Mark Delsing well that’s an interesting question. I’ll talk about that from the MC side, ok?

My first big hiccup was reconciling what felt like a very constraining set of rules. And they are, sorta kinda. But you probably know what I’m talking about, yeah? Looking at the MC moves as too small, too narrow, too limiting. Because I’d come to rely on an infinite decision space (which it never was, taking into account genre suitability, table mood, established canon, etc.). At some point I moved the validation step out of my head and trusted that darned near anything I might come up with in my typical fashion would probably fit in the MC moves list if you squinted. At some point, I was able to use it as an inspirational pick-list rather than “you may only do one of these things.” Honestly I don’t know what changed.

The second hiccup was getting used to the badminton game where we lightly bat “the conversation” back and forth, I mostly just wait for misses, then escalate. Understanding the setup-first-then-hit-hard (soft then hard) pace on the MC side was a big one. Like, it’s totally not okay in AW to just make someone take harm. It has to be established. That’s a very easy procedure to remember! But like…it’s different, you know? It’s making something very trad visible: you see a group of orcs in the valley/we draw our weapons and advance/roll initiative/okay I go first, the orcs roll and miss/I roll to hit and I do 5 damage. The future badness was definitely announced, and there’s some randomness in when and how the PCs take damage, but the steps are all there just the same.

In the big picture I do that with everything now, not just combatty things. But I kind of do it with … I dunno, different awareness than I used to. More purposeful?

The third big hiccup for me was listening for when common moves get triggered. This is maybe the weirdest, non-trad habit I’ve developed. Rather than players setting out when and how they want to overcome challenges or complete tasks, they just talk and describe until a move button gets pushed. Obviously smart players will play toward those triggers, or play away from the moves they’re terrible at. It’s not new-new just different.

I have a whole long thing I could probably write. I mostly don’t want to because I can already hear the arguments and well-actually and self-proclaimed experts on each of the three points I just put above. And writing in such a way as to sidestep the most obvious arguments is um. Exhausting. Especially when I’m doing this for free.