118. Examples, Expectations, & Permissions

Apocalypse World is chock full of examples. I’ve already said that they exemplify the conversation that is the act of roleplaying Apocalypse World, that they show negotiation and assent in action, players responding to each other thoughtfully and respectfully, correcting themselves and moving on. I’ve said that they show us the rules and elements of the game in action, character moves, MC moves, procedures - all of that. In addition to those things, the examples establish expectations of what play will look like and permission to take play in all kinds of directions. Let’s dig into that aspect of them.

There’s a lot of violence, yeah? Most of the extended example in the Moves Snowball chapter is a fight between a PC and a group of NPCs. But it isn’t just any fight; it gets particularly brutal. I’m thinking of Marie’s chopping into Plover and Pellet with a chainsaw. Then there’s Keeler going aggro on Plover, trying to smash his head in with a claw hammer, only to finish the job in the sucker someone example. And let’s not forget Bran’s casual attempt to blow Balls’s brains out in sucker someone. There are other examples, of course, and many don’t show these levels of malice or spite, but these characters are cutting loose and wreaking some havoc.

The examples you put forward in your game text tell readers what to expect in play. Some readers will be put off by the cruelty or animosity displayed here, and others will grin and hurry to print out playbooks. The first kind of reader is warned that this kind of play can readily result from the game, and the second kind is given permission to take play in these directions.

The question before us then is why setup a game with these kinds of permissions and expectations? Why does Apocalypse World in particular not only allow for this kind of play, but construct it through the players’ moves and actively encourage it through these examples?

On my way to proposing an answer to that question, permit me to make a quick detour.

I’m currently (and slowly) making my way through 7th Sea, which is all about heroes. I won’t go into much detail because, one, it’s not particularly important, and two, I haven’t read enough to make the full claims I’m heading toward (but I’ll post something when I’ve finished the text and gotten my thoughts in order). In the description of the various nations of the setting, there are story seeds that ask, as a hero, will you do X or Y. For example, as a musketeer in the world’s equivalence of revolutionary France, will you back the king or find a way to help those suffering under his indifferent rule. That’s a totally fair question to ask, and it balances the difficult pressures the hero is facing between duty and ideals, but we never really suspect that ideals will be trashed for duties. The question is does the hero find a way to satisfy his sense of honor and help the helpless, or go in entirely with helping the helpless. Again, it’s a fine question, but whatever the answer, we know that the hero will act like . . . well, a hero. It’s in the very premise of the game. We never expect the musketeer to skewer a beggar to get her out of the king’s way, for example

Apocalypse World is a morally murkier world than Theah. The world has gone to shit and the players are asked what kind of community will their characters build from the fucked-up societies of this post-apocalyptic landscape. Maybe the characters will be heroes, and maybe they won’t be. When we sit down to play the game, we don’t know if we are telling a tragic or hopeful tale, a grim cautionary tale or a triumphant story of making it all work somehow. We can only find out through the act of play itself. The crucible of Apocalypse World will tell us who these characters are at heart, what they care about, what they are willing to sacrifice, and what they are willing to settle for.

In order for that to be a truly open question, the characters need to be capable of doing some truly callous and horrible things. They need to have a limited set of tools that challenge them to establish peace - or at least stability - in whatever hodge-podge way they can. If they are not given the chance to be rotten, then being anything other than rotten is never a real choice. You can’t truly be a hero if you don’t have the freedom of being truly villainous.

Apocalypse World has no use for those terms – hero and villain – but some form of that spectrum still exists. So the moves limit how the characters can effectively interact with the world, and they tempt the characters to travel down some morally dark allies to get where they are going, and the examples show the readers again and again that taboos that might exist in other games don’t exist here. You can take revenge or settle a dispute with a claw hammer. You can push someone off a roof because they are fucking up your shit. You can happily manipulate someone to get what you want or need. Hell, not only can you do it, but you’ll probably feel the need to at some point in the game. Once the game establishes those expectations and permissions, then the players are truly free to find out who their characters are and what their story looks like.

That’s why, I believe, the examples show the things they do.

A bonus question: what keeps the game from being a glorification of violence, a celebration of characters doing shitty things to others? Consequences. The point that the text drives home again and again is that you as MC make everything hum along by making every action taken by the PCs consequential. Players’ characters can do whatever they like in Apocalypse World, but they will pay the price for those actions. What that price is and what those consequences look like – that’s left to the MC to decide. That’s what you are sculpting as you make your MC moves and wield the threats pressuring the PCs. The other players are equal participants in building the world, but you are solely responsible for the moral landscape and ramifications for deeds done. What does the opposite and equal reaction look like in your Apocalypse World? That’s entirely up to you.