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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8026300" data-attributes="member: 7016699">Thanks for the detailed reply. I trust you didn't take it as even an implied attack. I'm well aware there's something in my brain that reacts badly to this type of game, and I think I may be getting to understanding what it is. Dunno if I'm looking to change it, exactly; understanding it might be good enough.Seems as though my understanding was pretty close, but I may not have given you enough detail before, at least based on the relative amounts of text. ;-) I'll try to do better.Yeah. I'm with you so far. It's pretty straightforward.And here's where I come to understand (or at least where I come to be able to put into words) my problem with/thinking of games written from or for this POV. There is (or at least can be) a severance of cause and effect, action and result, that feels to me more like a weakening of agency than a strengthening of it. In the case of Isle's brother, that's just filling in details as needed, nothing special.Yes, it's meta, and yes, it's the point; I'm not convinced it's actually good meta, though. By misdirecting so thoroughly and so often, by breaking the lines of cause and effect, action and result, you lessen the ability of the character to actually control or choose how they affect the story, which reduces their agency. If attempting A to cause B results in theta, how is a character to understand the world and maybe change it?Indeed. I was figuring it was an ability that was actually useful, and that it worked the way the player in the example expected it to. Apparently I was wrong pretty much all around. Maybe there's a reason in the fiction for Isle to take the harm--that's half of enough to kill her--rather than following, but Marie's player seems kinda blindsided by it so I'm not sure it's established; and if it's not established it kinda looks like the GM being a dick.Also, this:is basically the GM making a decision because he thinks it'll make for a better moment, which isn't all that radically different from making a decision because it'll make a better story--the time scale is the only difference I see.Actually, it all makes sense, per my reading of AW, and I think that's connected to what bothers me. AW doesn't seem to be a game about stories so much as it is about moments, and it's always looking for the better moment. It's playing in the now (is that from the rules or this discussion?) which makes for lots of fun around the table but doesn't seem as though it's doing more than scratching the various surfaces around it. I think severing cause/effect and action/result works well for making moments, and poorly for making actual coherent narratives happening in actual coherent worlds featuring actual coherent characters.I think the difference in focus--moments over stories--is at the root of my distaste for AW and BitD. I have nothing against great moments, but I think they're made better if they're actually rooted in the fiction, if they have context, if there's more of a direct connection between cause and effect or action and result. Neither stories nor moments need to be driven by GM Force, but neither is automatically free of it either (and as is often made clear, GM Force isn't automatically Bad GMing--that depends on more than just the GM).</blockquote>

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