Version 1.3.2

Hi! Starting with a potentially easy editorial issue: in the final “Playing Bladesworn” examples chapter, I noticed three sections with a lot of repetition, that seem accidentally mixed up to me. In particular, I mean pages 35-37, sections “Making it to the Ruins”, “Exploration”, and “Exploring the Ruins”. The middle one (“Exploration”) reads to me like a weird, confusing and unplanned mix between the two others - most notably, it contains many repeated sentences from the first one (“Making it to the Ruins”). Most glaringly, the whole bullet point of: “Set a clock for the wilderness’s dangers…” appears copied verbatim. And, to me at least, it seems out of place in an “Exploration” section. On the other hand, I don’t really understand what’s the difference between “Exploration” vs. “Exploring the Ruins”. Another example, seemingly hinting that this is an editorial error, is the final sentence of “Exploration”: “Let’s start a six-segment tension clock (from Starforged) for our pursuit” - exactly such a clock was already presented at the end of the previous section (“Making it to the Ruins”), while it’s not imaged in the middle section even though it’s mentioned there, as quoted. Thus, I assume this situation is some accident of editing/growing the text of the book; did you maybe mean to cut out the whole “Exploration” section before publishing? Or incorporate some parts of it into the neighboring sections?

Other than that, expanding on my initial notes on reddit, I now re-read the book with some more attention (compared to my initial half-awake skim). I really love the whole “four things” framework to approaching “Face Danger”. It feels surprisingly evocative and immersive to me vs. being distracted by the looming choice of a Move in base IS:SF. In a way, I think I’d like if one day I might maybe manage to marry the two, so as to be able to start immersed in your “Four Steps Framework”, then after completing it, maybe pick a Move from IS:SF and get its mechanical resolution. But, I digress. Just wanted to repeat, that for now, this is the part that captured me the most, and which I’m especially grateful to you for, and for writing and sharing it!

On the other hand, although they seem interesting to me, and feel like there’s “something” to them, for now I admit to being confused and unclear around the Scale-Quality-Potency elements. I mean, with the examples given, I seem to understand the aspects they’re trying to capture (overwhelmed/overwhelming size; better tools/skills; narrowly specific boost/advantage). However, what I don’t seem to understand, is how - after making the analysis - should they affect my gameplay/narration (apart from the single explicitly stated special case of increased/decreased progress ticks). Those elements seem vaguely mentioned in some (not even all, I think?) of the examples in the final chapter, but I still can’t seem to grasp how using them to dissect the scene actually influences the game. Would you maybe consider trying to expand on that aspect? Do you think it could make sense to e.g. take one (or more?) example Move resolutions, and speculatively elaborate on how each of the three dials (Scale-Quality-Potency) could narratively differ in that particular situation, and how would that then impact the gameplay/mechanics/narrative? (Ideally, in a way different than just a dry mechanical increase/decrease of ticks on a Progress clock. I assume those are still primarily intended as narrative tools; or not?)

Thank you!