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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8416578" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Right. Same with investigators or occultists or explorers or nobles.Since AW indicates that the MC sets up things like groups of opposition, rival gangs, and other stuff like that in a sandbox-y type of way, I would imagine that it would be perfectly in-game for me to say "this noble is having a masquerade tomorrow night, there's been a rash of muggings on this other street, there's been reports of demons on such-and-such a street, the glow-in-the-dark fungus farms are mysteriously failing, and you all have personal issues you said you want to deal with--so what do you want to do now?"I'm having a hard time seeing this. Unless you're saying that the GM doesn't actually set up anything, including the area's NPCs, until the players decide they exist? If otherwise, then AW should just say that it's a sandbox game.OK, well that's good to know. If that's in the book, I missed it.I like options. I like knowing that I can play what I want to play. To me, having race/class limitations written on the character sheet and saying that everyone has to have a different playbook are both unnecessary out-of-setting restrictions. If race doesn't matter, then each class should be open to all races. The game is making it so it does matter, if only as a homage to Gygax who wanted D&D to be humanocentric.This is why I also hate how these games list names and physical appearances on the sheet, and in Blades there's a list of who you know, pick one, and they're all named. I am fully aware I can ignore those and make my own, but their appearance on the sheet feels wrong to me.It looks to me like the MC is railroading this: Keeler will walk by the armory and she will not only hear people in there but will automatically go inside and find out what they're doing. Now, this could very well be shorthand, because the writer didn't want to spend 4+ sentences establishing that Keeler said she wanted to walk to the armory, have the MC say she hears noises, have Keeler say she wants to go in, and have the MC describe the scene, when one sentence would do for the example. If that's the case, that's absolutely fine, no prob. But if the MC is actually expected to just tell PCs where they're going, what they're doing, and also that they know info that they couldn't possibly know, because this allows the MC to ramp up the tension, then I think they're doing it wrong. Or at least in a way that discourages me from wanting to play.I'm also a bit confused about this line, because it's making it sound like Keeler has an existence independent of her player. But I'm going to chalk this up to unclear writing. Maybe this is a "it's what my character would do" moment, but as I said, unclear.Yeah, that might be another issue as well. Not a huge fan of inter-party conflict, or TV shows where everyone is backstabbing each other.And that line there really makes me not want to play AW. The only options that require roles are both manipulative (and one of them I am not interested in doing at all), and the lack of a persuasion-type move makes everything both arbitrary and dependent on aggressive activity. If the MC decides one thing, then there's nothing the player can try to accomplish peacefully.That's another bit that's confusing. It's an RPG. Everything is fiction. Why not say "as established in a previous session"?Yeah, I read that. It makes it sound very GM vs. PC to me. "I want to hurt the PCs, but I'm not allowed to do it unless I have a good in-game reason." I'm sure that's not what's intended, but the writing is so unclear that's what's coming across.OK, so how is this different from a typical RPG?Which is weird, because all of the examples the game provides are filled with game terminology. So if the goal is to ditch real-world language, it fails.I haven't played Traveller so I can't speak to that (although I looked it up and the <a href="https://www.traveller-srd.com/core-rules/skills/" target="_blank">SRD </a>lists Carouse, Investigation, Streetwise, Social Sciences (Psychology), and Tactics, all of which could be used to read a situation). And it has a Diplomat and Persuasion skill.But I know that other games do have rules that let you read a situation. If I'm running D&D, the player can ask "what's the general mood like" or "who's the baddest mofo in the room," and I can tell them to roll Insight. Or I can tell them to roll Insight as soon as they enter, or just use passive Insight. If the player asks if there are any exits, I can have them roll Perception, use passive Per, or for that matter, simply tell them there's another exit as soon as they need to escape out of one. Or if one of them says "Is there a back door? If there is, I'm going out it," then I can either say there is one, say no, or invent a back door right there and then. Ditto for GURPS, Fate, Cypher, and other systems I've played.</blockquote>

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