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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8655888" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me, the optional difficulty rule is like adding a new weapon onto the weapon chart in D&D.I mean, if someone said "I'd play 5e D&D except it doesn't have rules for composite bows" it would seem pretty straightforward to fix that: just add it to the chart, with the same (or similar) stats to a longbow except it uses +DEX to hit but +STR to damage. It's a trivial fix.Vincent Baker's optional move for difficulty is similarly trivial. So if someone is saying "I would love to play AW except for its treatment of difficulties" that strike me as a weird complaint, because the utterly trivial fix is published in the book by the author (together with his explanation of why he thinks most people won't use it).Whereas the rules around what sorts of moves the GM makes when are fundamental to the whole game. They are at its core.It leads to the information only in the sense that the NPC tells it. Just as in D&D it is CHA that leads to a successful Intimidate check (for instance) that leads the GM to have a NPC tell a PC something they were previously hesitant to tell.I don't think you are looking at it through the lens of the rules that govern what a GM says. But those are what is doing all the work that you don't like. Consider again:A player's character meets up with Dremmer's goon, a NPC. They read the person, and learn what would get the goon to spill the beans on Dremmer - maybe they'll do it for a case of canned peaches. So the PC offers them a case - I can get you peaches, now where can I find Dremmer's dirt? - and rolls for Seduce/Manipulate (if you do it, you do it) and gets an 8. So the goon wants some assurance right now, and so the PC gives them a single can - There's downpayment on your case - and now the GM has to have the goon say something. The player hasn't offered an opportunity on a silver plate, so the GM makes a soft move. The GM decides to offer an opportunity - the goon says The dirt is in the safe in Dremmer's compound.The successful Seduce/Manipulate check doesn't establish that the NPC has something meaningful to say. But it does mean that everyone turns to the GM to see what the GM says, because everyone knows that the NPC is going to say or do something, and everyone knows that it is the GM who decides what NPCs do and say (as per the allocations of authority on p 109). And then (as per pp 116-17) the GM has to make a move and generally this will be a soft move (unless its in response to a player's failed move, or the player is handing the GM an opportunity on a silver platter).It is the rules that constrain and direct what the GM says that are doing the work here. Those are the rules that make the outcome different from what it would be, in a D&D game, if the player had succeeded on a CHA (Intimidate) check against a NPC. It has nothing to do with differences in the player-side aspects of the game, either the way PCs are built (Hot vs CHA) or the way player moves are structured (Seduce/Manipulate vs making an ability/skill check).</blockquote>

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