Oh, and while I may or may not have your attention, one of my players has brought up an interesting question: given that Wolves of the Maelstrom are painted as essentially being out to kill or severely harm the Child-Thing, wouldn't a PC answering "Yeah, I'm a wolf of the maelstrom" essentially reduce the Child-Thing and the Wolf's interactions to deadly animosity and outright flight?

Or is there something we're missing?

Yeah, there's absolutely nothing saying the wolves are out to kill or harm.

The Child-Thing's book just says "the maelstrom's wolves are hunting you". Maybe the PC wolf is misunderstood. Maybe they're hunting the Child-Thing to protect it from something worse. Maybe they have to make common cause against a more immediate threat.

Maybe we just need to create the "Barf forth Apocalyptica" oracle for In a Wicked Age.

Oh, I like this idea.

A hard-2 statline seems vulnerable in a way that other stats at -2 doesn't. Weird-2, fine, the maelstrom freaks out out, maybe you go briefly catatonic if things get non-consensually spooky. Sharp-2, you just do not get what makes people tick.

But hard-2 means if things get violent you're going to get hurt.

Seduce or Manipulate and similar moves are carefully structured to avoid taking away PC agency. However, the Waterbearer move Peacemaker doesn't address the PC-as-subject case. Can a Waterbearer conspire with another character to bring a PC, unarmed and alone, to an ambush?

Firstly, I've never been sure how Highlighting was really supposed to work. For example, maybe the Battlebabe's low Hard is something that interests me - she's not actually that tough, just cool. But if she's taken the right move, she'll never roll Hard unless there's a custom move in play that lets her - so am I being a dick by highlighting the stat that interests me but she can't choose to focus on? That seems worse in 2nd ed, since there are more chances to simply overwrite one stat with another - the Battlebabe can roll Cool for all Hard moves on the sheets, the Gunlugger can do the reverse, etc.

Highlighting a stat that someone *never* uses because of substitution is, yeah, usually a dick move; it's good form to ask the subject if there are stats they don't use. In 1e, it's not *totally* uncool to tell an Ice Cold Battlebabe to highlight hard; it means you want to see them try (and maybe fail) to Seize by Force. There might also be custom moves in play that aren't subject to stat substitutions; if the MC expects those moves to be relevant in a session, highlighting accordingly is okay.

Secondly, doesn't that mean that there's a double incentive to take the stat-swapping moves? It not only lets you use a much better stat, but it means that if the good stat is highlighted, you'll get a lot more xp out of it. And if it is a dick move to highlight someone's swapped-out stat, that also means they are more likely to have the good one highlighted - there are less options for the other players to pick from.

Yeah, all true. 

And thirdly, now that manipulating a PC can strip highlights off them if they don't go along... that seems like a weird incentive to me. Firstly, towards the end of the session it becomes less meaningful since there'll be less chances to roll left. Secondly, if you refuse to be manipulated twice, there's no longer any penalty for refusing since you're out of highlights.

I haven't seen how it plays out yet, but I really like the highlight-removal stick on Seduce/Manipulate. It's symmetrical with the XP-awarding carrot now, and much more clear in application than the "acting under fire" penalty of 1e. You're correct that the "weight" of it changes over the duration of a session.

If a PC is refusing manipulation-with-stick repeatedly, well, they're clearly a stubborn individual. Seems like a person who's stubbornly saying "no" repeatedly ought to find it easier and easier, while learning less and less. ;)

But meanwhile, the harder question is, why does the game push weird like it does? The ways the game gives you to increase your weird are completely out of balance with the ways it gives you to increase the other stats. How come it's that way?

Huh. I mean, it is and it isn't completely out of balance; there are more routes to high-weird than the other stats, but it's not difficult to max out any one you care to by the 6th improvement, is it? Some you'd have to plan ahead and start with +1...

"When life is untenable" doesn't specify, but should it be max weird+3?

Super jazzed about this! Did anyone else notice that in manipulating a PC, the mean option got a lot meaner?

Oh, interesting! Meaner, and much more symmetric with the carrot. It's a good change; it was sometimes uncertain where/how to apply the "acting under fire" with the old rule.

Right now the best thinking on RPGs is happening in the OSR and in the PbtA design movement. You might not recognize it as RPG theory, though. It doesn't look like the Big Model at all. Few essays, little wrangling, no glossaries. Mostly design and play, play and design.

Any instance of play is seen by only a tiny fraction of the community; any instance of design maybe a larger fraction. Is there value in having a common glossary to refer to, which includes summaries of the discoveries which came from those plays and designs?