37. fiction

We’re heading into the MC’s principles, but I want to talk for a moment about the primacy of the Fiction in Apocalypse World. As an MC, you have to check with your principles before saying anything, because everything you contribute to the conversation needs to follow what your principles demand. And as we’ll see, the principles are all about guiding the MC to cloak their moves and their decisions in the Fiction.

Every RPG has its play in the collective Fiction. Fiction is not only the result of play in an RPG, but it is also the medium of play. So an RPG does not need to center the Fiction in order to create Fiction—it’s gonna happen no matter what.

A number of RPGs that inspired Apocalypse World have tried to incentivize players to engage with the Fiction when playing the game. Statements like “I swing” or “I make a perception check” are about metagame procedures more than the Fiction, and designers have looked for ways to make the players move beyond the perfunctory. Sorcerer, for example, allows the GM to award bonus dice to players who are clever in their use of the Fiction when describing combat or actions. Similarly, it permits GMs to punish dull play with penalty dice. Over the Edge does the same thing, as do a number of other games. In almost all cases, it’s the GM who is granted the power to decide if a player has engaged with the Fiction enough to be awarded or so little as to deserve punishment.

In Apocalypse World not engaging with the Fiction is not an option. If you don’t ground your move in the Fiction, the move doesn’t happen. Carrots and sticks are removed from the equation as is the GM as arbiter. Apocalypse World goes to great lengths to force the players to constantly be thinking in terms of the Fiction. And the MC’s principles are overwhelmingly about constantly feeding the Fiction and presenting everything they do as Fiction in order to keep the players playing in the Fiction.

Why is that important? Why do Ron Edwards and Jonathan Tweet want to incentivize that kind of play? Why do Vincent and Meguey Baker force that kind of play?

Every RPG structures the conversation it creates in a certain way, demanding that you talk about certain things during play. What kind of conversation do you want to have when you play? What do I need to roll to hit? What’s her armor class? Which chart should I roll on? Ooh, a 14! Does that get me there? That’s one kind of conversation you can have. Or you can keep the discussion grounded in the fiction and talk about what cool and daring things the characters are doing. Every move is designed to make the conversation you have engaging and reliably entertaining. Every option you pick and answer you elicit make for rich conversation.

So with Apocalypse World, players can’t make moves except through the Fiction. MC’s can’t make moves except by cloaking them in the Fiction. With these two halves of the equation, you get a self-reinforcing cycle of Fiction informing Fiction. And that cycle—and the conversation it creates—is what I think people are really responding to in embracing the system. That is a fun conversation to have.