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The MC is now going to make a move. Guess what? That 'worst' is about to manifest! If a thief studied a lock in DW, I would trigger Discern Realities and they'd roll. On a 6- the lock might be trapped, and you're now poisoned with deadly red jellyfish toxin! You recognize the symptoms, and...

What is being said by Harper is that the MC decides things like what an NPC says, or how the psychic maelstrom manifests its influence in a given situation. But the setting is not a predefined thing, and the game doesn't work by having the MC tell you that finding water is impossible because...

What 'actually is' here that's being changed???!!! There's no real runes, there's not even a fiction of what these pretend runes 'mean'!!! So, nothing the character did, fictionally changed anything except their knowledge of the runes' content. That seems entirely diegetic to me. In the real...

Except here you are still left standing in front of the locked door. When we say that the situation has changed, it's a material change, not merely a difference in information. I understand what you're saying, it's possible some situations are ambiguous. Still, in general, we have moved on. Some...

Well, I think that the sorts of goals and how they relate to the setting matters. BitD has a setting, but the entire focus is on the life of the PCs and crew within that milieu. I think Egri's description is good, it's discussed here: Revisiting GNS – lumpley games

There is no 'setting' in AW, it's a purely Zero Myth game, beyond identifying a genre (post apocalypse). Player's choices of play book will then establish some constraints on the fiction. If there's a Hard Holder, then a hold exists (a refuge or base of some kind) etc. Normally at that point...

I'm not so sure. I mean, I agree that's the simplest level of play, but let's imagine I'm playing DW, and I'm fleeing from some terrible monster. I come to a dead end. I Discern Realities. I get a 10. There are kind of limited options available to the GM here! Some sort of fiction is required...

Yeah I stand corrected. In DW bonds are written during the session wrap up, along with allocation of XP for certain things, and leveling up or other 'house keeping' tasks. So not in character. And I agree that the criteria for bonds is very much focused on game or narrative considerations, like...

The authoring of fiction in Narrativist play is quite structured, in general. For example in DW the 'blacksmith scenario' could proceed in several ways: 1. The GM describes such an NPC as part of some PC action declared by a player; like asking around town for one. 2. The GM asks some question...

Right, so 4e is of course a bit different from BW in that it's not specifically adjudicating intent at the level of a specific check. It can, but that's normally left to the SC. A given check then determines the new SC tally, and some fiction follows which supports moving it on to a materially...

I OTOH am not understanding a distinction. Either way the GM made fundamentally the same calculation, that a map would be fun. In both cases the GM chose, and both cases present the same fictional causality, and map it in the same way to actual causes.

I think this brings us closer to an understanding. Dungeon World repeatedly admonishes the participants, especially the GM, to speak to the characters. Also to speak as the NPCs. Thus you ask "Thor, what are trying to do here?" Not "John, what do you want Thor to do?" This is exactly what...

Agreed, they can be a form of control of the story. They're, interestingly not generally a part of Narrativist play (and I am happy to agree that points out how imperfect the label is). So, there may be games where a currency plays such a role, I'm far from versed in all such games, but I don't...

I'm not sure Watsonian vs Doylist is the same thing as Trad vs Narrativist. Our play is as much 1st person reasoning as the character as trad play! I do both, and the notion that one is a kind of analysis of narrative from outside is not valid. In fact most real play is not 100% one or the...

First of all, there's a somewhat different attitude towards characters and roles. Trad play is fundamentally rooted in a competitive skill-test model of play where the GM's goal is to play the opponents. So, in that model of roles, the idea of trying to subvert this opposition by some...

Well, think about it. My 4e thief is in an SC where the object is to steal something from a house. Thievery is more a modus than a specific skill, but being proficient in it certainly means you know your way around a burglary. So you make an action declaration "I pick the lock" and you fail...

Then actually do the analysis! You are super willing to leap to conclusions and assume you know how this works, but what I hear you saying about, say, play in Dungeon World, bears no relationship to the actuality of it.

Because that world is not real and doesn't work like it is! When you base an analysis on a mistaken idea of what the situation is, you cannot arrive at accurate conclusions.

And again, you're out of your depth. You have clearly never participated in Narrativist play, as your characterization of how it works does not comport with reality. You're making the mistake of overlaying your trad agenda and (to paraphrase @clearstream) lusory attitude on a game which they...

Well,DURING PLAY in character play literally consists of that, plus acting out the role of the character. In terms of analyzing play, and system, I find that such confusion is profoundly unhelpful! What I want to do is understand how play works and how things like system figure into it.