I find that Vincent’s realization that games don’t need a resolution system but a consequence system to be the single most important bit of PbtA tech. So while I fail to pull it off a lot, I do really try to run a mental checklist before reeling off a MC move to try and determine if failure is the most interesting consequence. Often it’s not.

Frex the other night in my Night Witches game, one of the NPCs who has been giving one of the PCs a hard time about her affair with another PC (and this itself sprang out of not taking “there are no consequences for acting up” by one of those PCs earlier) got into another confrontation with the PC. Being a PC, she resorted to violence 🙂 so I called for Tempt Fate, and it came up 7-9. But the interesting thing there wasn’t for the PC to fail to beat up her antagonist, or get beat up herself–the interesting thing, I decided, was that she went way too far and almost put the NPC in the hospital. So on a miss…she succeeded even better, but that doesn’t matter, because the consequences will be worse than just getting into a scuffle. And that’s going to fall out later on as well.

I am going to think long and hard about ways to turn moves onto other PCs…that feels very, very right.

Paul, you’re right on about how the SotI game fell out at Dreamation–however, may I draw your attention to the final scene in the game. While I think I got a bit gamey there in a somewhat annoying way (sorry!), that was mostly because…while having Asgerd the Shield Maid screw up her attack and fall to her death would have been, to quote Frank Miller, a good death, it just felt…not good enough; so we were able to work out a non-failure mode for my miss on Tempt Fate that was so much, much more worse and also more satisfying, I think 🙂