Margolotte,
My reply was going to be, in essence, "But what if it makes more sense to have him just be the new guy in town?"
And then I thought about how boring it usually is, how cliched things get, when a new character is introduced to a cast of a show that prides itself on having tough, violent, angry characters - - everyone is "ha! We'll see how tough you are" and "Fresh meat, huh?"
House, MD has done good things with mid-season character introductions, but many shows do not. So yeah, once our new guy, Jackson, has gotten his character up and running, I think we'll follow your suggestions.
Provided that he (especially he, but this applies to anyone) has no particular interest in being the new guy in town, that is. I'll give both options and see what they want to do.

Secondarily, I ended up managing to get all my usual players on board this weekend, but I much appreciate the suggestions for the future, y'all! :)
Lastly, I wrote my first Love Letter today. It went over amazingly well - we got our first taste of combat, there were some nice dramatic reversals and lots of blood spatter, and the Angel, Boo, got some more screen time in hir quest to become a sort of spirit-healer (zhe brought one of the villagers back from a nasty head wound). Such a cool thing, Love Letters.

Hey gang,
2 questions for ya:

- There seem to be some Moves in the Advanced Fuckery section that relate to bringing new players into the game once it's started. Has anyone intro'd new people and have any insights or suggestions on how to do it?
- Also, I can't quite find any text on what to do if someone can't make it. I've run plenty of games before, so I can deal; I'm interested, though, in the AW solution for this problem. Polaris, f'rex, has it right there in the rulebook that you should cancel the session and play something else if some people can't make it. Again, thoughts? Suggestions?

Thanks, y'all!

Gregor, I'm going to kick off the answering by suggesting Polaris is setting-first. I think Pendragon is, too.
One of the most central parts of buy-in is:

• is the setting for this game. Vincent, I'm deliberately flailing in the hopes that you'll correct me and give your thoughts, like before. ^_^

Personally, I am still head-aching over what y'all's revelation was, but I think I can understand what "system-first" design is now - you have an idea that's mostly "so this is my insight into human relations", instead of mostly "so Huck Finn is amazing".

Ah, forgive me - I switched analogies on ya!
You said you were worried if there's enough meat on the bones for this hack. I was basically asking, "What makes you say that?"

Evan,
Good questions!
To put it simply, immersionism has been discussed previously in a few places, and my opinion on it is that it's tangential to CA - CA's must be support-able by game mechanics in order to be part of the experience of the game.

If the game mechanics can't support it, or help make it happen, then "it" is not a Creative Agenda so much as, say, a social or personal agenda.

I think immersionism is a term we could apply to "this is *how* I like to go about Creative Agendas" - the various stances, for example, are a way of describing how a single person mentally relates to the events of play.

It is entirely possible that a given game design supports a particular mindset, or player-to-character&setting relationship. A lot of Jeepform games, for example (from my admittedly ignorant perspective), seem to focus on immersion; LARPs are another example of a game community that arguably focuses on one stance in particular - that of "actor", or "my perspective in this game is only that of my character. No meta-gaming allowed!"

But of course, there will be a little meta-gaming, no matter what. Choosing or falling into Actor Stance just means we try to hold very tightly to "in-game" knowledge and perspective, as we see it.
Incidentally, I think Actor stance comes from two very different historical trends in gaming - a sense of "fairness" in early Gamist-ish design, and a perhaps physically inevitable effect/goal of LARPing (i.e. my character's body is my body, therefore it is more difficult to become privy to "out of character" information in the first place).

As for "attentionism", I think that has nothing at all to do with how the game is designed - the focus of this proposed agenda is on things that are tangential to the activity of play and the interaction with mechanics; rather, they focus primarily or even exclusively on ONLY the social level of player interaction. So, if you can't design mechanics that help you fulfill a particular social agenda, then it can't be considered a Creative Agenda.

Both of these proposed agendas are 100% valid as play priorities. But that doesn't mean they're the same kind of thing as Stepping On Up, say.

One factual nod that may help - the forerunner of Moves appeared with entirely different Color in Storming the Wizard's Tower. I must, of course, leave all other answers entirely to Vincent.