It Was a Mutual Decision is a role-playing game published by Adept Press in 2006. Description It Was a Mutual Decision is a story game involving a romantic breakup. Publication history Shannon Appelcline comments that Ron Edwards moved more towards story games after publishing Sorcerer: "The first of these games was It Was a Mutual Decision (2006). It spun out of the 'Ronnies' contest that Edward kicked off in August 2005. For the contest, Edwards gave out four words and challenged designers to create a '24 Hour RPG' using exactly two of them. The words for the contest were 'suburb,' 'hatred,' 'girlfriend,' and 'rat.'" Appelcline stated that "Edwards decided to write his own game on the topic, choosing the words 'girlfriend' and 'rat' for his own use. This made him think of were-rats and romantic breakup." Appelcline relates that Edwards has labeled some of these games as "Story Now" to emphasize their narrative nature, and that "It Was a Mutual Decision was the first game to include a 'Story Now' label. The term highlights the same idea that Edwards was trying to teach back in Trollbabe: that you could play a game by staying in the 'now' rather than preparing things beforehand or reviewing them afterward. Reception
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