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(2 edits) (+4)

I think that's absolutely a big concern - and one I think anyone who's had experience in a structured lit class has probably felt at some point. It's a pitfall to be avoided when writing this sort of thing, and something to actively educate against the use of. In my mind, and hopefully in my writing, the goal is to enable people to better embrace their ability to express themselves or creatively explore their ideas and unique stories through making people actively aware of how the sausage is made, rather than enforce specific and strict cookie-cutter plots. Blades is a really great game that does a lot of great narrative and media aware design/tools while encouraging GMs and players to have fun with and mess with those rules rather than stifling them.

I definitely have had bad art teachers who didn't know how to weave these two concepts (That of personal self expression/freedom and the education of the 'rules' of the artform), but I feel like I'm a better storyteller and writer for having learned the rules and media conventions in the first place, after all, its hard to break, bend or make new rules if you're not super aware of how they work in the first place.

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oh, yeah, i definitely get that impulse as well. even so, it's always clashed with the second impulse which like...a practical example of this is that i was raised Hindu (atheist Hindu but like, culturally Hindu) and i really don't know anything about Christianity? and i've to some degree actively resisted learning because i think my work will be stronger for operating completely without reference to Christian symbolism and symbology! and sure, i don't recognize that symbology as easily in the media i consume, but it's nice to have a personal and thematic aesthetic that exists entirely orthogonally to that throughline in most Western media. part of what's often frustrated me about PbtA games is that because the moves themselves are codified tropes, it makes it really tough to push the limits of the genre that a given game captures in a satisfying way, so i'm interesting in not laying that out in my work and seeing where it takes people. i think playtesting will probably have a lot to teach me about whether that's effective, but i'm very interested to try it out and see how far i can get on a minimum of that kind of information.

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That's a really interesting viewpoint and - regardless of where your playtesting leads you - I'm really excited to see how that is reflected in your work. Thank you for sharing!