Seems right to me.
I would say, think about where a character's stats and abilities are. What are they written down on?
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In a narrativist game we might imagine they are written on a board in the writers' room. This season the character Seeks Revenge, Has a Secret, and is Learning How to Be a Better Husband.
I think your last line is apt for "free descriptor" PC builds - I'm thinking MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic (and maybe other Cortex variants?), Hero Wars, and probably plenty of other games I'm ignorant of.
But I don't think it's right for (say) Burning Wheel. When Thurgon has Power 6 and Mortal Wound 11, compared to Aramina's Power 4 and Mortal Wound 10, that is meaningful within the fiction. Thurgon is physically tougher. This is something both Thurgon and Aramina are aware of. The "Seeks Revenge" aspect in BW is encoded in a Belief, and can be expressed via the expenditure of artha (which allows a player to lean into success), but that's not the whole of the PC build.
And in Apocalypse World, I think in the fiction people know that the Skinner is hot, the Battlebabe is cool, the Driver is sharp, and the Chopper is hard.
In Cthulhu Dark, the "free descriptor" is an occupation - in the sessions I've run there have been reporters (twice), a legal secretary, a longshoreman and a butler. It was up to each player to work out the details of what that meant, but it certainly corresponded to something in the fiction.
What I find is that the names of such ‘skills’ evoke a rather task/sim oriented approach. My character is ‘hot’ in the fictional world, therefore He is good at seduction. But the skill checks aren’t resolving whether the PC was seductive enough, they are resolving whether the PC achieved some goal
Here is the move description for Seduce/Manipuate:
When you try to seduce or manipulate someone, tell them what you want and roll+hot.
For NPCs: on a hit, they ask you to promise something first, and do it if you promise. On a 10+, whether you keep your promise is up to you, later. On a 7–9, they need some concrete assurance right now.
For PCs: on a 10+, both. On a 7–9, choose 1:
• if they do it, they mark experience
• if they refuse, it’s acting under fire
What they do then is up to them.
If the check is a success, we learn that the PC was seductive enough. (If it fails is another matter. Within the soft/hard move structure, and the guiding principles and agenda, the GM has quite a degree of leeway to narrate failure.)
I could lean harder on your distinction, too: seductive enough
for what? The most natural answer is
to achieve what they wanted!
I think my analysis is spot on as it brings to light details I find important. It’s possible it’s only over analysis to you because you don’t value the differentiations it brings out.
Have you played Apocalypse World, or read the rulebook? I think you are looking for differences in the least promising place, namely, PC build. Whereas the differentiation that - as best I can tell from your posts - you are interested in is found in the principles that engage the action resolution mechanics ("if you do it, you do it") and the rules for when the GM makes a soft or a hard move, which include a conspicuous lack of appeal to pre-established or unrevealed backstory.
What’s determined the NPC has the information in the first place? Isn’t your ‘hot’ skill what’s doing the work there? And if so isn’t whether the NPC has the information unrelated to your hot skill and the most important aspect and Yet the hot skill check resolves that as well.
The seduce/manipulate skill doesn't establish that any NPC has any information. I've posted it for you above: it obliges the NPC to give you what you want in exchange for a promise.
From the AW rulebook, p 109:
Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say
what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything
about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.
What ensures conflict resolution in AW is not the distribution of authority, but the principles that tell the GM ("MC") what to say. These include being obliged, via the mechanics, to provide answers. For instance, Read a Person:
When you read a person in a charged interaction, roll+sharp.
On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 1. While you’re interacting with them, spend your hold to ask their player questions, 1 for 1:
• is your character telling the truth?
• what’s your character really feeling?
• what does your character intend to do?
• what does your character wish I’d do?
• how could I get your character to . . .?
That's how a player, via their PC, might learn whether or not a NPC knows where the dirt is. It doesn't give the player any content authority, though. It obliges the GM to use their content authority in a particular way.
Or take a slightly different example. Say it was established the NPC had the info. At that point it becomes process/sim because your characters fictional ability to seduce is fictionally and substantially related to why you were able to get the info.
You seem to be using "process/sim" to describe a technique, not a creative agenda.
Even on that interpretation of the phrase, seduce/manipulate is not process/sim because if it fails, the narration of failure need not follow the in-fiction causal logic of the attempt to seduce or manipulate. From p 116 - "Whenever someone turns and looks to you [the GM] to say something, always say what the principles demand." And the principles don't demand you to track in-fiction causality; rather, they require you to author in-fiction causality. This is addressed on pp 110-11:
Make your move, but misdirect. Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. Maybe your move is to separate them, for instance; never say “you missed your roll, so you two get separated.” Instead, maybe say “you try to grab his gun” — this was the PC’s move — “but he kicks you down. While they’re stomping on you, they drag Damson away.” The effect’s the same, they’re separated, but you’ve cannily misrepresented the cause. Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible.
Make your move, but never speak its name. Maybe your move is to separate them, but you should never just say that. Instead, say how Foster’s thugs drags one of them off, and Foster invites the other to eat lunch with her. Maybe your move is to announce future badness, but for god sake never say the words “future badness.” Instead, say how this morning, filthy, stinking black smoke is rising from somewhere in the car yard, and I wonder what’s brewing over there?
These two principles are cause and effect. The truth is that you’ve chosen a move and made it. Pretend, though, that there’s a fictional cause; pretend that it has a fictional effect.
Together, the purpose of these two principles is to create an illusion for the players, not to hide your intentions from them. Certainly never to hide your NPCs’ actions, or developments in the characters’ world, from the players’ characters! No; always say what honesty demands. When it comes to what’s happening to and around the players’ characters, always be as honest as you
can be.
Suppose I'm interacting with one of Dremmer's underlings, and I read them -
How could I get you to spill the beans on Dremmer? - and so I learn their price, and then that's what I offer when I manipulate them, and so they do what I ask: they tell me where I can find the dirt on Dremmer. It's in a safe in such-and-such a place in the hardhold. So I sneak in, acting under fire, and I hit my roll and open the safe. And I look to the GM, and the GM has to make a move, in accordance with the principles. I haven't failed my roll to act under fire, and I haven't handed the GM an opportunity on a silver platter, so they're not allowed to make a hard move and tell me the dirt's not there!
But I'm looking at them, so they have to make a soft move. There are a lot of options there, from the sound of voices approach, to a dog barking, to there being something else with the dirt I didn't expect (say, a photo -
Where did Dremmer - or whoever took it - get a polaroid from?! - of Dremmer in bed with my partner). The GM will be acting on the principles and making a move that they think follows honesty from the established fiction.
But to reiterate: they can't make a hard move if I make my check and don't hand them an opportunity on a silver platter, so they can't say the dirt's not there.
That's how Apocalypse World does conflict resolution: not via funky PC building, and not via funky allocations of authority, but via very careful rules about what the GM is allowed, or required, to say and when.
