created.
If I then say “Kell’s hatred of his father helps me jump the river” then thats an attempt to add to the SIS that this is true. It is judged when I try to use it.
If I then say “”Okay, so Kell’s hatred of his father helped him shoot this man dead. My God… all of his fighting is a sublimation of his desire to kill the man he hates and loves. Which I didn’t know until we insisted that the trait was relevant here.” is where you rationalise why you got +2 to killing this man.
So the question becomes, “What effect will this fact have”, “Does this fact have an effect” and “Why did this fact have an effect”
It’s an interesting thing to look at, but I don’t have an application for it yet. It’s just something I’m going to need to keep track of (at least mentioning), if I run a MitM game with people used to only MatB games.