The whole game could be "To get something you want when someone else doesn't want you to get it, roll +stat, the stat depends on how you try to get it".

The game's not like that because the specificity of the particular moves, the consequences of rolling 7-9 and making one of those choices, the way the different moves shape what is possible in the world, all push the game towards a particular kind of fictional content, which is more compelling than if it didn't.

When Vincent talks about "designing the fiction of the game" that's what he means.

So, Orion, what do you want the fiction of your hack to look like?

I don't find myself looking at the moves very much either. When I do, it tends to be when someone's blown a roll, and I get to steeple my fingers, chuckle, and then survey my list for something appropriately terrible.

Most of the time that's just thinking about what the immediately invloved NPCs want, and giving them one of those things, like, they want to drag Must off behind the petrol tanker and murder him, so "One of them's got you by the ankles and is dragging you off, face down through the dust, you're kicking and yelling, but no one hears." (Seperate them)

Sometimes it's thinking about what an offsceen NPC wants, and giving them that. The Black King wants to subjugate everything he sees, so... (but that would be giving things away to my players, and they have to wait until next session).

Bret, that's awesome.

I've been trying to write up the weather as a threat. Maybe an affliction? I was kind of toying with this as a custom move:

When you act out violence and anger, roll +weird. On a 10+, advance the "Black Clouds" countown clock, and choose two. 7-9, choose 1.
 - A peal of thunder
 - Lightnight strikes something
 - Oily rain begins to fall

The countdown clock would be about the black clouds advancing from the south, consuming the land and turning it into a waste of mud and oil.

This is a custom move that I just made up for the creepy marshes on the edge of town. It's kind of inspired by echo bazaar. I'm kinda excited to see it in play, but I'd be interested in ideas for making it even better.

When you catch one of the strange creatures that lives in the marsh, roll +weird. On a 10+, it will tell you secrets of someone you knew who recently died. On a 7-9, it will babble random secrets from dead people, which may or may not be useful. On a miss, it's just an frogeel, and not very chatty.

Mike, good call on it being limiting.

How is this: Choose a move from any playbook. When you're in the machine you can perform this move, but you use +weird to do so.

If this move was the start of a class, the sex move would be: "When you let someone use your machine, it counts as sex"

Oh, also "Drive flippin' fast" might be wrong. It should probably be a two-step thing, like ""Move under its own power" and then "If it can move under its own power, it's really flippin' fast" and "If it can move under its own power, it can fly"

Here are some examples:

Move under its own power, fly, holds 10-15 people, needs helium or hydrogen gas, is finicky and difficult, "Zephyr": It's an airship, with a huge manifold and a hull with veiw-pots and an open deck.

Move under its own power, armour +2, weapon with harm2, close, loud, auto, area, runs on masses of electricity, finicky, "Monster": It's power armour with a built-in weapons system.

Vincent, those are some good insights. Here's what I'm thinking. This bit:

"It gives you deep insights into your character that turn out, on reflection, to be deep insights into yourself, your friends, and the world."

Is what I'm talking about.

I mean, all this is basically a fancy way of saying that the characters still don't exist. Which is a simple point and should be obvious and yet it seems to be so difficult.

Here's a thing then: Does the "affirmed rightness of your vision" suffer if you don't have explicit authority over a character's feelings and such?

What different feelings do these rules give you?

The Fear Giver
When you see the Fear Giver for the first time, roll +cool

10+ you're fine
7-9, choose one of the following:
You cower and whimper
You drop what you're carrying
Take -1 forward
On a miss, all three, and you're acting under fire to approach the Fear Giver

Or

The Fear Giver
When you see the Fear Giver for the first time, roll +cool

10+ You're fine
7-9 You're afraid
On a miss, You're afraid and take -1 forward.

Or

The Fear Eater
When you feel afraid, and the Fear Eater can see you, roll +hard

10+ You're fine
7-9 You take 1 harm (ap)
On a miss, you take 3 harm (ap)

I dunno. What would they do to the game?

That sounds sensible, which means I probably disagree. Let me tease out some ideas.

So, you're approaching things the way Shreyas approaches things. But you're not, like, thinking as Shreyas would think, right? You're thinking "what should I do to give people the impression of Shreyas?" You're "performing" Shreyas. And everyone's Shreyas is different, right? Some people will perform him one way, and some will perform him slightly differently. None of you actually know what Shreyas is thinking when you do that though right?

Now, I'd argue that this is true for Shreyas as well. He's thinking "what can I do to give people the impression of Shreyas?" and then he performs himself. "Selves" are performed, and they tend to be performed differently around differnet people and in different context. We turn all those different aspects of what someone does into a construct, an imagined personality. But that's kind of an aside to my point. Performing someone doesn't give you access to their thoughts.

But maybe that's just semantics and pedantry.

Here's another way to look at it.

Imagine a scene in a game. You're playing Roark. I'm playing Marie, Steve is playing Vonk. Marie used to be Roark's lady-friend, but that was a while ago, and now she's sweet on Vonk. In this scene, Marie is all coming on to Vonk, and Vonk is pretty happy about it. Roark is keeping his feelings to himself. We don't see him do anything that would give his feelings away.

Now, after the session is over, we get to wondering what Roark thought during that scene. You could be thinking "Oh man, Roark was super steamed!" But at this stage, that's just a plan, right? You're planning to introduce to the fiction that Roark was steamed, and you'll do that by having him do something to demonstrate that. But until you do that, it's not in the fiction.

Now, what I don't know about is what happens if during our post-game chat you say "Oh man, Roark was super steamed". As I see it, most games, most times, that goes straight into the fiction. That's how it was, no questions asked. But that's an element of the system, I think. It doesn't have to be that way. I could be like "Says you!" and then if it never comes up again, we'll never know.

On the other hand:

That "trick of the brain" thing? I totally get what you mean. I mean, I think that's pretty much how I play a lot of the time. Sometimes it's easier to find that connection to the character than others (and it would be interesting to think about why that is), but yeah, that intuitive sense of what's right for the character in the moment of play? I understand that.

I guess what I'm saying is that it might be interesting to think of that not as an intuitive connection to the character (because the character doesn't exist), but as an intuitive connection to the other players and to the themes and conventions of play. You "know" what to say next because you're intimately in tune with what you want to express with the character, what the other players will accept and appreciate, and what will fit into the scope, themes, and system of the game you're playing.

I guess I maybe don't believe in immersion or something.

Here's the thing I'm thinking: When a game text says "Think about what the character would do and have them do that" or "Your job is to realistically play your character" or whatever other phrase it uses (in Apocalypse World it's "your job is to play your characters as though they were real people, in whatever circumstances they find themselves — cool, competent, dangerous people, but real.") - when a game text says that, it's a handy metaphor, a shorthand. What it really means is something like:

"think about what we already know about what this character has done, and then say something that you think is compelling and cool for you and the other players, taking into account the themes of the game, rules for how things get established in the fiction, reward mechanics, and not stepping on too many people's toes unless it's really worth it." (actually I drew a diagram of this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1164498/A%20thing.jpg)

Characters don't exist. They don't have a "self", and you can't refer to them for advice on what they'd do. They only have thoughts and feelings in as much as those are established in the fiction, and few systems have ways of establishing thoughts and feelings. When you think you're "immersing" in the game, and are "connected to your character", I think you're actually connected to the other players, and the system, and are intuitively making decisions based on what you all at the table are interested in - not anything about what the character "wants".