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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9508248" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Aesthetically, Id peg the issue on what Moves are called and themed as and how that relates to the outcomes they generate. To my understanding thats always been a contentious issue within the PBTA communities, with many games being made or broken on how they do them, but naturally I think the issue exists in the progenitor as well. To illustrate how that could be done differently, I'd point to the example I gave of my own game. But, to use some already commercially available games, the two games I actually liked out of this sphere were Ironsworn (and the rest of Shawns games, to be clear), and Fellowship. A lot of the appeal for me of these two was of course that what they were about was essentially highly appealing to me, and that helped to get into them. As well, both of the games have toys in them, in that I can play without having to do a narrative. Ironsworn et al was designed to be sandboxy, and the way Fellowship is set up just lends itself so well to it as well. And I really appreciated how Fellowship made a toy out of worldbuilding; if I was ever going to decide to make my games setting generic, I'd follow in its footsteps. Nowadays, I can get into any given PBTA game regardless of my feelings about how they were designed, because I'm better positioned to consent to how they work. But what made these two games work for me when I just hated everything else I tried was that at no poing do they restrict your agency or otherwise dictate your actions. You have consequences, lots and lots of them, but what you ultimately do is up to you, and how the mechanical systems that reinforce this are themed prevents any notion that I'm not in control, or at the very least, that I can't take control with further actions. That would be from Baker, and to a lesser extent Ron Edwards before him. Thats where the whole idea of treating your characters like a stolen car comes from; you're not supposed to care that your agency is being limited because the game doesn't trust you to be willing to engage in an uncomfortable situation of your own accord.</blockquote>

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