10. Character improvement

Today we are looking at the antepenultimate section of “The Basics” chapter in the 2nd Edition of Apocalypse World: “Character Improvement” (page 13)

A player marks experience—fills in one of the little experience bubbles on her character sheet—under three circumstances in play. First is when she rolls one of her two highlighted stats. Second is when her Hx with someone goes to +4 or to -3. Third is when a move tells her to.

When a player marks her fifth experience bubble, she improves her character. Toward the back of each playbook are the rules for that character’s improvement: she can choose new moves, sometimes get a gang or holding or whatever, improve her stats, things like that. When she improves, she erases all her little experience bubbles and starts over at 0.

Once a character’s improved 5 times, as MC you’ll open new options for her. See the ungiven future section of the improvement chapter for details, page 262.

Before getting to the “three circumstances in play” by which experience is gained, let me first say that I love the phrase “mark experience.” We are of course literally marking the playbook in the appropriate bubble, but mark has that secondary meaning of “to take careful note of,” as in “mark my words.” Yes, you are putting a mark on a piece of paper, but there is a subtle command to observe and appreciate that experience gained.

Now, the two reliable ways to gain experience in AW are to 1) take an action using a highlighted stat, and 2) to turn over your Hx with someone by going to +4 or -3. In the first case, you are interacting with your fellow players, and in the second case, your character is interacting with her fellow characters. Apocalypse World is explicitly about the community formed by the PCs and the shared experience of the players, and both of these parts of the reward system reinforce that. Highlighting stats (which the Bakers connect to keys in Clinton Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday and to fan mail in Matt Wilson’s Primetime Adventures (see Ludography, page 290)) is about each of us saying about the other, “I want to see your character engage in these kinds of activities.” I think your character is awesome, and I want to see her manipulate and seduce others, etc. And Hx (which owes a debt to the trust mechanic in Timothy Kleinart’s The Mountain Witch) is a measure of how well our characters know each other and share past experiences. We are rewarded for getting our characters into each other’s business and we are encouraged to play our characters with the audience of the other players in mind. Even the third circumstance for experience gain - moves telling us to mark experience - are often the result of our characters interacting with each other, such as being manipulated by another PC and getting the reward for doing what they want.

We will look later at what “improvement” means when we look at the playbooks (since, as we've noted before, everything the player needs to play is located in those playbooks.)

Experience is as much of a pacing mechanism in AW as anything else, I think. There are not a lot of ways the change your character’s Hx with another character, but it does happen at least once per session, with the end of session move. Oftener, you will mark experience for rolling on one of your highlighted stats. So the reward system here encourages play behavior and narrative elements (Hx) while allowing the characters to progress in power and narrative abilities (new moves) at a reasonable rate.

The final paragraph has two interesting elements. The first is the wonderful word “ungiven.” To me, it means on the one hand that no one gave you this future, that this is a future you fought for and one. On the other hand, the second meaning (because there is always a second meaning) is that this future is the opposite of being a given, or a sure thing. This future is not a given. In the harsh landscape of want and need, most lives are short and brutal without a future at all.

The second element is the odd phrasing, “as MC you’ll open new options for her.” This one I don’t get at all. The ungiven future is a player’s right regardless of your role as the MC, so why is the MC given any agency in this sentence? You don’t open the options at all, do you? Am I missing some element of play or rules here that make the MC responsible for those additional paths being available to the other players?