108. Act Under Fire: Examples

I have talked a lot about the examples in Apocalypse World throughout these posts because they are unique and thoughtful in what they demonstrate. Every time I plan on not talking about an example, I find something about it that is too cool to pass up.

The examples from Act Under Fire do everything we have come to expect from examples in the book. Namely, they exemplify not only how to MC the game and how the rules work, but how the conversation looks in action. The coolest element here is the decision to show what “a mistake and correction” look like in play. I can’t think of another RPG that does this, but it is an inspired part of the text. If an RPG rule book should communicate not only the rules of the game, but give the players the tools they need to have the conversation in which play exists, then showing that mistakes will be made and easily corrected is a real gift to the players.

Here’s the passage:

Audrey the driver’s blundered into Dremmer’s territory and gone to earth. She’s lying up against a wall amid the debris with a plastic tarp over her, trying to look like not-a-person-at-all, while a 2-thug patrol of Dremmer’s gang passes by. If they spot her they’ll drag her to Dremmer and she wants that zero at all. She hits the roll with a 9, so I get to offer her a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. “Yeah,” I say. “So you’re holding still and you can’t really keep them in your sight. They, um, they spot you, but you don’t realize it.” I think about this for a second. It doesn’t seem quite right, and Audrey’s player is looking at me like I might be cheating. “Actually wait wait. You hit the roll, you didn’t miss it.” “I was gonna say,” Audrey’s player says. “So no,” I say. “Instead, they haven’t spotted you, but they’re getting closer and closer. They’ll be on top of you in just a minute but if you do something right this second you’ll have the drop on them. What do you do?”

I really like that description of things going sour – the feeling that something’s not quite right, the unhappy-not-in-a-good-way look from the player, the realization of the error, and the player’s “I was gonna say.” But once the problem is identified, the fiction’s wound is healed with two words: “no, instead.” And that’s all it takes to correct the mistake, rewrite the fiction, and build the momentum back up. By the time the MC gets to “What do you do?” no one at the table cares about the moment before.

So two things are accomplished in this one example. First, it takes an earlier general warning (“remember that a 7 – 9 is a hit, not a miss; whatever you offer should be fundamentally a success, not fundamentally a failure”) and lets us see a specific expression of what that looks like in play. The example makes concrete the difference between a worse outcome and a failure, which is infinitely more useful than an abstract warning. Second, it shows us how the conversation surrounding such an error works and how small a deal making such an error is. That’s comforting and instructive to inexperienced and experienced MCs alike.

We don’t need to go into the other three examples, but we should note that it’s clever how the Bakers not only worked in examples of a strong hit, a weak hit, and a miss, they did so while simultaneously offering examples of a worse outcome, a hard bargain, and an ugly choice. I don’t think that needs any analysis; it’s just cool, and deftly handled. Examples can be tricky to write because they need to be instructive, but not patronizing; immediately understandable, but not obvious. And on top of all of that, they should be inspiring, portraying exciting moments that let you envision what play looks like and make you want to get your friends together as quickly as possible to have similar experiences. That is, I think, precisely what these example do.