96. Moves Snowball: Part VI – What do you do?

”Okay. I do direct-brain whisper projection on Isle.”

”Cool, what do you do?”

”Uh - we don’t have to interact, so I’m walking past under their feet where she can see me, and I whisper into her brain without looking up.” She rolls +weird and hits a 10+.

”What’s your whisper?”

”Follow me,” she says

”Yeah,” I say. “She inches her butt forward to drop down behind you, but then tips her head like she’s thinking of something – “

Don’t do it,” Marie’s player says.

”She forces your hand,” I say. “She takes 1-harm, right? Loud-optional, right? So, loud or not?”

”Isle, god damn it. Not loud.”

”Sweet”(127-128).

Now that Marie has assessed the situation, she has to decide how she’s going to get to Isle to “visit grief” upon her. She wants to lead Isle away from Plover and Mill in order to be able to deal with her alone. Cool. So she uses her brainer move. But of course the move is triggered by the fiction, so the MC asks, “Cool, what do you do?”

Note in Marie’s player’s response, the fiction doesn’t have to be elaborate, merely clear. In this case, the fiction needs to establish where Marie is in the scene and that Isle can see her (as dictated by the move). No one needs to describe the dirt caked on Isle’s boots or the heat radiating off the garage. If the players wanted to embellish the fictional details, the game certainly allows it, but nothing in the game requires it. In fact, when Marie makes her whisper, there is no elaboration of what that looks or sounds like. Perhaps this isn’t her first time making the move so that detail has already been established, but perhaps not; perhaps this is the first time. In that case, we can assume that there is nothing to be seen from the outside. No one watching Marie would have any idea she was whisper projecting.

I draw attention to this only because a lot of players love the rich fiction that comes out of playing Apocalypse World or other games powered by the Apocalypse. It is worth noting that while the game grounds play within the fiction, it doesn’t actually make a lot of demands on the richness of that fiction. Enough fiction needs to exist and be concrete enough for moves to trigger and for MCs to be able to make their moves, but how rich you get in your play is entirely up to you and beyond the push of the game’s mechanics.

Note also that the game is not particular about the order in which the fictional details are created. Technically you can’t direct-brain whisper to someone without whispering something in particular, some action you are trying to force your target to take. What was whispered wasn’t specified before the roll, but it’s no big deal. If she had, great; since she didn’t, it needs to be clarified now, so the MC asks, “What’s your whisper?” If Marie’s player had rolled a miss, the MC would still need to know the whisper in order to make her move as hard as she liked.

So the MC is asking questions here like she did earlier (“You do? It’s charged?”). That first set of questions (see post no. 93) was about negotiating assent surrounding the triggering of Marie’s read the situation move. This set of questions is about clarifying the fiction for play to move forward. See all that damn work that questions are doing during play? (I’m currently a little obsessed with the purpose of questions between players in roleplaying games, so expect more analysis of questions in the next couple of posts.)

Finally, let’s take a moment to appreciate that the entire scene of play that follows is born from a strong hit, a 10+. As I’ve observed before, strong hits don’t get much love in the Apocalypse World community, often overlooked by the heart-filled eyes that players have for the 7-9 result. The text tells us that the way to make a strong hit meaningful is to make it “consequential” (pg 86), and that’s what the Bakers demonstrate in this extended example. Isle doesn’t just resist, take the damage, and Marie tries to find some other way to visit grief upon her. No, Marie’s move permanently changes the situation, and the MC has the NPCs actively respond to that changed situation. That’s MCing like a boss.