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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8291112" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I agree overwhelmingly with your above post, and I agree with some of those thoughts on 4e (particularly how non-framing aspects of system, eg Milestones and the % of the overall Team PC gastank is in the "Encounter Tank" and how deeply synergies can be brought to bear, mollifies the game's sensitivity to Daily Refresh).However, I think where AA's thoughts (and perhaps yours if you also subscribe to those thoughts) falls flat is I've seen him express a sentiment of "in PBtA systems, Complications are going to arise whether Team PC acts or doesn't act so, effectively, the GM has mandate (or maybe even responsibility) to just Soft Move the game into (basically) oblivion (meaning GMs have unbridled framing and re-framing authority by just looping soft moves ad nauseum) if they wish.  Consequently, the Skilled Play signal (that is the player's ability to actually wrest control of the gamestate presently and future states downstream of this present gamestate) is effectively muted because of the GM's authority and responsibility to endlessly erect obstacles in the course of merely running the game."Or, put another way, "Fill their lives with danger by weaponizing the soft move in an infinite loop (with brief interludes of Hard Moves and a tacit acknowledgement of the impact of their 33 % 10+ moves...which really don't matter because remember to weaponize that soft move infinite loop!) until you're bored or you feel like the scene is played out and then just rinse repeat until end of session!"With respect, I don't know who is running his Dungeon World games or where this interpretation of DW or PBtA games at large is coming from (if indeed my reading is correct)...But my god.  That is as incorrect a reading as I could possibly imagine.  Its just fundamentally not true.  That is basically as Calvinballing of PBtA GMing as I could imagine...a sort of GMing that would be so ham-fisted if operationalized and so deeply detached from the aggregate of the game's principles and structure (and all the things that spin out of that), that I can't imagine even sitting for that GM for more than a moment.   I mean...maybe my reading is wrong, but that looks to operationalize a kind of PBtA GM Force that effectively obviates player input into the fiction that is really on par with the most brunt deployments in AD&D 2e.The GM depicted in the "infinite soft move loop" paradigm is NOT:Playing to Find Out What HappensFollowing The RulesMaking Moves That FollowBegin and End With the FictionAnd they're probably NOT:Asking Questions and Using the Answers (because the sort of structured conversation that stems from following the play procedures would reveal the degenerate, Skilled Play-killing "initiate operation Soft Move Endless Loop" paradigm happening...if it hasn't been exposed already)I don't know how one reads that sort of authority and play structure from the text and I can't imagine how one feels like they could deploy it (in spite of all of the relevant aspects of system and structure that push back against it) in a manner sufficiently covert so as to not induce an immediate walk-out.So my TLDR version is this:  That reading of PBtA games is fundamentally incorrect and I can't imagine trying to operationalize it in play.  GMs don't have the authority and don't have the means to just Soft Move the game into whatever gamestate they feel is best served by their will at the moment.  Its just not the way the games are written and if they're being played that way by people, its because something has gone wrong in the reading and the holistic application of the ruleset that is akin to the whole "Skillchallenges are just an exercise in pointless dice-rolling and incomprehensible fiction" debacle that we (including AA!) worked so hard to push back against and clarify!The integrated structure of play, the authority distribution, the profound constraints and limits of power on GMs, the table facing nature of play, and the robust PCs (including the resources they can martial) make this (imo degenerate-play producing) reading of PBtA games basically a non sequitur.EDIT - I'm sorry this sounds like a rousing rebuke (because you're both my pals), but I can't disagree more stridently.  I'm just stunned...floored at the text interpretation (and trying to imagine the horror of the play it would produce!).  I'm hoping I've made a wrong turn at Albaquerque and I'm reading you both wrong here somewheres!  Ready and willing to stand corrected on a misread!</blockquote>

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