138. Barter Move: Dropping Jingle to Speed a Thing on Its Way

When you make known that you want a thing and drop jingle to speed it on its way, roll+barter spent (max roll+3). It has to be a thing you could legitimately get this way. On a 10+ it comes to you, no strings attached. On a 7–9 it comes to you, or something pretty close. On a miss, it comes to you, but with strings very much attached.

As MC, you’re the judge of what’s legitimately available this way.

“Strings very much attached,” of course, is just another way to say that you can make as hard and direct a move as you like (161).

I like this move as a companion piece to the marketplace move since they both arrive at the same end via different paths. As with the marketplace move, this move will always end with the character getting what they sought. The fact is, the answer to whether you can get a thing or not is necessarily a dull answer, and to spend a dice roll to figure that out is a waste. Either the item can be got or it can’t, and the MC can determine that. If it can, why not give it? A more interesting question, and the one that the marketplace move asks, is what are you willing to do and what risks are you willing to take to get the thing. This move asks a different interesting question, which is what complications might arise from the getting of the thing? The answers to both questions are naturally interesting because they offer to shape the narrative in unexpected directions.

This move allows the player to control the likelihood of whether the item will come with strings attached by letting them roll+barter. This is also a clever way to demonstrate that moves with rolls don’t always have to depend upon a stat, and it shows how well thought-out the barter rules are in the game. The move caps the amount of barter you can spend at 3, because no bonus in the game can exceed +3 without unacceptably reducing the possibility of a miss. But nothing about that decision feels arbitrary when applied to barter because the game has already established that 3-barter is an exorbitant amount of jingle. I don’t know if this move is the reason that barter scales the way it does, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it is.

To me, the 7-9 result of this move is tricky ground for the MC. What’s the difference between “it comes to you, no strings attached” and “it comes to you”? There’s no middle ground between strings attached and no strings attached. The “or something pretty close” suggests that you can offer a less-than-ideal substitute, but of course it still needs to be close enough to be a hit, so there’s not much room to fuck with the result. The difference between the weak and strong hits seem to be tonal, more than substantive, which makes it a tricky distinction. It would be nice if the accompanying example delineated this distinction, but it focuses instead on the miss:

Audrey needs gasoline and lets everybody know. She spends 1-barter to speed it on its way, but misses the roll. I tell her that Joe’s Girl delivers a canful. “She’s happy to donate it to the cause! She just expects you to bring Fleece back with you.”

This is a great example that puts a lot of punch into a short passage. The fiction surrounding the move is quick and light, but the impact is meaningful. “She expects you to bring Fleece back” is indeed an MC move, offering an opportunity with a cost. And just like that, the characters have a complication and obligation for the narrative ahead. I love the simplicity and elegance of that effect.

The “expects” in the MC’s statement makes the move feel harder than it otherwise would because it is clear that there will be consequences if Joe’s Girl’s expectations aren’t met. Perhaps one way to think of the results is that on a strong hit, the character gets what they want and the MC doesn’t make an impactful move. On a weak hit, the character gets what they want and the MC makes a softer move, perhaps announcing some distant future badness. And on a miss, the character gets what they want and the MC makes as hard a move as they want.

Taken together, the three barter moves define the relationship between jingle and the goods and services they can get you. Jingle is powerful stuff, and the recurring theme in these moves is that if you drop the barter, you will get what you want. Period. But getting what you want doesn’t mean getting it the way you want it. As the MC principle says, respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards. These moves set you up to do just that.