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There is a substantial amount of GM's Say in Blades. It's different in that it's constrained, targeted and transparent. That where judgement is applied we can see its impact. There is a substantial difference here compared to the black box we see in traditional RPG design. Both utilize a high...

Most of these games are not really adventuring and in some there is no group. In Apocalypse World you are all members of the same hard hold (community) but no guarantees you actually work together. It's like tabletop Deadwood. In Sorcerer your lives intersect from time to time, but you each of...

I don't think expectations need to come from rulebooks, but that shared and formalized expectations help to create a healthy creative dynamic that encourages to speak up when we're not getting what we desire from play. Granted, I only play with friends.

Because it's not just making up details on the spot. It's framing scenes that speak to the embedded premise / values of the characters. The expectations for what the GM is doing are clear and transparent.

You can look at it however you want, but to me the essential component of a king ruling by fiat is that he is not accountable. That his decrees cannot be challenged. They are usually made for solid, principled reasons. We just don't know, because it's not for us to know.

It's not fiat because the motivations behind it are arbitrary. It's fiat because there is no accountability for it. There is no binding agreement about it. There is no saying "This is not meeting the shared expectations we have set". That's the difference in the enumerated principles and agenda...

I'm not going to dig into the technical bit of Apocalypse World, but instead take a higher-level view. We're deciding to play a game designed narrativist because we want a particular arrangement of things: Now that particular piece of prep is only useful to us (assuming we want they above...

I think something like Blorb Principles does a much better job at getting to the gameplay concerns of mystery scenario in large part because it's emphatically about fairness and the integrity of the challenge rather than getting into that space of this or that is more real. Blorb Principles 3...

So you agree that it's not less authentic?

It isn't about the quality of the experience. It is about the authenticity of it. The integrity of it. The realness of it. That's what matters to me. The reason I do this thing is the experience of being there in the moment as the character I'm playing, feeling what they are feeling, and making...

I'm not saying that you personally are making a judgement. I am saying that the terminology itself only addresses itself, only imagines itself and leaves no room for other things to exist and be legitimate. That it cannot be used to compare and contrast because it leaves no room for anything...

@Bedrockgames The problem with discussing the play practices you are talking about in the way you talk about them to others who play that way is the same fundamental problem you get when discussing method acting with method actors. The language in use does not account for other ways of...

Clue(do) lacks a (shared) fiction in that players lack the ability to impact or influence it and there is no response to the actions players take. This is why despite being more jargony I think "shared imagined space" was actually better for communication than "the fiction". Both are meant to...

The idea that providing stats to an NPC who has none defined or further developing them between sessions make them more real or objective is something I find profoundly silly. The idea that say when I played the prelude our Vampire Amsterdam Chronicle that my character, Ariel Mataan, was less...

The reason this matters, is because some people want to gate keep that feeling of being there in the moment behind a particular process. This is no different than Method Actors believing they have some sort of special sauce (and that other approaches to acting are inauthentic). They are wrong...

So right now, I am running a game of Blades, for a crew of hawkers (for an in-person group). We use what I would call moderate myth in that I prepare only what I feel I need for the next session. This prep is binding secret backstory meant to highlight the conflicts of interest that exist...

@Bedrockgames You are also challenging the integrity of the play experience of many people's games and doing so without regard to the experiential quality of those games (something you get your druthers up about on a regular basis). You also are regularly (whether meaning to or not)...

I adore Monsterhearts, but it does not really have rules for romance. It has rules for attraction and social leverage because they are exploring possibly unwanted attraction (as in being attracted to someone despite yourself) and the sort of twisted social dynamics you often see in supernatural...

Apocalypse World doesn't feature that sort of prep (if we are running it according to its instructions). The game tells you how to prep (fronts in First Edition / threats in Second Edition). When the game says "always say what your prep demands" it means fronts/threats. You cannot take the...

This is just fundamentally untrue of games like Apocalypse World. The GM has framing authority. They just have restrictions on that framing authority and a differing agenda than simulating a world. 95% of the differences lay in how the GM role functions. My interface as a player in Apocalypse...