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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9200216" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Pointing at another game, that uses a fundamentally different set of rules, to try and defend what AW was doing, is basically a whataboutism, isn't it?I noticed a rule in AW I found troubling in terms of player agency, and you defended it by basically denying there was a problem. Then I reiterated, elaborating on what I percieved. If at any point I have cede control of my character to anything or anyone else, I have lost agency. I then also pointed out that the expected means to resolve this in AW, stepping out of character to negotiate if the Move should have been triggered in the first place, is an undesirable game state. You then responded by pointing at another game that, per you, has a similiar dynamic, as though that justifies what AW is doing as fine and thus, I shouldn't have a problem. But, to be thorough, i did go back and take a look at your counter example:[ATTACH=full]332421[/ATTACH]My thinking is that you're trying to emphasize that Procedure as being identical, as in you couldn't decide after the fact that a strike was a Pummel or just a Subdue. And that isn't true as far as I can tell. Nothing in that subheading or the entire section on Non-Lethal damage makes any distinction like that, and in practical terms I'd rule it more or less exactly like how 5e displays the same idea: Declare it when it matters. But then there's also the other angle of there being an identical OOC negotiation. The difference there though is that in DND, the only way agency gets denied is if the GM denies it, which not only isn't a guaranty but is also easier to deal with, as neither one of us is actually violating the rules, and the GMs perogative to make rulings is ultimately still due to them. Most people, I suspect, would have settled on a gentlemans agreement about when to declare if this was a stickler issue, and others probably wouldn't care. I certainly wouldn't, and my desire to make it explicit in my own game has more to do with emphasizing and supporting non-murdery approaches than it is with denying players the agency over their characters actions. In AW, though, to fix this issue either means extended negotiating to determine some other Move be used, or violating the rules. And thats without getting into the implications that result by having to use another Move. As related, if my character is supposed to Go Aggro, bluffing isn't the only reason I wouldn't harm the person. Having to shift to that Move also produces an agency problem, as now Im having to force my character to adhere to a specific aesthetic because the game has mechanically restricted a more free form resolution. This is what I was relating by stating this as a shortcoming of genre emulation. The specific narrative beat that Go Aggro emulates is so narrow that I have to adhere to the outcome of the prescribed beat, and don't have any wiggle room to define my own beat through the characters agency. And this is all on whats supposed to be an unambiguous success! Success at what? Not telling my own characters story, but telling the story of a trope. Im sure somewhere in AW there's some obscure rule tucked away in the natural language that could apply to fix the problem, and if there is so be it (as you'll no doubt pull it out in short time), but when I run into this kind of problem, I check out. Doesn't matter at that point if the game has a fix, because the problem just doesn't need to exist. The Move wouldn't be impacted one iota if that single sentence was just straight up deleted. But its presence speaks to the overal design and intent of the game, and naturally, Im not a fan and Im entitled to criticize it on that basis. Just as you are to jump to its defense, though I don't see the point. You're not going to convince me to like this, and my intent isn't to convince you to not like it.</blockquote>

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