Well, there are two things that make random tables awesome: a finite number of concrete possibilities, and more than two possible results. It's true that those things fit together differently in an AW move than they would in a random table, but they're still present.

Obviously there are a ton of differences, but I think they're tapping into some of the same magic.

yeah. Chris, I didn't explain myself in the best way, but I don't mean that the move lists are, like, random tables. I just mean that they do some of the same things that random tables do, to powerful effect. You roll, you go down a list to see what happens (and in AW, you pick).

So I'm probably not the only one who's thought this, but I haven't seen discussion about it, so here it is. Some months back Ken Hite made a post on his blog about setting creation. Within it, he discusses how powerful random tables are:

how do you get [players] to pick up the setting and wield it like a battleaxe? (or a warhammer.) Gary Gygax gave us the answer. And then he immediately hid it from us. The answer is the Random Encounter Table, or Wandering Monster Table, or Random Dungeon Generator, and all those other wondrous time-killers in the back of the DMG. By stocking those tables, paying some attention to the probabilities, and adding modifiers here and there, you create an immediate, accessible method for GMs to understand your setting in the most visceral way possible: by co-creating it with you. They only have to read the setting bits they've generated, and they have a story and an adventure. This is an almost insanely powerful technology for setting design and presentation, and we've unaccountably left it back in its rudimentary Bronze Age form, like the Antikythera Mechanism.

Why? Because I (and I think virtually every other designer of my generation) fixated instead on Gary's other answer, the exact wrong answer to the problem: Greyhawk. (Or Glorantha.) Don't co-create, hyper-create! Don't leave randomness around in your wilderness hexes -- define the heck out of every hex to start with! Put in weather patterns, and historical chronologies, and elf pantheons!

I see AW's moves (the ones with lists, I mean) as a powerful harnessing of random table technology. Ken Hite talks about the power of random tables toward setting creation, and of course setting creation is happening all the time in AW, but really the random-tables-within-moves in AW are all about using that power toward situation creation, which I suppose is just another evolution of In A Wicked Age's oracles.

So, yep, that's it. Just some food for thought that hopefully helps people ponder AW in a fruitful way.

c'mon people, remember how you printed out, folded, and cut the XXXXtreme STREET luge books*? It's just like that. Lord knows I made my share of those things.

*okay, ;)

It's over on the development blog, here.

But how about roll+barter spent? Does it become a mechanic then?

yeah, the whole "it's not a mechanic" thing makes it way confusing for me. I'd rather he phrased it, "barter isn't and shouldn't be the only way you make them buy." But then I don't expect Vincent to write the game solely for me.

Okay Vincent, so you say "Players are going to want and expect barter to be a game mechanic, but it's not".

Now bear with me for a moment. I would certainly expect that, if I have 2-barter, but, say, hire the protective companionship of a battlebabe for a week (1-barter by the book), I "spend" 1-barter, whatever that looks like in the fiction, and now only have 1-barter left. That seems really obvious, but you never say that that's how it works, so I'm not sure. Additionally, my interpretation of how barter works also seems mechanical, and you say barter isn't a mechanic. I've thought about this much too much.

Do I have it right?

Awesome, man. Good luck. It looks like I'll be starting up a game of AW in this very same heat-riddled town this very same month. Let us know how it goes.