This blog - now about 20 years old - does a nice job of putting Everway into its (then) historical context:
The same author notes "Jonathan Tweet's discussion of resolution presented in Everway", which introduced a handy taxonomy of resolution techniques:
I've never played Everway, but based on what I know if it, and also drawing on familiarity with another Tweet game from the same general era, namely, Over the Edge, I would expect actual play to vary quite a bit both from table to table and at a given table, between highly collaborative approaches and a lot of player-driven RPGing, and a lot of GM power and GM decides with the players along for the colourful ride.
During the early 1990s . . . a certain approach to numbers and Fortune became apparent across a number of games: Prince Valiant, Over the Edge (especially in light of Laws' essay), Castle Falkenstein, Everway, Maelstrom/Story Engine, Zero, and The Whispering Vault. Later, similar games include Sorcerer, Orkworld, and The Riddle of Steel. All of these texts demonstrate an internal struggle to articulate means of addressing Premise, littered with trip-ups based on assumptions of GM-power and the utter lack of precedent in explaining the whole idea. . . .
A . . . structural issue is to decide how much Premise-addressing (story, if you will) has already occurred before in-play decision-making begins. . . . When the Situation is well-established prior to play and essentially independent of the player-characters, then how they encounter it and become enlisted in its hassles is up for grabs, including when they arrive. The protagonists usually play a catalytic role toward everyone and everything else. Playing Everway, The Dying Earth, InSpectres, Orkworld, The Whispering Vault, and Trollbabe is a lot like this. . . .
[A] Timid Virgin (sic) effect is a full spin toward Force Techniques in isolated spots, which is less schizoid in terms of the reading experience, but perhaps more confusing in the long run. Sorcerer, Everway, Zero, Prince Valiant, and The Whispering Vault all have this bi-polar problem, which I think characterizes many early-to-mid-90s game texts.
The same author notes "Jonathan Tweet's discussion of resolution presented in Everway", which introduced a handy taxonomy of resolution techniques:
These terms describe the mechanical and social means, among the real people, by which an imaginary action or event is determined to occur.
- Drama resolution relies on asserted statements without reference to listed attributes or quantitative elements.
- Karma resolution relies on referring to listed attributes or quantitative elements without a random element.
- Fortune resolution relies on utilizing a random device of some kind, usually delimited by quantitative scores of some kind.
I've never played Everway, but based on what I know if it, and also drawing on familiarity with another Tweet game from the same general era, namely, Over the Edge, I would expect actual play to vary quite a bit both from table to table and at a given table, between highly collaborative approaches and a lot of player-driven RPGing, and a lot of GM power and GM decides with the players along for the colourful ride.
