101. Putting the A in PBTA: Part II - Make it interesting

In my last post, I looked at what I believe is the heart of being powered by the Apocalypse. I named the first two parts – being inspired by Apocalypse World or one of its descendants, and using rules that make the fiction the very foundation of play – and ended by mentioning the third: constructing play so that what the players say is likely to be interesting. That’s where we’re picking up today. And since we’re in the middle of the Moves Snowball chapter anyway, I thought we’d use the next excerpt to make our discussion concrete.

But before we get to the passage, let’s look at an excerpt from one of Vincent’s posts on his “anyway” blog. This one is from his 9/24/2008 entry entitled “That Reminds Me” (http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/389):

The real cause and effect in a roleplaying game isn’t in the fictional game world, it’s at the table, in what the players and GM say and do.

If you want awesome stuff to happen in your game, you don’t need rules to model the characters doing awesome things, you need rules to provoke the players to say awesome things. That’s the real cause and effect at work: things happen because someone says they do. If you want cool things to happen, get someone to say something cool.

[Then in comment 1:] If your rules model a character’s doing cool things, and in so doing they get the players to say cool things, that’s great. I have nothing against modeling the cool things characters do as such.

Just, if your rules model a character’s doing cool things, but the player using them still says dull things, that’s not so great.

Awesome. Characters doing cool things does not inherently mean the conversation will be interesting. Players saying cool things, does (or at least it does as much as any system or rules set can).

How does a designer achieve that? We can see Vincent’s answer to that question in another “anyway” post. This time, we’re looking at “Adequacy, Cause and Effect,” posted on 6/9/2009 (http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/455):

Here’s a subsystem from a game I just made up (similarities not especially coincidental):

When your character attacks, describe the attack and roll d20. If you roll less than your opponent’s ADV (Armor Defense Value), your character hits! The GM describes the hit, and you roll your character’s weapon’s damage die for the damage.

We all know what happens with these rules. “Describe the attack” and “describe the hit” notwithstanding:
I attack.
You miss.
I attack.
You hit!
7 damage! I attack.
You miss.
I attack.
ad interminable

Now, what we want, recall, is for somebody to say something interesting instead. There are two ways to make that happen. I’ve been focusing on this one:

Make rules that give the details of the attack and the hit or miss causal power.

For example:

GM, on a hit, choose one of these, based on the details of the attacker’s attack and the defender’s position:
- The defender stumbles and falls.
- The defender backs desperately away.
- The defender’s guts spill out.
- The defender’s foot is half-severed.
- The defender’s skull is cracked.
- The attacker’s weapon wedges in the defender’s ribs.
- The attacker slips and loses her footing.
- The attacker has to draw up or she’ll overreach.

See how the GM will just naturally ask the player “how are you attacking?” and take the player’s answer into account?

I attack. 6 damage.
You hit. Wait, what was your attack?
Uh, I thrust at his face with my knife.
Cool. [checking the list] You cut open his cheek but your momentum’s significant. Do you draw up or overreach?

We can see that making players say interesting things and making “self-enforcing” rules (to use Vincent’s phrase quoted in my last post) that make the fiction the basis of play are intimately bound up with each other. The first requirement for a statement to be interesting is for it to be specific. It’s not enough for a game’s rules to order the players to describe things. If the game’s structure allows players to mechanically move forward without detailing the fiction, a large portion of players will do that at some point in play. And while it may be exciting later in the retelling that you battled and bested the Great Vampire Master, the conversation during play itself - I attack, you miss, etc. - is dull as dishwater.

Setting up game play so that the conversation is vibrant and interesting is at the philosophical and design heart of Apocalypse World, the binary star of making the fiction the basis of play rather than an appendix to play. Both elements spin in each other’s gravity to power the specific play we get out of the game.

You are already thinking of all the things the rules of Apocalypse World do to safeguard an exciting conversation by directing players to say cool things. All those move triggers require you to say something likely to be cool to activate them. All those pick lists and 7-9 results make it more likely than not that cool things will be said in resolving a move.

And what about the MC moves? They are designed to give the MC something cool to say every time she speaks. The MC scans the list of moves, picks one that looks interesting, and then misdirects by coming up with fictional details that make it seem like the fiction made the decisions instead of the MC. In fact, I think you are more likely to have interesting things happen in your game if you don’t fool yourself by your own misdirection. As I discussed back in post no. 51, the text on page 89 orients you to consider the move itself as separate from the fiction, that you are choosing a move and working it into the fiction, not creating fiction and then retroactively thinking about what kind of move it would be. Consulting that list is likely to launch your own game in unexpected directions, and as long as you can work it into your fiction, it will always work.

So let’s see how the MC moves give the players interesting things to say. Picking up from where we left off in our discussion of the Moves Snowball chapter, here’s our passage:

“So, Marie: at home, pacing, armed, locked in, yeah? They arrive suddenly at your door with a solid kick, your whole door rattles. You hear Pellet’s voice: ‘she’s expecting us I guess.’” I’m announcing future badness.

“I go to the peep hole,” she says. “There are three of them?”

“Yep,” I say. “Pellet on your left, Plover and Church Head are doing something on your right, Plover’s back’s to you - and you hear a coughcough-rrrrar sound and Plover’s at the door with a chainsaw. What do you do?” I’m putting her in a spot.

“I read the situation. What’s my best escape route?” She rolls+sharp and – shit - misses. “Oh no,” she says.

I can make as hard and direct a move as I like. The brutes’ threat move I like for this is make a coordinated attack with a coherent objective, so here it comes.

“You’re looking out your (barred, 4th-story) window as though it were an escape route,” I say, “and they don’t chop your door all the way down, just through the top hinge, and then they lean on it to make a 6-inch space.The door’s creaking and snapping at the bottom hinge. And they put a grenade through like this - ” I hold up my fist for the grenade and slap it with my other hand, like whacking a croquet ball.

“I dive for - ”

Sorry, I’m still making my hard move. This is all misdirection.

“Nope. They cooked it off and it goes off practically at your feet. Let’s see … 4 - harm area messy, a grenade. You have armor?”

“1 - armor.”

“Oh yes, your armored corset. Good! You take 3 - harm.” She marks it on her character sheet. “Make the harm move. Roll+3.”

She hits the roll with a 9. I get to choose from the move’s 7 – 9 list, and I decide that she loses her footing.

“For a minute you can’t tell what’s wrong, and you have this sensation, it seems absurd now but I guess it makes sense, that you hit the ceiling. Maybe you tripped on something and fell, and hit it that way? Then gradually you get your senses back, and that noise you thought was your skull cracking is actually your door splitting and splintering down, and that noise you thought was your blood is their chainsaw. What do you do?”

Announcing future badness dramatically sets the scene. Putting someone in a spot escalates that drama by literally bringing the future badness to the PC’s door. The coordinated attack with a coherent objective brings the baddies through the door and into the character’s room. Because the character tried to read the situation, the MC is prompted to give out the interesting details of Marie’s window being barred and 4 floors up, which is of course misdirection as to why Marie has no easy escape. A successful roll for reading the situation would have revealed an escape route to Marie of course.

My favorite part is when Marie’s player tries to jump into the conversation while the MC takes a breath. The MC interrupts her and has to explain within the fiction why she doesn’t have time to dive for whatever it is she’s diving for. The real reason is of course that the MC is making her “hard move,” but since the character wants to dive for cover, the MC misdirects by creating fictional reasons why she can’t. “They cooked it off.” Boom. (Literally and figuratively.)

Then of course, there’s the harm move that demands the MC think beyond simply marking the character’s harm clock. Like the example list of attack results in the blog post above, the harm move guides the players to thinking about interesting fictional results of suffering harm. Translating “loses her footing” into the fiction creates this cool disorientated experience of Marie losing track of which way’s up, only to find herself on her back with these three toughs rushing her from the door. That’s incredibly exciting shit! And while some excellent players can probably make that kind of excitement happen with any game system while they are at the top of their game, Apocalypse World is designed to make these moment happen regularly with players of all skill levels, no matter what their state of mind.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say that a game that is powered by the Apocalypse attempts to make it likely that the players say interesting things. Whether it uses pick lists, or MC moves, or any or none of the tools used by Apocalypse World, it gives the players some “self-enforcing” infrastructure to support a conversation full of interesting statements.