“Investment is partially a choice, sure, but it’s easier if you’ve chosen a premise that everybody’s willing to get behind.”

Well, J. Walton, I was pretty early out the gate on player investment through shared creation of an antagonist with My Life with Master. So I get it. And I’ve played it in a zillion permutations (Microscope and Kingdom, Primetime Adventures, Monsterhearts, Ganakagok, Chronicles of Skin, Dirty Secrets, Serial Homicide Unit, The Dreaming Crucible, etc.), but in my experience, “setup is play” (as Beakley calls it) isn’t the only functional play paradigm. “Setup is play” isn’t some definitive fix to the problems of the gamemaster created scenario paradigm. There are functional ways to play gamemaster created scenarios. They have their own different creative and emotional rewards, their own social rewards, and require a different kind of engagement and trust.