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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8415674" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my post just upthread, and just below this one, I've tried to spell out - with reference to the moves and principles - how the allocation of authority to establish fiction works in AW.The same thing can be done to spell out what [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] says here,So part of PC gen - including but not limited to the Hx phase - establishes background. So when the GM engages in framing early on, honesty demands that the framing follow from that established background. There's no "Four strangers - a cleric, a fighter, a thief and a wizard - meet in an inn."And the principles include asking provocative questions and building on the answers and also being a fan of the players' characters. So it is the players, via their PCs and their answers to provocative questions, who are expected to provide the trajectory for play. But the GM will be putting their bloody fingerprints all over everything they touch (p 113). That's the pressure that chaochou refers to.The same notions can be seen by drilling down even more finely. Consider seduce/manipulate, that I also posted about upthread. A player who succeeds on their throw for this move, and commits as required by the degree of success, can require the GM to have a NPC give the player's PC what they want. There's no GM move that allows the GM to tell a player what their PC chooses to do.Or consider seize by force: a player who succeeds on this move can have their PC take definite hold of something. And this "binds" the GM in the sense that the GM is a fan of the players' characters and is expected to respond with intermittent rewards. But the players are under no requirement to be fans of the NPCs, to pause and ask what they do, nor to provide them with intermittent rewards! So the combination of principles and player-side moves establishes an asymmetry in this respect, which Baker notes towards the end of the "Moves snowball" play example (p 156):A subtle thing just happened. I’ve been saying what they do and then asking Marie’s player what Marie does, but here she’s seized initiative from me. It isn’t mechanically significant, we’ll still both just keep making our moves in turn. It’s just worth noticing.What I'm trying to show in this post, and the previous one, is that the difference from GM-driven play, and from some typical D&D play, isn't just a matter of ethos. Of course ethos is part of it (that's what an agenda and principles are, at their core) but the ethos is spelled out in detail, and it interacts with the technical rules for action resolution in particular ways that combine to yield the overall play experience.To even think about replicating this in D&D play, you'd first have to ask how would I implement seduce/manipulate, or seize by force (beyond just inflicting hp of damage)? I don't think that's a trivial question. As far as I know the only version of D&D to come close to doing this is 4e, via skill challenges; and skill challenges are scene-based resolution and so quite different from AW's if you do it, you do it.</blockquote>

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