This is interesting but it strikes me as culturally fairly far removed from the common culture of D&D play.
Agreed.
For instance, "nothing happens" is clearly a legitimate GM-side move in a lot of D&D play.
And also, in a lot of D&D play the GM is allowed to make a hard move whether or not the player hands an opportunity on a platter, in the AW sense of that phrase. This is related to the role of "secret" or "unrevealed" backstory in D&D play, which GMs routinely rely on to help make their moves, but which doesn't play the same role in AW play (eg it doesn't count as an opportunity on a platter that an action a player declares interacts in some way, unknown to the player, with some bit of GM unrevealed backstory or setting notes).
I'm sure there are other differences two, but the two I've mentioned are the first that I think of.
As you may know, there are pockets of approaches to 4e D&D which come closer to the AW approach. I don't know that they were ever "mainstream" even for 4e D&D, and I believe are even less mainstream in the post-4e era.
I wonder are there games have have elements that encourage narrative that are closer to the cultural norms of D&D that could be added as an optional extra for those tables that are interested and willing to buy in.
Burning Wheel is a bit closer to D&D than AW; and Torchbearer closer still. I still think that adapting some of the approaches found in these games would require cultural change, particularly around
what the GM is permitted to say. For instance, both use a form of "say 'yes' or roll the dice"; whereas a common D&D norm is to sometimes say "no" (which in AW parlance often means making a hard move) in response to a player action declaration, even if the player has not rolled and failed a check.
It seems to me that "pushing the game toward story" as the thread title suggest involves a change in the culture of the game.
Agreed.
I think there is a bit of a tendency to place too much emphasis on a few mechanics - eg Fate points, BIFTs, etc - rather than to focus on these core questions that govern who gets to say what when, with a particular focus on the GM. But it is different approaches to these core questions, rather than nifty mechanics, that tend to be the driving machinery of RPGs (like AW) that are widely seen as "story oriented".
I am able to run "story oriented" Classic Traveller making almost no changes to the mechanics that were published in 1977 (the only significant change I have made is to generate the star map on more of a just-in-time basis, rather than in advance of play as the rulebook instructs me to). But I have adopted a version of the AW approach to who gets to say what when, taking advantage of the fact that, just like AW, Classic Traveller bundles much of its action resolution into discrete, and trope-y/thematically salient moves (like "When you attempt an interstellar jump . . ." or "When you try a non-ordinary manoeuvre wearing a vacc suit . . ." or "When you deal with police or other government officials . . .").
Without wanting to rehash a different thread's debate in this one, I think "pushing the game toward story" would have to begin with a discussion of the different sorts of approaches to GMing. (And I should add: of course there is an approach to story in RPGing that is very different from the AW approach I've posted about in this thread - that is, the DL-approach which relies heavily on the GM suspending the rules, and managing the backstory, so as to make sure a story happens somewhat independently of the actual minutiae of play.)
