106. Act Under Fire

Act Under Fire: roll+cool

When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire, roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7-9, you flinch, hesitate, or stall: the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. On a miss, be prepared for the worst (136).

It’s very easy to see this as Apocalypse World’s “do a thing” move: “Whenever a character does something that obviously demands a roll, but you don’t quite see how to deal with it, double check first whether it counts as doing something under fire. Come here first” (137). The results of the roll are generally applicable to any situation – on a strong hit, you fully succeed; on a weak hit, you are given a complication; on a miss, prepare for the worst. It is the most stripped-down structure for a move, and as such it served as the inspiration for Dungeon World’s Defy Danger move, which in turn led John Harper to make it the foundation of the only move in his World of Dungeons. Between the Bakers’ “come here first” and the popularity of Defy Danger, it’s tempting to overlook the specificity of Act Under Fire.

Defy Danger and the World of Dungeons move both require the players to figure out what stat the acting character is tapping into to solve her problem, because the move applies to all stats, so you are rolling+whatever-is-relevant. Significantly, that’s not the case with Act Under Fire. Everything about Act Under Fire is about the cool stat. In fact, while the authors might define the cool stat on page 11 (“meaning cool under fire, rational, clearthinking, calm, calculating, unfazed”), it is really this move that defines what coolness means in the game. In other words, cool as a stat only exists to give this move a mechanical variable. Without this move (and a handful of other moves tapping into the same character trait prominent in the main characters inhabiting Apocalypse World) cool wouldn’t exist as a stat. The written definition of cool orients us to the meaning, but Act Under Fire shows us what that actually looks like in the game world.

All of the language in the move itself and the passage that follows the move, is about the characters’ ability to remain calm and focused in the face of “serious pressure.” I’m struck by the oft overlooked phrase “or dig in to endure fire” because sometimes acting under fire means keeping from mis-acting under fire. The endurance referred to here is not a physical, constitutional endurance, but a mental, determined endurance. The detail of what it means to roll a 7-9 is similarly about that mental resolve. Flinching, hesitating, and stalling point to a slight break in resolve, discipline, and endurance, enough of a hiccup to reduce the strong hit to a weak one. “[Y]ou flinch, hesitate, or stall” is the narrative effect of your roll, which leads to a mechanical effect of the MC offering you “a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice.” In the paragraph following the move, the authors clarify that “[y]ou can read ‘under fire’ to mean any kind of serious pressure at all. Call for this move whenever someone does something requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance, or care.” (Side note: I have many times talked about the poetry of the prose in this text, and I love the rhythm of that list from discipline to care. Try putting those words in any other order and you can feel the sentence stutter and uncoil.)

So what is the significance that this, the most general move in the game, is focused solely on cool? It indicates that determination, that mental discipline, resolve, and endurance, are central to challenges faced in the game by the main characters. The main characters are going to have to endure and overcome a lot of hardships, but the rest of the rules of the game (especially those applying to the MC) will tend to point you to a place that the characters are having to dig deep within their own reserves to withstand danger and unpleasantness. Unlike Defy Danger, you will not use Act Under Fire to figure out if a character can leap a great distance, push a heavy boulder, or slide through a narrow opening. If you do use it to determine such things, you will need to phrase the dilemma in terms of mental resolve rather than physical toughness or dexterous ability. Leaping the distance just because you want to get to the other side isn’t really subject to a roll. Either you can do it or you can’t and the MC will tell you which. But leaping the distance as you are being chased by a gang of brutes intent on spilling blood? Now the leap is a test of your discipline and resolve. It’s a subtle shift, but an important one, revealing to us the dramatic heart of Apocalypse World in action.

Of course, there are moves that let you act under fire with other stats. A battle-hardened gunlugger can use her hard to act under fire instead of her cool. A maestro d’ with the You Call this Hot? move can act under fire with hot rather than cool. And a spooky intense savvyhead can use her weird when acting under fire. All of these substitutions change the way those players handle serious pressure; they don’t change the way the game doles out situations full of serious pressure. A battle-hardened gunlugger uses pure physical brutishness to muscle her way through the fire. A maestro d’ being chased by that gang of brutes will leap that distance by calling on her grace and hotness, rather than her internal discipline. In short, those character moves tell us about the characters and the way they confront pressure. The MC is still bringing situations packed with “serious pressure.”

In my next post, we’ll look at the nature of the “fire” and the examples the text gives us of the move in play. Before I end though, let’s all applaud the phrases “a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice.” It is probably one of the most popular phrases in the text (I know, there are so many), and deservedly so. There’s the lovely syntactic balance of adjectives and nouns, the neat inversion of a the single- and double-syllable words in the final coupling, the always-pleasant triad of options, the straightforwardness of meaning from good straightforward words – but mostly, there’s the clear communication that something unpleasant is coming. You don’t want any of these things, but like a kid terrified of and thrilled by a monster rollercoaster, you want all of them and the excitement they promise. There are dozens of possible outcomes with those options, and each one will offer an exciting turn for both the narrative and the players’ characters. What’s not to love?