@nightpool @lizardsquid sure, absolutely! games that don't fit for me can still be cool games
the problem i have is that the core pbta resolution mechanic doesn't actually resolve anything? regardless of which of the three possible results (success, success-at-a-cost, failure) arise from the die roll, the actual in-game result is determined arbitrarily and unilaterally by the game master and is not only permitted but encouraged to differ from the nominal result of the die roll
at least, that's the case in apoc world itself - i think derivatives generally are better about giving examples of play that successfully align the die result and the gm's decision? not sure
of course with a good game master, none of that's gonna be a problem, but every bad rule can be "solved" by having a sufficiently good gm run it 
@00dani @nightpool@cybre.space I'm not sure I quite understand. The way I interpret the rules is "the actual in game result is determined arbitrarily by the GM, *but* within the confines of what the roll got".
which.... is exactly the same as every other game I've played where the GM narrates the outcome of a dice roll.
FATE feels equally arbitrary to me, for example.
@lizardsquid @nightpool thing is, there are examples of play in the original apocalypse world rules where the player rolls "success" and the gm gives them failure ("you successfully read the sitch and discovered that you failed!")
as well as examples where the player rolls "success-at-a-cost" and the cost is literally "you failed" ("you successfully snuck into the enemy camp, at the cost that you were discovered by a sentry!")
naturally that's a terrible way to run the game and nobody would do that, but it is what the game itself tells you to do for whatever reason
@00dani I can't find that first example, but that second one was trying to be "you can still sneak into the *camp*, but you have to kill this kid to do it".
from experience, though: it is very easy to turn a "success with a catch" into "a less-crappy failure"
@lizardsquid oops, yeah, i was rlly vague abt the first example it was like, "there are now psychic bodyguards coming and so you have to take a hostage instead of whatever you were doing before"? something like that
and yeah that second example is just. it's failure. if you're trying to sneak undetected into the enemy camp, and someone detects you, you failed to sneak undetected into the enemy camp 
@00dani I think "getting detected but immediately killing the person who detects you before they can sound an alarm" still counts as success in the task of "infiltrating into the compound without alerting everyone"
If this was a video game, yeah, that would break your "ghost the level" achievement, but the character's still achieving the goal.
@00dani oh yeah, in play I encountered several situations where I came up with a "success with a cost" that the player thought was a failure, and that meant we had to negotiate what they were actually trying to do in the first place.
And while that happenned more frequently than it did in other games (mostly because other games don't have partial successes), my AW players were much more willling to point out when I made a mistake than other people I've played with.
@00dani something I like about Burning Wheel is that whenever a roll is made, the GM explicitly has to tell the player what the consequence of failing is BEFORE the player rolls anything, giving the player a chance to change their mind.
@lizardsquid that sounds excellent, i think i've gotta check out burning wheel 
@00dani I believe it's the most "crunchy" game in my collection, so do be warned of that
@lizardsquid it pretty much depends on how you define your goals and margin of success - if you were indeed trying to sneak in undetected, then being detected is definitionally a failure, but if you were just trying not to raise the alarm, then killing a sentry to stop them raising the alarm could be a success-at-a-cost
if the game had you explicitly define What You Want To Do and What Constitutes A Failure up-front then it'd be a lot more fair in my eyes - say, if a player got to declare the meaning of the three possible die results before rolling