I humbly suggest to the op to read the fluff intro, of course, and jump straight to reading all the pc playbooks. Most of the setting is there.
Yes, I've done that. I get the setting in the sense of genre/colour/tone.
Hi there! I wouldn't say the setting is the situation. Perhaps the situation is the (first) session, instead. By reading the manual and the playbooks the setting is mostly implied. Does it make sense?
Interesting. Maybe my use of "setting" is misleading, or just flat-out
wrong?
I'll try to explain what I was getting at, and why - for me - it's distinctive compared to what I'm more familiar with.
Painting in broad brush strokes, and doing some classification on the run, I would say that I'm familiar with 3 main sorts of situation - and I'm thinking here especially of situations at the start of a campaign/"arc":
(1) The PCs have to leave home/comfort/their default to deal with a challenge/threat/problem;
(2) The PCs are in the midst of some immediate crisis/threat/challenge (eg the gladitorial arena; an assault on the homestead; etc) and have to resolve it;
(3) The PCs have some sort of standing disposition to action (eg knights like to joust, and to rescue innocents and restore justice; mages wish to learn magical secrets; a servant wants to protect the interests of his/her master; etc) and some event occurs that triggers that disposition.
For this sort of situation, setting is a backdrop but often not fundamental. And (1) and (3) can certainly co-exist with a pretty robust status quo, and (2) can as well although maybe is more likely to produce outcomes that upset a status quo.
What's struck me about AW, by way of contrast, is that the situation is (or, I should say, seems to be) established by the arrangement and orientation of the setting elements - rival warlords/hardholders and the like; poison in the water or food supply; fifth columnists and crazies; etc. In this way it seems closer than what I'm used to to what Ron Edwards wrote about
here.
Comparing to DW - which I have read, and even played a little bit of - the concept of "fronts" also seems much more at home in AW. I can see how that sort of technique relates to the idea of the non-status-quo.
I've been thinking of trying to do some DW with my group some time in the not-too-distant future, but now I'm thinking AW looks more interesting. (If also more challenging, because I think it would push me as a GM in ways that I'm not used to being pushed.)