I feel like a beautifully designed PbtA move is like a little nugget of interactive poetry. And then you get moves that are just about resolving uncertainty and it seems to completely miss the point of all the little constraints and gestures baked into, say, a move like Shut Them Down or Go Aggro.

It’s probably a bad metaphor. But yeah. I don’t think PbtA style moves are especially well suited to broader resolution, like plain old skillz

This is a super interesting thing to me, because when I think of the one PbtA game I’d actually like to run (vs play) it’s Uncharted Worlds. And if you’d ask me why I’d say it’s because it turns it’s back on the whole moves-as-poetry aesthetic (nice turn of phrase, that) and just says “here’s how you resolve uncertainty”. Cool, I can work with that.

Alot of PbtA seems like it’s trying too hard to be clever. Like each new generation is trying to one up the last generation in how punchy or involved or novel their moves are.

Sometimes I think designing artsy games is the indie community’s version of lonely fun.