Ok, y'all in the #TTRPG space. Where did you get the notion that "fiction first" means to ignore mechanics or that the "fiction" overrides mechanics? Because that's never been my understanding, and everything I've seen in the places where this notion originated contradicts that.

...Critical Role?

to me, “fiction first” means you cannot invoke the mechanics without having a proper trigger or position in the narrative, and the mechanics primarily create more narrative, but importantly, the mechanics are there to drive the narrative in specific ways, and ignoring them does the game a disservice

Think I've figured out where it comes from and it predates PbtA: "Drama, in which the GM (or rarely, the player) resolves the outcome by saying what happens ("You skewer him!" says the GM, without rolling or consulting numbers of any kind)." (System Does Matter)

I am aware from bitter experience that storygames are in fact incredibly mechanistic because when I first tried running My Life w/ Master I mistook "storygame" for "storytelling game" and that was probably the worst ever session I've run as a GM. (Because of my misunderstanding, not game quality).

I think this one boils down to: a) despite our little circle on Bluesky most RPGers aren't actually part of theory discussions and are unaware of them b) the in group use of "fiction first" is not what most people would intuit if they come across the term. (See also storygame, trad etc.)

Ngl I feel like alot of common terms have been warped from their original intents and are in a way unrecognized or highly misconstrued. Half the time I feel like my understanding of what fail forward means is different than what others take it to be as an example.

I'm a little late to the party, but I saw someone critique pbta by saying they preferred "fiction first" to "mechanics first", and I just thought time is a flat circle

i inferred it from context when it got used, usually as a synonym for rules-lite, narrative driven, roleplay focused, etc; often with an implication (or declaration) that mechanics are optional oracles and the ideal play state is 100% without rules you're the first to tell me otherwise 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think it's from reading so much system agnostic content. Understanding what players interact with independent of the specifics of mechanics definitely changed the way I write.

I mean, from the very first wave of games that called themselves that? Right from the beginning, there were (arguably even more) people who interpreted it in that loose/colloquial fashion rather than the "correct" formal PbtA definition.