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So I think that "having a mental model" is both a) a pretty dang common term and b) not terribly inaccurate for what we're doing when we run a game? Our shared hallucination is all in our heads after all (maybe with a bit of graphical representation). I've used the term quite a bit for how I try...

So the "PBTA community" seems to have judged DW as "bad" mostly in the following ways: - Using the core 6 D&D stats. Most PBTAs use evocative stats, and less of them. Clearly this was done intentionally in the design to evoke D&D and be familiar, so I don't see this as a "bad thing." - Defy...

I’ve even seen some PBTAs bringing downtime actions in to build an episodic structure and create that sort of focused downtempo scenes.

I didn’t think AW’s designs were particularly germaine to this specific BITD focused question/discussion so I simply said “other PBTAs did this earlier.” BITD extended the idea to a full ready-made high author vision setting, which I think makes it more analogous to the other sandbox mechanisms...

Right, clocks and all that stuff is clearly one set of tools for a designer to drop an entire sandbox-city/setting (I’m running a different FITD that’s a post-collapse sci-fi continent, with the factions split across countries) ready for play in front of a market and try to give a coherent...

One thing I thought was really interesting when I gave 4e a shot with some experienced folks was how baked in to the game the Monster Knowledge checks to get explicit details of the monster's stat block are. I think that open check where the player can know the rules for it (appropriate skill...

Sure, and in many ways it may inform the overarching design of the game itself then moment to moment play. Like, we have the Stress -> Vice -> Trauma link not because it's pure game based attrition, but to see if you can deal with the costs of the Scoundrel's life or if you flame out. The game...

I hope my other post answers most of this (in that NPCs generally belong to Factions, and the Factions have Goals + Tier + Assets + A Starting Situation) that explain how Blades handles NPC play, but just to give a really concrete example of a Faction (spoilers): Being Tier 4, they roll 4d6...

Yeah, so the idea that "there's no story or plot in this game" may be pretty long running; but Play to Find Out is actually meant to be a little more then "lets not pre-plan a story," it's that there's specific things that vary from game to game you're playing to find out. Which I agree, unless...

Ok, I’ve got it: they’ve been secretly doing a piece of performance art this whole time about how the average D&D group is actually a collection of absolute psychopaths.

Sure, that was just an immediate and relatively wide spread example to try and illustrate the point at hand.

I assume being a murderer in cold blood means you’re starting from a .. let’s say interesting mental state to begin with anyway!

I think there’s just some resistance or whatever on their behalf to buying into your core assertion that “it’s all turtles GM decisions all the way down.” I’ll freely admit that when I run Stonetop I’m making a conscious decision about the next steps of play, right? Like, I’m prompting for table...

As somebody who has been in and around a segment of society who deals in violence on a professional level for a long period of time, the assertion you’re responding to is even more incredible. The military has developed entire long scale training regimens to try and get past the need to, dare I...

And honestly, sometimes there's something really refreshing about seeing a creative (or team of creatives) take classic tropes and do something genuinely new and interesting with them. I'm not sure if Daggerheart has done that since I haven't read it in full, but it's certainly fresher/different...

I'm not sure if this quite aligns with what @pemerton meant, but my immediate contrast in my head is between a) OSR style play that re-centers "treasure = XP" in a very classic way as a goal of play vs b) plotted narrative adventure time where the GM is using milestone xp. In the former, the...

It’s almost like @Reynard made an entire thread about this before it wandered off into the weeds :P.

DW was maybe informed a little by 2e but really more 3.5e. The characters are way too heroic and competent at the get go to replicate older gen play. It was the trappings that throws people off I think! Freebooters on the Frontier exists because the other DW descended games don’t handle old...

It was not, really, but the art style and framing (classic monsters, "getting treasure" being an implied focus of the system) felt older school then most people used it for I think.

The thing is that just dropping a couple of the classic moves & the treasure focus would’ve gotten them 90% of the way to that. They’ve pretty consciously tossed out the D&D-ness of this iteration as well, which is interesting! It’s listening to the side of the community consensus which held...