107. Act Under Fire: Stakes in the Fire

We’re back to look more at the Act Under Fire move. I am particularly interested in the way that the “fire” is characterized. Here’s the explanatory text that follows the move itself:

You 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. I often say things like “okay, roll to act under fire, and the fire is just how badly that’s going to hurt,” “…and the fire is, can you really get that close to her without her noticing?” or “…and the fire is, if you fuck it up, they’ll be ON your ass.”

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.

On a 7–9, when it comes to the worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice, you’ll need to look at the circumstances and find something fun. It should be easy to find something; if there weren’t things to go wrong, nobody’d be rolling dice. It can include suffering harm or making another move. However, remember that a 7–9 is a hit, not a miss; whatever you offer should be fundamentally a success, not fundamentally a failure.

First, there is no rule that says you have to define what the fire is; instead, we get a recommendation: “I often say . . . .” The Bakers do not make something a rule unless it is necessary for the game to do what it is designed to do. It never hurts to name the fire, but it is not always necessary. What does naming the fire accomplish? It clarifies for all the players why this move is being triggered. If you can’t name the fire, then the fiction doesn’t have someone “requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance or care,” and they can probably just do it without triggering the move.

The move triggers when there is something unknown about the possible outcome: “how badly that’s going to hurt,” “can you really get that close without her noticing?” and can you do this without fucking up and having them “ON your ass”? By clarifying the fire, the players are identifying the question being asked that the roll will answer. Or, to put it differently, defining what the fire is sets the stakes for the roll. Really, what are stakes other than a shared clarity of the fiction? If the fiction is well-established and the situation is dramatic, then everyone at the table is already asking themselves the questions posed by naming the fire. If everyone is asking separate questions, then the fiction itself is probably muddled. Naming the fire, then, is a quick checking in rather than establishing something new, which is why it’s less of a rule than a suggested practice.

It’s important that the fiction be detailed and clear (and hence the stakes be detailed and clear) going into the roll, but it is just as important on the other side of the roll, especially for the 7 – 9 result, for that’s when you need to “look at the circumstances and find something fun.” If you’ve done it right, “it should be easy to find something; if there weren’t things to go wrong, nobody’d be rolling dice.” If you’re having a hard time finding some fun way to fuck with the situation it’s either because the fiction itself is unclear or because there’s no actual fire under which the PCs are acting. In this way, the move is self-regulating. If you don’t clarify things before the dice hit the table, you are forced to do so afterwards in order to work those dice results back into the fiction.