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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7070873" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with this, but perhaps more than you might be inclined to I will try and connect that fiction to some sort of conflict or opportunity for action or decision. The dark naga came into my BW game because (i) one player wrote a new Belief for a (seer-type) PC that included, as an element, that she could feel a dark power rising in the land; and (ii) another player brought in a snake-handling PC with the belief that "sorcery is the venom of the fangless". So a dark naga seemed to make perfect sense, as a way of following these leads into a place that requires some sort of action or decision.This is interesting. I'm still assimilating it.Part of the art of building and playing an effective BW PC is framing Beliefs that straddle the immediate and the long term. It's not easy to get this right; and while the GM is duty-bound to put those Beliefs to the test, there is no obligation to make it easy. And if the PC squibs, the GM is (I think) under an obligation to step up the pressure.I remember one session quite a while ago now where the PCs were in the Keep on the Borderlands, and sharing the inn with them were some travellers from Urnst carrying wedding gifts to Hardby. One of the PCs - the assassin, who at that point was not an NPC, and whose player was sick of continual money troubles - had the Belief "I will steal the wedding gifts". And it was established, via a process of transmuting colour (the Urnst NPC arrived in a wagon) into framing, that the wedding gfits were in the wagon (which was always under guard). That "process" consisted in my narration as GM - when the PCs first approached the Keep from the hills of the Abor-Alz I mentioned the NPC party being visible on the plain below them (establishing colour), and then later on it became clear that the wedding gifts were in the wagon (I can't remember the details now, but - in the context of a PC with that Belief - that is a move from mere colour to framing a context for action declaration).But the PC hemmed and hawed and passed up the initial chance to have a go at the wagon. (Something else was happening with another PC - I think the elven princess was confronting a death cultists described as a friendly priest - and the other players, in their "free roleplaying", decided it was too risky to tackle the wagon.) It was only later, when the party from Urnst was about to depart - taking their wagon with them - that the PC made the attempt! (Which is to say, I reframed the situation with higher stakes - act now or miss out on your chance to get the gifts! - and the player chose to have the PC act.)I think there is overlap there with your MC list. There is definitely scope in scene-framing play to develop leverage, including via lateral decision-making (eg in our 4e game at one point the fighter PC took on a rescued dwarf NPC as a herald - this was not the resolution of any immediate conflict, but played into subsequent events in the game where the PC needed to engage effectively with the ruling clique of a city; in BW there are Resources and Circles tests, linked tests, and the like, all of which have significance - both mechanical and in the fiction - that unfold over time).But from my side perhaps the biggest difference I see, when I try and related your lists to my own experience, is the idea of pressure. The BW GM is meant to pour pressure onto the players. Which means the fiction isn't just engaging to the PCs (and thereby the players), or offering interesting avenues for decision. The players should feel that the fiction is bearing down on them (and their PCs). This is where I would say the intensity of the play experience is located. (And it can be quite intense - not in a "You'll need therapy after this session" sense, but in the sense of your heart being in your mouth as stuff that matters to the PCs is happening, and there's no avoiding it - if you (the player) don't act (via action declarations for your PC), even against adverse odds, you'll lost what you were hoping for.) I don't know if that speaks to your sense of the differences?</blockquote>

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