46. Be a fan of the players’ characters.

Like “play to find out,” “be a fan of the players’ characters” has become a common phrase. It’s a phrase that RPG players have wanted and needed to hear, eagerly embraced because it’s why we all play in the first place: to see awesome characters do awesome things and create awesome tales.

It is no surprise that this principle follows immediately after “respond with fuckery.” After talking about how the MC’s part of the Fiction should respond to player characters’ actions, it is only appropriate to discuss the MC’s general attitude toward PCs. Having just said that part of your job is fucking with the PCs, the text makes it explicit that fucking over the PCs is not your job.

The word “fan” here is a perfect word choice. It positions the MC as an audience member of the story unfolding (something the game text does repeatedly). When we are fans of a character in other media, we root for their success and want to see them reveal the quality of their character through trials and tribulations. We want to see them get into trouble so we can enjoy seeing them get out of trouble. We want to see them face hardship and come out the other side better for it in some way.

The language of the explanatory text of this principle drives home this notion of the MC as audience. In the second paragraph, we learn:

The worst way there is to make a character’s life more interesting is to take away the things that made the character cool to begin with. The gunlugger’s guns, but also the gunlugger’s collection of ancient photographs – what makes the character match our expectations and also what makes the characters rise above them. Don’t take those away (86)

The language here is laced with evaluative words. “More interesting,” “cool,” “expectations” – all of these position the MC as audience member, one with an opinion about and an interest in the characters. “More interesting” is in reference to making “the players’ characters’ lives not boring,” of course, but boring for whom? Boring for the characters and their players, certainly, but also boring for us, the MC. As audience members, we want their lives to be interesting to us. Same with “cool.” They are cool to us. And whose expectations are we thinking about? Our expectations. If you do not think they are cool, do not find their lives to be interesting, and do not have expectations for the characters to meet and exceed, you are not putting yourself in the position of audience and fan and you should probably pack it in and play something else.

To jump to the end:

When you highlight a character’s stats, try to choose one that’ll show off who the character is.

Find what you find interesting about their characters, and play there.

You have phenomenal power in playing the world. Through your NPCs, you can push and prod and poke the players’ characters. How do you decide where to push and prod and poke? By thinking as a fan who is watching a great narrative play out before her eyes. You “find what you find interesting” and go there, see what happens. This is the basis of stakes questions. This is the heart of MCing Apocalypse World. You know how when watching a TV show you think, I wonder what would happen if this gal had to make a choice between x and y? Now you have the ability to get an answer to that question! Think like an invested audience member, that is what this principle demands.

The other part of this text I want to focus on is the third paragraph, from which we get this gem:

The other worst way is to deny the character success when the characters fought for it and won it. Always give the characters what they work for! No, the way to make a character’s success interesting is to make it consequential. . . . Let the characters’ success make waves outward, let them topple already unstable situations. There are no status quos in Apocalypse World (86)

I have many times heard that a 10+ is often the least exciting throw in the game—you get what you want without complications. Yeah, maybe It’s exciting to roll high, but where’s the thrill of the 7-9 results? The Bakers accurately pinpoint this as a moment that an MC might be mistakenly tempted to subvert the success "for the sake of the story." But AW is designed so that the story will take care of itself if you just focus on making everything have consequences, success as well as failure. So to avoid the potential pitfall of an MC subverting a success to be “interesting,” this bit of the rules tells you how to celebrate their successes
and make them interesting at the same time: make them every bit as consequential as failures. All that work you put into creating NPCs with simple desires and straightforward relationships gets to pay off yet again when you think about how this success would impact the NPCs and their wants and opinions. Follow the internal logic of the Fiction and all the trajectories you have in place and see where the successes can impact them. Cause and effect doesn’t stop because characters get what they worked for.