Things in RPGs that you used to like but don’t anymore

[kyoryu]

Where it "fails" is at providing authored-fiction-style stories with clean story beats, closely-plotted events, beginnings, climaxes, and ends. But I find that to be a feature, not a bug. If I want a clean narrative, I've got tons of fiction to read/watch. I want things that could spiral out of anyone's control at any minute. Where me, as DM, having to improv and react to the players' actions and them having to react to my actions is the story.

Strangely, this is exactly why I play Fate/PbtA games.

I don't want players thinking "but the story demands...." or "this is better for the narrative...". I want them thinking like characters. Let me weave it (or not) into a coherent narrative--that's a chunk of my fun in trying to fit these disparate aspects into a retrospective "story"[1].

I actively tell players in my Fate/PbtA games not to do things "to make a better story". Story comes between the players, their goals, and the opposition to them. And, yes, things spiral in interesting ways.

And for me, world building is much of the fun. Having people interact with the world in character stance, not in author stance. Where the world reacts and responds to what they do through their characters, not what they do acting as players. I've found that having a living world that reacts to the players and in which the players' actions (filtered through the characters) have lasting effects (including for other groups) provides all of the benefits...without the stance switching and heavy workload on anyone's part.

While there is definitely a group that plays both games in heavily- or almost exclusively-author stance mode, it's not necessary. There's some mandatory author stance stuff in Fate, but it can be pretty minimized. Most decisions in PbtA games can be framed as player-facing.

I find PbtA to be opinionated and constraining, because it has its model of what is "interesting" and "how to play TTRPGs right". And that model doesn't fit anything but a narrow slice of possibilities. None of which I'm personally interested in. So for me, PbtA is the model of how to do it wrong, how to create preachy, uninteresting, constraining games. But that's a matter of pure taste, not some objective statement.

It's interesting, because maybe, in this case, that's a good thing? AW is a tool designed to do a fairly narrow set of things, and do them pretty well. It's up front about that. And if that's not the thing you want to do, cool. I'd rather have a game be honest about what it does and let me decide up front if I want to play it or not.

As far as narrow vs. broadly scoped? I find that most games are more narrowly scoped than people think... it's just when you're used to the walls being in particular places, you don't go there and don't notice them. But that's me.

[1] I don't plan in advance. But I do look at what's happened and look for pieces I can weave into future sessions so that in retrospect it appears like a linear story despite having been anything but that. Self-laying railroad tracks--you look backward and you see the tracks you've laid behind you. But you can go anywhere.

Pretty similar to what I do. I've had players amazed that my games weren't prepped or pre-written.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I do think it's interesting that we seem to have reasonably similar goals, and you dislike games for not achieving them, while I like the same games for facilitating them greatly. But, as I've said, there's also that very vocal "hyper-narrative" crowd that asserts everything must be cooperative GM, full author stance, blah blah blah stuff even that's very weakly supported by the texts of the games themselves.