114. Self-Interest

Apocalypse World directs us to make straightforward NPCs: “Make your NPCs human by giving them straightforward, sensible self-interests. . . . In your game, make all your NPCs just not that complicated. They do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and if something gets in their way, well, they deal with that now. What they do in life is follow their parts around – their noses, their stomachs, their hearts, their clits & dicks, their guts, their ears, their inner children, their visions” (84).

I talked about NPCs in post no. 43, and there I say that giving NPCs straightforward self-interests allows the MC to always know how a character will respond to whatever a PC does. I still stand by that, but I want to add to it. In post no. 82 I talk about a distinction Vincent made in one of his podcast appearances between instruction and orientation in a rulebook. In short, he suggested that some rules are there to tell you what to do and some are there to prepare you for what the rules are going to make happen anyway. I feel like the direction to create NPCs with “straightforward, sensible self-interests” is definitely an instruction, but that instruction is reinforced by the rest of the game’s design so that making simple, self-interested NPCs feels almost instinctual. Uncomplicated NPCs are required in order for threats to gain simple trajectories that PCs can intercept, and their simplicity is everywhere in the basic moves chapter, which we see in the ways that PCs can interact with the NPCs in a moment-by-moment basis.

In the move seduce or manipulate, we are told the following:

Seducing someone, here, means using sex to get them to do what you want, not (or not just) trying to get them to fuck you.

Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. To seduce or manipulate an NPC, the character needs leverage, a reason: sex, or a threat, or a promise, something that the character can really do that the victim really wants or really doesn’t want.

Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.

Let’s start with that last paragraph. The default state of NPCs is to go about “according to their own self-interests.” Every PC interaction with an NPC is guided by what that NPC’s uncomplicated wants are. If you are trying to get something from an NPC without triggering a move, you are just talking and the MC will play the NPC in accordance with their simple desires. All the social moves in Apocalypse World get triggered when you try to get an NPC to act in your self-interest, either by convincing them that satisfying your needs will meet their own or by demonstrating that your threat overrides what their self-interests previously were.

If as an MC you create NPCs with complicated desires you make it difficult for the PCs to know where to push and difficult for yourself to know if that pushing will be effective. Similarly, if you do not pick a body part and give your NPC enough of a desire to follow it, there is no tug-of-war between characters because there is no clash between self-interests. This is not something you need to understand in the abstract as an MC, and if you’ve made your NPCs as the rules instruct, this will all happen magically and seamlessly. If you didn’t, the moves will push you in that direction simply in order to make the interactions work the way they need to. In this ways, the rules tell you which direction to walk, and then the rest of the game builds pathways and bumpers to unconsciously steer you down that path anyway.

That’s pretty bitchin’ game design.

And what about conflicts of self-interest between PCs?

When one player’s character manipulates another, there’s no need for especial leverage. Instead, the manipulating character simply gets to offer her counterpart the carrot, the stick, or both. The carrot is marking experience, and the stick is erasing a stat highlight.

See that? No leverage. You can’t manipulate another PC anyway, so why call for leverage? Whether another PC goes along with you or not is entirely up to them, and never the dice. So we get the ol’ carrot and stick approach. That carrot and that stick do exactly what the leverage is designed to do, with a twist. The move aligns the interests of two people, but it aligns the interests of the players rather than the interest of the characters. Characters don’t care about XP or highlighted stats – they don’t even know what the hell those are. Once the players’ interests are aligned, then the characters can go off and do their “ill-considered” (to borrow a word from the examples) things together.