Questions and Content Authority

I have some questions of content authority - specifically,  the power and limits of answers to the MC’s questions.

The suggested method  touched on at The Mighty Atom, has the players answer questions “within their character's experience and frame of reference.” (The Mighty Atom, Tuesday, October 26, 2010).  This makes good sense to me.

From the text, under the 1st Session rules, they are given even more content authority (e.g., Landscape, sky . . . ).  This appears more than just within character’s experience and frame of reference-- or at least it is implied?  Or, even if they do limit it too character’s experience and frame, that still has broad Content Authority implications, right?

I would enjoy hearing more recommendations on handling  content authority in AW. 
 
When could I reasonably, by rules, block a player’s suggestion?  I mean, I know how I would actually do it, just have a conversation about it.  But it would help if the rules had some structure to guide.  Perhaps I’m channeling my inner Polaris-- a “but only if,” just jumps to my mind, but given the distribution of power, I know this can lead nowhere good.

(This is not an idle fear.  I was playing a Ghost/Echo game, and I decided to do the “ask Questions like crazy” tactic, when one player, early on, offered a wacky view of the Ghost world--- that it was actual ghosts inside the planet, living on an inner earth--- I think he was a bit confused about the setting to begin with, as this wasn’t a matrixy sort of feel.  His contribution really threw everyone’s aesthetic. We rolled with it, since it was just a one shot Ghost/Echo game, but I thought:  I’d have to adjust that if I were in a long term AW game and someone answered a question in a way that just didn’t jive with my understanding of the world.)

How could he be confused about the setting of GHOST/ECHO?  Isn't the "setting" comprised of like three pictures and a list of names?  His interpretation of the Ghost World sounds reasonable to me.

It sounds like you really only face that kind of danger at the beginning of a new game where an answer can really turn the metaphysics of AW quite a bit.  But if you've already described some stuff, how much could they harm things?  I'd incorporate just about anything the players answered my questions with, but I suppose there must be limits.  And if we hit those limits, I'd just back out and explain the problem I had and see if we could work out some kind of agreement.  But that's true in pretty much any game.

If CONTROL of the world is really important to you, you can limit your questions to very narrow domains.

Yeah, he was making dinner for his kids and I started throwing questions everyone before he really had a chance to look at the game.

Most people were still in that dumbfounded shock of "really, this is it for the game rules?"

We only had 1 hour to game, so I put it in high gear-- no time to even read the rules!

Hmm, I have to say that I've gotten a lot of mileage from adopting an improv approach to this -- maybe I had something else in mind, but when the player says X, I gotta think about it for a minute and see how it's potentially awesome.  Like in the GHOST/ECHO example, I think a setting where hackers use ghosts from a literal underworld might be pretty cool. 

Let me give you an example from my online game, the first time one of the players did the brain opening move, I asked them to describe the landscape and it was very mystical, a crossroads with a raven in a tree and the moon overhead.  I was kind of taken aback because it seemed really out of place in AW, but with some thought I made it work and the character ended up negotiating with the Raven-spirit and is basically being stalked by it now and it's become a player-generated threat, which is cool. 

The fact is, the the AW mechanics allow you to throw the ball to the player, let them throw it back at you -- and when they blow their roll, you get to throw it back at them again, AT THEIR FACE.