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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9841020" data-attributes="member: 42582">Don't worry about that! I don't think you are. And I always find your posts pretty interesting, although I don't know if always grasp them right away - sometimes it takes a little bit of back-and-forth.OK, I see what you mean here and I agree that the book doesn't give advice on this sort of thing, and the agenda/principles barely touch on it (Make Apocalypse World seem real, Say what prep and honesty demand and Make the players' characters' lives not boring will only take you so far with this sort of thing).In Baker's and the game's favour: there's a limit to how much advice you can give to people on how to construct authentic, creative fiction.In the other direction: you've pointed to an example (Annotated Sorcerer) that does better. Burning Wheel doesn't give abstract advice, but it does have an example that perhaps goes a little bit further than AW does too: in the chapter on Relationships, the rulebook says that if there's a Vampyr haunting town, and if one of the PCs has, as a relationship, his wife, then of course it's her that the Vampyr goes after. Maybe the closest that the AW rules get to that is the example of using Keeler's gang members to attack Marie?So I'm in two minds: I think you're asking for the (near-)impossible, but you're probably right that it's possible to do better.I'm more sympathetic here to the AW book: I think it's a sophisticated treatment of the issue/problem.This one is interesting, and I think came up in one of your earliest posts I remember reading, and the resulting conversation, where you launched one of your attacks on No Myth!I think that AW could be clearer in its advice on (i) what prep looks like, (ii) how to use that prep, and (iii) how to combine, and/or prioritise, saying what prep demands and saying what honesty demands. I think that increased clarity could take at least two forms (and there are probably ways of being clearer that I've not thought of!): (a) better examples, in the text, of being constrained by and using prep (in Moves Snowball, there's reference to Isle's family as a threat, but no example of using a threat's countdown clock, for instance); and (b) reorganisation of the text, to combine some of the stuff that is said in the Threats/Fronts chapter into the discussion of agenda and principles.The book does say not to create any fronts/threats until after the first session. But I think it could be even clearer about why that is - I've found your comparison to In A Wicked Age helpful in understanding this, and think the book could do a better job.I think a lot of people (including me, at least from time to time!) read play to find out what happens less specifically than all the above suggests, and a bit more generically - along the lines of play to find out what the fate of these characters is, without pre-planned arcs or particular aspirations. Something quite a bit closer to, say, Burning Wheel.That's still such a departure from a lot of typical RPG play that I can see why people think it's exciting and even revolutionary to advocate it, without picking up on the more specific aspects of AW's design and the corresponding rules text.(I've just EDITed this in): I think this is what I mean when I say there can't really be instructions for creativity. At best there can probably be ideas, prompts, guidelines, etc.It also goes to playing to find out - as a GM, when you make this decision about the hardholder, is it veering into the sort of No Myth-based "railroading* that you've worried about in other posts? I think the answer has to be no, as long as the GM makes the decision authentically, and in such a way that it doesn't "box in" or "head off" all the other trajectories that the players have established for their PCs.A lot of us can probably agree on this!</blockquote>

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