129. Help or Interfere, Part III: Examples

Marie’s helping Keeler get into the water cult house by talking animatedly with Tum Tum, trying to hold their attention while Keeler sneaks behind them. Marie misses the roll, so I get to make as hard a move as I like. I choose to put Keeler in a spot. “Do you glance Keeler’s way? Or do they read your mind? Or what? Anyway, one of them turns, very deliberately, and Keeler, looks right at you. What do you do?”

Keeler’s trying to get out of a firefight with Dremmer and Balls with her skin more or less intact. Bran’s interfering with her by shining a targeting laser on her. He hits with an 8, so Keeler gets the -1.

Bran’s going aggro on Marser, threatening his life, his family’s lives, the lives of everyone he’s ever known. Keeler’s helping by sitting nearby, idly loading gun after gun. Keeler hits the roll with an 11, so Bran gets the +2 to his aggro roll. (150-151)

In my last post, I talked about the 1st edition version of this move and the 7 – 9 result that the characters expose themselves “to fire, danger, retribution or cost.” To illustrate what it meant by that instruction, the 1st edition examples each included a parenthetical aside of what that might look like. In the first example, we are told “On a 7 – 9, maybe Tum Tum starts pressing her for . . . unsavory commitments, with threats to back them up.” In the second example, “maybe on a 7 – 9, she notices” Bran’s interference. In the third example, “maybe on a 7 – 9, Marser decides the real threat is Keeler and the only way to be safe is to get rid of her.”

Removing that part of the 7 – 9 result does zero harm to the move because the fiction naturally takes care of these kinds of details. In the first example, for example, if Marie hits with a 7 – 9, then she successfully distracts Tum Tum, but she obviously does a less thorough job of it, giving Keeler only a +1 to her roll, so the MC is naturally inclined (and trained) to explore the fictional possibilities and ramifications of that fact. Hell, even on a 10+ Tum Tum can be way too interested in Marie, inviting the MC to make a move that puts pressure on Marie.

In the example of Bran targeting Keeler, the idea that Keeler notices is an unnecessary detail, and one the players will naturally work out themselves. “Do you figure out how they keep targeting you? Do you realize Bran is fucking with you?” That’s better drama than letting the dice decide that detail. Same goes for the final example. Marser is free to decide that Keeler is a huge threat with or without that 7 – 9 result. That’s part of the PC-NPC-PC triangles that is constantly under the MC’s purview. No roll is needed to give the MC permission to pursue that route.

So while the changes to the move might read on the page as being unexciting, the fiction that results will be anything but. The more you can get the PCs helping each other and getting tangled up in each other’s shit, the more cause-and-effect chains can splinter off and touch multiple PC lives, and the changes in the move seem designed to make that happen more often in play.

My favorite example is Keeler “loading gun after gun” to help cow Marser. It’s a wonderful image, and you have seen that scene in a number of movies and TV shows, and it is always chilling if done right. My least favorite example here is the first one because the helping move seems to eclipse’s Keeler’s move altogether. Keeler is trying to sneak into the water cult house (presumably by acting under fire) and Marie is trying to help. When Marie fails her help roll, the results of Keeler’s move seem to become beside the point. Was Keeler’s roll a miss? If not, having Marie’s bad roll undo Keeler’s hit seems downright unfair. If Keeler did miss, then having Tum Tum notice her is just part of that miss and seems unrelated to Marie’s roll, in which case, the MC still has two moves to make. Sadly, it’s a muddled example and missed opportunity.