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Where I agree with you. In really broad terms it's incumbent on the GM to be open about their process because there are lots of ways to GM and lots of cultural assumptions about the GM role. Especially the GM as mysterious entertainer who stewards the game and provides a good time for the...

It depends on whether you think rules should create accountability. I don't but I'm also sympathetic to the idea that principles should be enumerated. The issue with accountability is it creates a play culture where you can point to the rules and say 'I'm following the rules' and it leads to...

Most fiat is principled, you just need to find out what the principle is. Four somewhat common principles: Ask what would be there, if indeterminate then decide yes and think about what clues it could offer. Ask what would be there, if indeterminate then nothing that actively harms or helps...

If I'm playing some 'generic' Narrativist game (say The Pool). If I want some deep mysterious backstory then I just write deep mysterious backstory. To give a concrete example: The character is: A hard boiled detective, going to a seaside town to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl...

Ah my bad. I assumed you, the GM, knew the answer to the mystery. Like you had a specific person in mind before the investigation happened.

I don't like thinking about this stuff but my mind does its own thing and so I ended up jotting down the skeleton of two games to work through it. Some brief thoughts at the bottom. THE 'REAL' KEY The occult apocalypse machine is ticking down. In one hour the world will be devoured. You need...

I didn't give my actual take on BitD. So going with 'no myth' as a play style (flags, minimal backstory, GM facilitates, fail forward). Then my answer as to when to use it is: Does off-screen positioning matter for strategic purposes, is this challenge based play? Myth Does the clash of...

We're running into the issue of just having to show completed Apocalypse World prep. I was looking to see whether my prep was suitable but it's lots of scribbles that only make sense if you're me. A majority of the prep centres around the values and the resources of groups of people and how they...

Well there's some stuff that I wonder about but it's going to mostly build out a character, not lead to much consequential revelation. There's no real exploration going on in my games (any of them). I think almost all the good stuff happens after backstory reveals, so I try to get it out the...

By revelation I mean the introduction of backstory. So the maelstrom is an area where I would flesh that out but I do mention that in my post. What will we make of the world and so on is just the result of conflicts. So no backstory involved, just changing positions. E.G. Midnight massacres the...

In AW specifically there just isn't much room for revelation. The characters are mostly going to places they already know, or kind of know, or know of. Same with mystery, there just isn't much room for it given the nature of the fictional circumstances. There is some hidden backstory and...

Revelation that bad stuff has happened isn't a hard move. Although in general your prep shouldn't be 'this bad thing has happened' because by the end of session one you should have a situation in motion so there's no need to prep much else. or to the extent there is, you never need to prep...

Nah we're actually only disagreeing in a minor way. You're allowed to make as hard a move as you like at any time (in AW specifically) but in general you should start soft. In session one though, I'm far more likely to make very hard moves. Although I probably wouldn't do the above for a whole...

Well there is no MC prep before session one, so the prep can't prevent anything. The PC could say they go to Kumptown to meet sludge and I could say 'yeah it's a burning ember and sludge is dead. Looks like the work of the Pyrocult'

Yes.

You'd establish that as part of their clock. So let's say after session 1 you create a clock for the Pyro cult and the first tick is, burn down Krumptown and kill Sludge. And the first scene is as follows: MC: What are you doing Midnight? Midnight: I'm riding to Krumptown to see Sludge...

Well the advice/best practices/philosophy of what constitutes Narrativist play change radically depending on who you ask and are often mutually exclusive or directly opposed. This is true of 'trad' games though, so they're all really in the same basket.

A Flag is a mechanic that tells the GM what the player wants to see in play. So for instance: I'm the greatest swordsman, no can beat me I put my family first In play the GM will look at the flags and introduce content that plays to or challenges the flag. For instance having loads of sword...

This is the no-myth interpretation but AW isn't a no-myth game. Dungeon World is really shaky, I don't think Adam and Sage knew what AW was trying to do in the slightest. A lot of the subsequent PbtA advice and designers do basically advocate no-myth. Truncated history of no-myth. Gareth...

This is a conversation that breaks my brain. I am actually going to explore it in play but it's lower on my list of priorities than other stuff. So if I'm playing say (Apocalypse World, Cyberpunk 202, Sorcerer, The pool). Then I do create backstory and that backstory acts as a constraint on...