113. Seduce or Manipulate

When you try to seduce, manipulate, bluff, fast-talk, or lie to someone, tell them what you want them to do, give them a reason,and roll+hot. For NPCs: on a 10+, they’ll go along with you, unless or until some fact or action betrays the reason you gave them. On a 7–9,they’ll go along with you, but they need some concrete assurance, corroboration, or evidence first. For PCs: on a 10+, both. On a 7–9,choose 1:
• If they go along with you, they mark experience.
• If they refuse, erase one of their stat highlights for the remainder of the session.
What they do then is up to them.
On a miss, for either NPCs or PCs, be prepared for the worst. (142)

This is our second move PCs can undertake to try to get someone to do what we want, and it’s a damn effective move. The only two requirements for the move are that we 1) tell them what we want, and 2) give them a reason. There are no limits imposed by the move beyond that. There is no caveat in the rules here that says the thing you want them to do has to be reasonable or something they would typically agree to do. In the explanation of Read a Person, we are told “’Dude, sorry, no way’ is a legit answer to ‘how could I get your character to___?’” (146) but no such guidance is given here. You are invited to be as far or as close reaching as you’d like.

Thematically, this means that everyone in Apocalypse World has a price. Further, the currency for that price is not fixed. Sex, drugs, money, power, promises of rewards – all of these (and more) are potentially effective on every one you meet.

Well, that’s all good thematically speaking, but how does a move like this exist without being abused left, right, and center? What is to stop you from trying to solve the problem of an invading enemy force with some sexy moves? I haven’t heard any tales of the move being abused horribly, so what keeps it functioning?

I think there are two things that make this move reliably work. Actually those two things are really one thing: the equality of all the players at the table. The game doesn’t assign authority to any one person in determining if and when a move is triggered. As we’ve covered before, moves trigger via a natural and often unspoken negotiation. The player and the MC have to agree that the move has been triggered, so if a player wants a ridiculous return on a tiny investment, the MC can raise her eyebrows to get negotiations rolling. So that’s the first thing of this one thing: the built-in negotiation between players for moves to trigger from the fiction.

The second thing of this one thing is the way the move is written. You are free to tell your target anything at all you want them to do. Period. But the anchor and limiter to that request or demand is the second part of the move: you have to give them a reason. If you want someone to do big things, you are going to have to give them big things. The reason that you give will naturally be a part of those negotiations between player and MC. You want her to call off her brute squad and leave the townsfolk in peace? And you think that is going to move her?

The question, then, becomes not can you try to get them to do what you want, but how much are you willing to pay to get them to do the thing you want. The twin levers of “tell them what you want them to do” and “give them a reason” always work in tandem, and they ensure that no matter what offer or threat is made, the story is bound to profit by it. In this way, it’s a self-scaling move.

One of the awesome things about playing Apocalypse World, whether you’re piloting the PCs or driving the world around them as the MC, is that you can play as hard as you’d like, that you are in fact rewarded for pushing hard. The scaling power of seduce or manipulate is one of the ways the game allows for and encourages all that pushing without ever threatening play itself. As an MC, you can throw horrible consequence after horrible consequence at the players because their moves give them the tools to deal with whatever comes their way. You never know what the characters are truly made of until you put them in a pressure-cooker of a situation; then we’ll see what they think is worth fighting for, and we’ll see what they are willing to pay to get what they want.