123. Open Your Brain

It’s been over a month since my last post and I’ve been itching to get back to it! Partly I’ve been swamped with work, partly I’ve been distracted by all the prep that went into my son’s graduation from high school this past week, and partly I’ve been putting this off because I’m afraid I won’t do justice to the topic of the world’s psychic maelstrom in the next couple of posts.

Let’s go ahead and get the text for the move out there:

When you_ open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom_, roll+weird. On a hit, the MC tells you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two; answer them. On a 10+, the MC gives you good detail. On a 7–9, the MC gives you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the MC will tell you that. On a miss, be prepared for the worst (148).

The world’s psychic maelstrom has been mentioned several times up to this point in the text, but how the maelstrom affects the game mechanically has been unclear. The first thing to note is that you have to actively “open your brain” to gain access to the world’s psychic maelstrom. We know that it is always “[a]t the limits of perception . . . howling, everpresent” (8), but it cannot penetrate your thoughts without your inviting it in like a vampire. Once it is in, the exchange is a two-way affair; you give a little and you get a little. Technically, the move says the MC “might” ask you a question or two, but come on, it’d be a sad day if the MC didn’t.

That two-way street is not without its risks. Let’s remember that the world’s psychic maelstrom is one of the “essential threats” that you start thinking about after the first session; and yet in spite of that, characters are supposed to willingly invite this threat into their heads? How does the game engineer that, especially since the only bait on that hooks is “something new and interesting”?

The player will want to choose a topic, naturally. She’ll say “I open my brain about Tum Tum” or something. It’s fine to give her what she wants, much of the time—after all, you want everybody to be opening their brains, you don’t want to chase them away from it—but not all the time. Sometimes you should tell them about your favorite topic instead, and sometimes you should tell them what they need to know, if only they knew to ask.

First, the game tempts you with information. You want to know more about something? All you have to do is open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom and you can have plenty of information at your fingertips! In this way, opening your brain is a third type of perception move, only it doesn’t rely on your sharp the way reading a sitch or a person does, and the conditions to meet the fictional trigger are easily met. This one you can do any time about anything. That’s an offer that is hard to pass up, even with a game like Apocalypse World that doesn’t rely on mysteries for its narrative oomph.

The instruction for the MC is to “give her what she wants, much of the time” because you want to encourage players to open their brains as much as possible. Even when you aren’t giving her what she wants, you’re still telling her things that are interesting and new, whether it’s a thing that interest you or a thing that they should know. All in all, this paragraph makes it seem like a pretty good deal really.

Remember to respond with fuckery and put your bloody fingerprints on it no matter what.

Oh right! There’s the thing that makes this Apocalypse World and not Hey Neat I Have Psychic Powers World. Giving them what they want happily coexists with responding with fuckery and putting your bloody fingerprints over everything that comes out of the world’s psychic maelstrom.

The second lure for players to want to trigger the move and access to the world’s psychic maelstrom is how cool the play is that results from the move:

At first when you ask questions, they can be simply to establish facts and images, questions like “what’s the psychic maelstrom like for you?” and “how do you learn things from it?” As the game progresses, though, ask questions about the characters’ lives, pasts, psyches, souls. “Who was your first kiss? Tell about it.” “Are you happy?” “What’s the worst hurt you’ve suffered that you can’t remember?” “If you could take one conversation back, undo it, what would it be?” “If you were to kill Bran right this minute, how would you do it?” Make time for the players’ answers, and don’t let the players squirm out of them just because they never thought about it. “I know you don’t know who your first kiss was. Make it up!”

For me, this is the real gold at the center of the move, those questions about the characters’ “lives, pasts, psyches, souls.” Open your brain provides a mechanized way to dig in to the quiet and often unseen parts of a character, parts that you might never have even thought of otherwise and that certainly could not become “true” in the fiction without an opportunity to make it officially part of the narrative. In another game, you might have reams of backstory for your character, but until it makes it into that shared fiction at the table, they are nothing more than ideas that guide the way you play. Because playbooks in Apocalypse World are designed to build characters quickly from physical cues and narrative abilities, the “lives, pasts, psyches” and “souls” of the character are left to be discovered in play. Some parts of your character you discover by the choices they make when faced with various challenges and problems; the rest is set up to be discovered by the probing fingers of the world’s psychic maelstrom.

And look at those sample questions! They’re so personal and intimate! Are you happy? If you could take one conversation back, undo it, what would it be? Who was your first kiss? These are not casual exchanges you have with strangers you just met; these questions mirror the kinds of conversations you have with close friends or with people you wish to be close with in the small hours of the morning. The questions probe not just for “facts” about the character, but for the messy stuff of feelings, ambitions, and unspoken desires. Who doesn’t love to have those conversations?! And now you can have them with your fictional characters, building up their complex internal lives one small conversation at a time.

Obviously, I’m not the only one who loves the fiction born from this move. Once the move is triggered and the power of the questions is witnessed at the table, many players are eager to trigger the move and see it triggered by other. It’s an organic and beautiful way to learn about the characters piece by piece, and because the human brain is always making connections, those little tidbits and stories are ripe for the players to tie into other elements of the fiction that have come before or are yet to come.

The next paragraph from the text is all about these types of connections our big ol’ brains like to make, and it gives us the third incentive to trigger the move: the world’s psychic maelstrom offers a whole new depth to the stories you can tell and crises you can explore.

Also take full advantage of the characters’ open brains to barf forth apocalyptica. What if there’s somebody in the maelstrom that they know? What if some part of the maelstrom stays inside their brain when they close it again? What if the maelstrom sweeps a certain key memory out of their brain while it’s in there, or gives them a brand new fresh one?

Dealing with warlords, brutes, grotesques, and hostile landscapes is challenging enough, but the world’s psychic maelstrom provides a whole new axis for dangers in Apocalypse World. It gives the game a fourth dimension beyond the physical world of want and suffering, and it invites you as players to think of all the ways that the maelstrom can play with the minds, perceptions, memories, and pasts of the characters. And like all the other questions you ask yourself when MCing the game, these are questions that you don’t want to know the answers to beforehand. What happens if some part of the maelstrom stays inside their brains when they close it again? Play it out and see, together. What if the maelstrom swaps out old memories for new? Make it happen and explore the results, together. The game gives you permission, urges you in fact, to dive into the unknown with the apocalyptica you barf forth.

The nature of open your brain puts the move in the interesting position of being simultaneously unnecessary for successful play - in the sense that characters can do everything they need to do without ever opening their brain – while being vital to the nature of Apocalypse World and the feel of the game. A game of Apocalypse World that ignores the world’s psychic maelstrom would be a hobbled and deflated one.