Hm. That is completely different than what I expected was meant. So that’s cool.

I absolutely agree that the “play to chase the things you flagged as important” and “play to chase the things someone else flagged as important” produce wildly different tablefeels, especially if you’re used to one over the other. In fact, even though I love PbtA, one of the things that bugs me is I can see my super-creative and enthusastic friends who really wanted to just seduce and manipulate all session long struggling with ways to force a Weird roll because someone marked it.

To contrast, you’re absolutely right that chasing those flags will tell you cool shit about your character that you might not have discovered otherwise. It makes the shared fiction more of a thing, instead of these tight-focused, personally-driven characters. Which is not to say that you can’t play PbtA that way! If you have a really clear vision of your AW character, you don’t actually have to chase XP; in fact, sometimes it’s better not to, because while new moves are fun and all, failure cascades in AW result in characters who are seriously damaged, physically and emotionally. I’ve spent the last 7 or 8 weeks between 6:00 and 10:00 in Harm, and every time I blow a roll, it snowballs into more trouble. If I had played Monsoon the way I had originally envisioned her, I bet she wouldn’t have so many advances, but neither would she be trying to stay one step ahead of the Reaper every session.

What I was sorta expecting was an analysis about how the moves in PbtA can subsume in-fiction action if you “do it wrong”, ie, allow moves to be triggered without the appropriate fictional actions first. I’m really happy it didn’t go that way, because I think that’s well-trodden ground.

I think you’re right that BitD’s advancement system has a limited number of outputs, but I also think that’s intentional: your options don’t necessarily broaden, because you’re still running a character who is part of a gang of Thieves or Smugglers or whatever. Instead, as the game develops, your stakes change/escalate, because running jobs as a Tier 0 gang is a different thing than running them as a Tier 3 gang. Also, your fictional positioning changes, both because your rank increases and because as you do jobs, your relationship to the other factions changes (which is also impacted by rank). Pulling a jewel heist from the Red Sashes for the Lampblacks at Tier 0, you’re not expected to accomplish much. Pulling a jewel heist from City Hall at the behest of the Cult of Ecstasy is going to feel different, even if it’s mechanically similar. It’s like an old-school game in that way, in that challenge and competence are in a locked arm’s race, Red Queen-style.

Clearly, I did not think you went on too long!