I put this in blood & guts because it concerns hacking, more or less.

Here's a move I wrote to illustrate my situation:

whenever you try to write a game, roll +game designer. On 10+ choose 3, on 7-9 choose 2, on a miss your game is crap.
-your new game is not an AW hack
-your game is awesome
-your game is fun
-your game is well designed

What's going on? You might have seen my Sagas of the Icelanders hack. Thing is, before AW came along, that was its own game in-the-making, new mechanics, all that stuff. There's also the matter of a gritty surreal fantasy game I've been toying with for a while. I had a bunch of concepts and some loose mechanical bits. Now, all I can think of is how to make it an AW hack. There are other examples.

When I think of how to tackle a design problem, the moves are staring me in the face, poking my eye with a long knife. I cannot think of mechanics outside moves. It's all I can muster. Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get my point.

Now, there are many pros to this:
-in a way, that means that more people will read and play my game if it's a hack of a popular game (probably)
-AW is just awesome, so what could be wrong with that
-moves are elegant and intuitive, they're something I've been looking for in games for a long time, why not use them

The cons, well, I don't know. For one I fear I will get oversaturated, also, I feel robbed of my originality. Vincent, you robbed me! Then there's the fact that a lot of other people are making hacks. Do we really need another one? Well, yes and no. Last but not least, am I really doing my games a favour by turning them into AW hacks? Again, yes and no.

But yeah, just wanted to get this off my chest. Screw it, AW is a brilliant game. Make more hacks people, Bulwark, Knife & Candle and Dragon Killer are making me happy in my pants. Dead Weight, too.

Ok, the rules tell us "make your move, but misdirect". As the MCs we're not supposed to reveal the crunchy, mechanical bits to the players but instead always make sure the fiction rules during the game. But once outside the game, then what?

I know there are a lot of people here who've played the game with (fairly intimate) knowledge of the rules. Did that change the "wrapping up in the fiction" illusion for you? Did you, during the game, say to yourself "oooh, he's Separating Us now"? I mean, I'm slightly worried that once the players know about the principles, agenda and moves, it will spoil the fiction for them somehow. Or should we all know what page we're on? I'm all about talking to my players and explaining to them how the game works, but in this case I'm wary. In fact, during the first or second session I told them about "having the NPCs in my crosshairs" and I think that affected the game. Possibly maybe.

How terribly unfounded are my fears?