135. Inflicting Harm On and Healing Another Player

135. Inflicting Harm On and Healing Another Player

When you inflict harm on another player’s character, the other character gets +1Hx with you (on their sheet) for every segment of harm you inflict. If this brings them to Hx+4, they reset to Hx+1 as usual, and therefore mark experience.

When you heal another player’s character’s harm, you get +1Hx with them (on your sheet) for every segment of harm you heal. If this brings you to Hx+4, you reset to Hx+1 as usual, and therefore mark experience.

You can remember these two moves like this: when you hurt someone, they see you more clearly: now they know what you’ll do to them. When you heal someone, you see them more clearly: there’s nobody so uniquely vulnerable and exposed as an injured person in your care (159)

There is a sub-theme in Apocalypse World about how we act when others are vulnerable to us. We encounter it first and primarily in the unique special move that every character has, their sex move. In triggering the special move each character must make themselves vulnerable to another who is in turn made vulnerable to them, which is just how intimacy works. For most characters, sex adjusts the Hx between the characters to varying degrees as each character is either willing to open themselves to others or attentive to their lover when the lover opens themselves up to the character. (I discuss special moves in post no. 22, if you’re interested.)

These harm and healing moves are directly related to the special moves, not because the game equates sex and violence – good lord, it does anything but that. They’re related because they are all concerned with how your character treats the vulnerabilities of others. If you take advantage of that vulnerability (or force vulnerability when it isn’t offered), you learn nothing about the person you violate, but they learn about you, and they learn in direct proportion to the harm you do them. If however, you use that vulnerability to care for and heal that person, you learn about them, and in direct proportion to the amount of healing you do.

In light of these moves, you can see an intimate sexual encounter as an act of healing, even if it doesn’t touch the characters’ harm clocks. If the angel has an Hx=0 with a lover before the special move triggers, then the Angel understands that lover as well as if they healed that person 3 marks on their harm clock. When the gunlugger gets +1 to their Hx with their lover, they are as good as healed that one point in their very soul. It may only be a suggested equivalence, but it’s a beautiful one.