thread: 2010-04-26 : The MC, a GM
On 2010-05-04, Christian Griffen wrote:
There's some mechanical GMing in games with GM budgets like PTA, Agon and Beast Hunters (of which Vincent now has a copy with a dedication to Judd :).
To me (after running Session 1 last Sunday), AW feels like "crunchified" Otherkind dice. You get what you wanted, or you get screwed, or a mix there. The thing I'm marveling about right now is that AW ingeniously solves the potential play-before-play issue of many other recent resolution systems while still avoiding the pitfalls of old systems. The players don't need to negotiate stakes, because they know what their moves can do. And they need to play it all out to really apply the move (frex, when reading a person, holding the questions to use during the conversation). At the same time, the MC doesn't need to present the other side of the stakes because those possibilities are always known to the players (taking harm, being separated, etc.). And that also requires roleplaying to see which one actually comes to pass and how.
So instead of setting binary stakes, rolling, and then maybe skipping over the details and moving on, we end up resolving stuff in often surprising ways and with lots of roleplaying, all while everyone knows how to go after their characters' goals and what's at risk for doing that. Very smooth, and very cool.
