Very interesting. I think the distinction you draw between games that have a) an interesting editorial viewpoint about its genre/subtopic as opposed to being b) a game that doesn’t, and which (say) just uses -6/7-9/10+moves as a way of rendering skills.

I think it’s unhelpful to refer to the first category as PbtA and the latter as not; that seems both pejorative and, worse, confusing (in that it leads to confusing sentences like, ‘Half of these PbtA games aren’t PbtA.’)

I laughed when I read, “And yet folks playing those games probably aren’t having in-session arguments about .. [various moves’] fictional limitations”. That’s a really important point – we can get caught up in tasty game design and overlook whether that part of the game is functional in practice.

Games exist both as statements about design, and as tools to produce actual play – and a game could suck at one but be good at the other.

Somehow I have this idea of game designs like cheese. Man, I’m full on all this cheese I’ve eaten already, I want a tasty bit of cheese to finish off with. That? No, that’s mere cheese. It’s like it doesn’t understand what it really means to be an interesting cheese. Bring me something tasty!