62. leave yourself things to wonder about

 . . . Ask questions, but also . . . Leave yourself things to wonder about.

You’ll know it when it happens. A player will say something and you’ll be like, hey wait, there are fish swimming down there. So you’ll ask, and the player will answer, but you’ll be like …I don’t think that’s the fish I’m after. I think the fish I’m after is still down there, deeper than I thought, and bigger than I thought too.

Sometimes it’ll happen with one of your own NPCs. You’ll be talking along, and you’ll suddenly be like, hold on, this guy Scrimp is kind of a weasely fuck, but he isn’t afraid of Marie at all. How can that be?

You don’t need an explanation right now! Don’t look too deep, this is just session 1. Nod to yourself and back away, fixing the spot in your memory. (Which means to note it down on your threat map under “I wonder.”)

This is one of my favorite passages in the First Session section, and I think one of its beating hearts. The fish metaphor is incredibly evocative. The darting of fish beneath the reflective surface of the water always presents itself as a possible trick of light and mind. Did I just see that, or did I imagine it? So the MC stirs the water and studies it. It positions the MC as both observer and active participant, a fisher looking for fat and feisty drama darting beneath the characters, setting, and situations playing out. And better yet, the players themselves are unaware of the fish beneath the surface because they are involved in playing their characters; they don’t have the luxury to sit back and observe as the MC does. This is, I suspect, one of the reasons that Apocalypse World has a traditional MC. Someone is wanted to watch for fish as the active observer. Then, as the players pursue their own dramatic goals, the MC can sculpt scenes in pursuit of answering the questions they have asked themselves as audience members. The difference in goals as player and MC makes for the emergence of a richer narrative with the ability to surprise and delight everyone at the table. A powerful metaphor can cover a lot of ground and spark a lot of thought in just a few sentences, and that’s exactly what the Bakers accomplish here.

It is equally powerful to note that these same fish can be observed by looking at your own instincts when playing NPCs. The one sentence about Scrimp tells us so much about how the MC of AW is supposed to play their NPCs. We know that you are supposed to pick a body part and let it lead the NPC. We know that you are supposed to create triangular relationships. But here we learn that you can let your own NPCs surprise you. Instead of playing your NPCs as a one- or two-note characters, don’t be afraid to let them wander afield. That’s not an error. When it happens, don’t force the NPC back in line; ask yourself why you did that? What’s behind the NPC’s rogue behavior? This happens to authors all the time. Again and again in interviews you’ll hear authors say that their character just didn’t want to do what the author wanted them to do. Eventually the author has to let the character go and explore what they’re all about. In a game in which plot is emergent, we are all authors, and we have to let the characters do what they want to do when they voice an opinion. This brief paragraph says let that happen, trust it, and make a note of it to explore why it happened. How does that not sound like awesome fun? Of course it does, and it’s why it’s so cool MCing Apocalypse World.

The advice to “back away” is important too. The first session is, as defined here, a reconnaissance mission. Play, collect information, start noting questions and seeing what about these particular characters in this particular world under these particular circumstances is exciting and interesting. (The phrase “back away” is yet another evocative one. It calls up the image of one who has stumbled upon something dangerous or fragile or glorious; they don’t want to disturb the scene, but neither do they want to stop watching, so they back mindfully away.) And they give you a specific section on the first session worksheet to simply “wonder”! You are not writing down stats and figures and information about the characters—you are writing down all the things that are interesting and promise to be dramatically fruitful. You are observer and mad scientist (-slash-fisher? I’m lousing up the metaphor)! You get to throw characters together and see what each combination reveals. Get a whiff of a chemical reaction and separate them, noting your observations and questions. Make plans to push those experiments later, for as the text says, “Don’t explain everything . . .”

There are so many fun aspects to MCing AW, but this short passage gets at the heart of what is both special and exciting about MCing the game. ​