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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9201319" data-attributes="member: 7040941">I use improv game as shorthand for the underlying mechanics that are shared between roleplaying and improv theater. Ie, as a game pattern. And given AW et al's focus on RPGs being a Conversation, well, that's what Improv Theater is, so while the word "improv" comes with a lot of baggage that evokes feelings of wannabe comedians trying too hard to be wacky and zany, it isn't being used in the same sense of describing a specific and complex activity, and is instead being used to describe a simpler, less specific and more universal activity. Its the same thing. It may well just be that you're getting hung up on the baggage of a certain word, meta in this instance. We can after all clarify what we intend to mean and agree to stick to those definitions. If I for example want to utilize the word anarchy to make for an expedient and less formal talk on anarchism, we shouldn't be worrying about the implication of the word anarchy as being walking into a deli and urinating on the cheese. We just have to be sure we're establishing that and I'm actually trying to be better about recognizing when what words I'm inclined might not convey the same definition. Meta in this sense refers to speaking about a game concern outside of the reality of the gameworld. Clarifying player intent is a meta concern, and one Id prefer if the game didn't produce an excessive amount of. Meta in this sense does not, nor have to, refer to meta as in the derogatory "metagaming", where out of game knowledge is leveraged for an unfair advantage within the in-game. Ie, you introduce your Player knowledge that Trolls are weak to fire to win a battle, despite your character Frildo never having left the Bubblegum Forest until a week ago and never seeing a troll before until this moment. In the specific example of clarifying player intent, this isn't the same thing as metagaming as its within the bounds of fairness in the game, but both are still meta in the sense that they're rooted outside the gameworld itself. That produces an itchy aesthetic concern, though. Reactions aren't intuitively something you, the person who made an Action, rolls for. Someone else does, because intuitively unless you're the one reacting you shouldn't be doing anything.I think thats pretty relatable to another interpretation of these games where the GM/MV is the only one interacting with dice or Moves. If playing that way feels better its probably because they have a strong adverse reaction to controlling more than just their character, which results from control of other characters being wrapped up in the Actions they take. It isn't, but Go Aggro is just one move in a greater spread of Playbooks and general moves. All of them collectively evoke a genre, and individual examples can prove that by being specifically and notably present in other examples of the Genre. In post-apocalyptic stories, people being on edge constantly and at each others throats is a consistent theme (in the writing sense) that plays into the overall messages of these stories of succumbing to our lesser instincts in the absence of the social contracts that normally bind us. Go Aggro as an individual trope exists in a lot of different genres, but its inclusion and specific design in AW is explicitly meant to convey how post-apocalypic fiction handles it. Just to poke some fun, but you could say this quote in a discussion about Improv Theater and it wouldn't be out of place. The issue though with roleplay, thats different from improv theater, is that ideally, at least for some of us, we want to accurately portray realistic consequences to our actions. Its not easy to do that when resolving certain actions comes with a lot of riders that aren't realistically there. Real people don't work like a Move. Narratives do. And interestingly, Narrative improv is a thing (and funnily enough, is about genre emulation) and there's quite a few methodologies for it, most of which all remind me pretty heavily of what AW does. Only strict difference is Narrative improv in a theater context doesn't have any means of forcing specific outcomes from interaction to interaction, other than foreknowledge of where the overall narrative is meant to end up in.Which, I suppose, is what AW does. Fascinating stuff.</blockquote>

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