132. Session End

At the end of every session, choose a character who knows you better than they used to. If there’s more than one, choose one at your whim. Tell that player to add +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet.If this brings them to Hx+4, they reset to Hx+1 (and therefore mark experience). If no one knows you better, choose a character who doesn’t know you as well as they thought, or choose any character at your whim. Tell that player to take -1 to their Hx with you on their sheet. If this brings them to Hx -3, they reset to Hx=0 (and therefore mark experience).

If you forget to do this at the end of a session, be sure to do it at the beginning of the next. It’s important.

Every player has to choose someone, no passing.

I talked about Hx and this move pretty extensively in post no. 127. Let’s look instead at the idea behind resetting your Hx with another character, and what that means about how we relate to other people.

Here’s what the text says:

Resetting Hx from +4 to +1 doesn’t mean that now you know them less than you did, obviously not. It means that you’ve crossed a threshold of knowing them, kind of like how both of your brothers know you better than a coworker does, but you can still say that one of them knows you better than the other.

Some groups play that when you reset your Hx with someone, they have to tell you a secret, to reflect the fact that you’ve crossed this kind of threshold with them. It’s a good rule, if you’d like to adopt it yourself.

This idea of a relationship progressing at the same time that the number drops has caused quite a bit of consternation over the years. Vincent and Meguey have spoken about it in several places. Meguey talks to +Richard Rogers in his first episode of the +1 Forward podcast (it’s a great podcast and that was a great episode, so check it out). In his “anyway” blog, Vincent talks about it as well:

“The Hx rollover in Apocalypse World is absolutely rooted in my observations of people, yes. I've often had the experience where I'm hanging out intensively with someone, and getting to know them better and better, and then suddenly I feel awkward and alienated around them for a little while. I don't know them any less well, but knowing them better makes me less comfortable until I get used to it.

”The Hx+3 honeymoon's over, in other words, but there's always the possibility of another Hx+3 honeymoon in the future.

”It goes along with the fact that I know my brother Drew, say, better than I know Graham Walmsley, but whichever of the two I drive out to GenCon with, I know better at the end of the trip than I did at the beginning.

”I think that people find it clunky in the game because there's an implied second Hx stat, but the game doesn't have any use for it so doesn't ask you to track it. It's the Hx baseline, which starts at 0 and increments with every rollover. Apocalypse World cares about how your Hxs change, relatively, not which of your Hxs are stronger in absolute terms.

”If it makes you feel more comfy, you can track your Hx baselines in your game.” (from “Just 3 Insights?”, comment 8, http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/604)

So you can think of the first time your Hx+3 with another character rolls over to Hx+1 as going from 0.3 to 1.1, and so on.

I would like to see the examples tackle one of these resetting moments, but none of them do. I can’t say I blame the authors, because doing something cool like telling a secret or something else that signifies that growth is entirely optional. The examples show you what needs to be done an how it works, not optional tricks and tools. These are the examples we get:

During the session, Marie and Keeler had a light-but-honest conversation, and Marie said maybe something that wasn’t a big deal, but she’d never said it to anyone before. Marie’s player tells Keeler’s to take +1Hx.

Keeler, however, was completely appalled by what Marie said, and withdrew from her abruptly. Marie didn’t even notice but kept right on talking. Keeler’s player tells Marie’s to take -1Hx.

During the session, Bran pursued his own interests mostly apart from the other two, but enlisted and had conversations with both of them at different times. He chooses to tell Marie’s player to take the +1Hx, more or less arbitrarily, and figures he’ll choose Keeler next time.

I do love the Marie/Keeler exchange. Keeler knows Marie better and is horrified by what she learned. Since Marie paid so little attention to Keeler’s response, she learned nothing about Keeler and proved that she knew Keeler less well than she thought by thinking the story shared wouldn’t be “a big deal” to her. The example is a clever and quick way to get that across.

Since the game cares about how your characters interact and connect (or fail to connect), I would love to see Bran have a reason to give the +1 to either Keeler or Marie. But the other examples already establish that, don’t they? The point of Bran’s example is that you sometimes have a session where you don’t have a lot of interaction with the other PCs. When you do, don’t sweat it; give a +1 to whomever and move on. The game won’t fall apart if your character was doing her own thing with NPCs all session, and it’s not worth fretting about. But it’s equally important that you don’t have the option to skip the move. By insisting on every player making the move, the game forces a little debrief and consideration at the end of the session. You need to think about who your character interacted with and how. You need to take measure of where they are in their relationships. That mindfulness, that taking stock, is the real point of the move, I think. Yeah, the changing of your Hx scores will eventually result in a point of XP here and there, but unless you’re an angel having a field day healing and fucking everyone, your change will be pretty slow. The Hx rules in general, and the session end move in particular, are there to keep you thinking about these relationships and how they are changing from session to session. Having those relationships in mind gives you ideas about scenes you want to have and ways you want to play your character when they are paired with the other characters. The trip from Hx+1 to HX+4 (or Hx=0 to Hx-3) is just close enough that that extra tick at the end of the session can push you to further shore up or fracture that relationship in the next session. And of course, the more players come into a session with desires and directions of their own, the more exciting that session will be.