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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8410208" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't agree with this.Here are three examples of play/resolution from the rulebook (pp 198, 142, 152-154):Marie draws Roark a bath and joins him in it, with dandelion wine. She wants him to bring Joe’s Girl to her. She misses the roll [a seduce/manipulate throw], so I get to make as hard a move as I like, and I choose to separate them. “As soon as Joe’s Girl comes up in conversation, he sees what you’re up to,” I say. “He shoves you out of his way and stomps out of your rooms. He takes his shotgun with him but doesn’t even bother to get dressed. He’s muttering the whole way down the hall, like ‘f****n Marie, shoulda known, f***n trusted her, f**n Joe’s Girl…’” Maybe I just choose to announce off-screen badness: “Marie, when you see Isle that morning her face is a mess. Somebody cut her cheek open with a heated knife. She won’t say who.” Marie the brainer goes looking for Isle, to visit grief upon her, and finds her eating canned peaches on the roof of the car shed with her brother Mill and her lover Plover (all NPCs). . . . “Okay. I do direct-brain whisper projection [a telepathic version of the Go Aggro move] on Isle.” “Cool, what do you do?” “Uh — we don’t have to interact, so I’m walking past under their feet where she can see me, and I whisper into her brain without looking up.” She rolls+weird and hits a 10+. “What’s your whisper?” “Follow me,” she says. “Yeah,” I say. “She inches her butt forward to drop down behind you, but then tips her head like she’s thinking of something—” “Don’t do it,” Marie’s player says. “She forces your hand,” I say. “She takes 1-harm, right? Loud optional, right? So, loud or not?” “Isle, god damn it. Not loud.” “Sweet. Plover thinks she’s just leaning her head on his shoulder, but she’s bleeding out her ears and eventually he’ll notice his shirt sticking to his shoulder from her blood. Do you stick around?” I’m telling possible consequences and asking. To me, this isn't a picture of people who, deep down, are very bad. It's a picture of people who, deep down, crave intimacy but struggle to find it because of the world they find themselves in.This is why the PCs have their special (sex) moves - at least that's what it looks like to me. Probably nothing brings that home harder than the Driver's special:If you and another character have sex, roll+cool. On a 10+, it’s cool, no big deal. On a 7–9, give them +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet, but give yourself -1 to your Hx with them on yours. On a miss, you gotta go: take -1 ongoing, until you prove that it’s not like they own you or nothing.I mean, to me it seems like that could come straight from a Hank Williams or Leadbelly song!EDIT to add a further thought:A key vehicle in AW for the GM to express their thoughts is the world's psychic maelstrom. How this is handled, and what sorts of images and information it provides, can drive home the nature of the world (natural and social) and ways in which it might be fundamentally hostile or fundamentally a home for the protagonists.</blockquote>

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