Dan Maruschak: That’s a good point! I think there’s a very meaningful distinction to be drawn here…

“PbtA finally gives us a language to talk about game design” means that PbtA is supposed to be a starting-point. It’s definitely one of the first RPGs (and by that, I mean that it’s the first RPG I know of to do this, but I could be wrong about it being the first RPG ever to do this, so I’m hedging) to lay bare the workings of player-mechanics interaction, according to one view. It begins with the model of “an RPG is an asymmetric conversation where intent leads to consequence, which leads to intent which leads to consequence” and then starts dissecting that and making it explicit.

I suspect a lot of people accept that model implicitly, because it does a good job of laying out how traditional RPGs work. But just because it’s a language to talk about game design doesn’t mean that it’s the language, naturally.

(Aside: I’m definitely suspecting that PbtA has gotten a lot of people into game design who wouldn’t have normally done so.)

Which spurs the thought in me: what other approaches to player-mechanics interaction are there, and what does a game look like that lays those rules bare and makes them explicit? For instance, what makes Swords Without Master different? (My gut tells me it’s using an entirely distinct internal model of player-mechanics interaction.)