61. Ask Questions all the time

 . . . but you can’t know everything, so… Ask questions all the time.

Ask about the landscape, the sky, the people and their broken lives too, don’t just tell, share. Turn a player’s question over to the group: ‘I don’t know, where DO you get your food?’ But especially, anything you want to know, ask. Anything you think might be interesting later, ask. Anything a player says that sticks out, anything that seems like the tip of an iceberg, or like fish moving under water, ask. Start to cultivate an apocalyptic aesthetic in your players too (99).

The first sentence of his paragraph is a callback to the second paragraph under “Describe. Barf forth apocalyptica” on the page before. There we are urged to “talk about the landscape, the sky, the people, and their broken lives.” Using the same words in the same order is a fantastic way to connect the “asking” and the “telling” to the same act of MCing. As the MC you will make declarations and decisions about certain things and you will ask the other players and defer to them about certain things—but there is no difference between those things. It’s not that one realm is the MC’s and the other is the player’s. Which brings us to the key word of the sentence: “share.” The MC might moderate the conversation at times by asking and talking, but the whole conversation is one of sharing. The MC has already been dreaming up apocalyptica as part of their prep, so they kick things off by telling, but once that tone and feel has been offered up, it is time to “start to cultivate an apocalyptic aesthetic in your players too.” By asking and adding on and probing and distributing the creation of the shared imagined space, we all cultivate an apocalyptic aesthetic together that puts us all on the same fictional page.

So part of asking questions is about that cultivated aesthetic. The other part of asking questions has to do with the MC’s role as audience. What do you “want to know”? What “might be interesting later”? What “sticks out” or “seems like the tip of an iceberg, or like fish moving under water”? You are sussing out what is happening in this first set of scenes you construct and seeing what interests you, what you feel like prodding in the future, what bits of meat on these bones will be most tasty. Those questions and observations you make in that first session will determine where you push and poke in the upcoming sessions, and they are critical to you playing your role as MC in Apocalypse World.

So as the text says, “ask questions” . . . ​