139. Insight

By default, nobody has access to insight, but a hocus’ followers or other circumstances might give it.

When you are able to go to someone for insight, ask them what they think your best course is, and the MC will tell you. If you pursue that course, take +1 to any rolls you make in the pursuit. If you pursue that course but don’t accomplish your ends, you mark experience (161).

This is a simple move, and one that will not occur often. As the passage says, no one can access the move by default. You can ask for insight from anyone you’d like, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to give it, but that advice will just be a lot of hot air. Unless you create a custom move or custom circumstances, this move is only available to the hocus and even then it’s only available if the player chooses followers who “are rigorous and argumentative.” And even if you have a hocus who has rigorous and argumentative followers, she only gets access to the move if her fortune roll gives her a surplus. That’s pretty fucking peripheral.

So why include it? Why take up the space in the rulebook for a move that will occur in only this rare circumstance?

First, I think, it’s a great way to characterize the Hocus’s followers. There’s a lot of variety packed into the choices available to the Hocus player. Always there is a give and take between the Hocus and her followers; sometimes she has to come to them, and sometimes they come to her; sometimes she has something for them, and sometimes they have something for her. With insight, the Hocus comes to her followers for advice and wisdom, which makes them sound more like advisors or counselors than followers (which goes along well with the characterizations of “your family,” “your staff,” and “your court”). This move allows that fictional relationship to have mechanical presence in the game. More importantly, that mechanical presence has teeth so that the advice the followers give has meaning in the game. Just as Reading a Sitch makes what the MC says true by giving you +1forward, so this move gives you +1ongoing in pursuit of the followers’ recommended course. Here of course is the added bonus that if your followers have led you astray, you get to mark XP, so no matter what the outcome, you gain something.

Second, the move models the way that typically non-gamish events can have mechanical significance. Ten years out from its own publishing and a hundred published games inspired by it later, it seems silly to talk about the moves of Apocalypse World modelling what moves can do, but there is a wide variety of moves as Vincent and Meguey explored the ins and outs and each individual element of moves’ structures. In insight, we see that something as simple as seeking advice can have mechanical juice and a way of ensuring that what the MC tells you is most likely true.

Functionally, the move is a way for the player to ask the MC for direction. The move is written specifically to answer the question “what is my best course of action.” If you ask for insight into something about which you cannot take concrete action, the move will technically trigger I suppose, but you’ll have nothing to put +1 towards. So you need to ask about something actionable, and the MC has to give you an action to take.

The MC is directed specifically to draw the advice from their threat map and other prep:

Unless there’s a good reason for the followers to be in the dark, you should use your behind-the-scenes knowledge to give good advice.

If the player has enough on her plate, she might have her character go to her followers to get a +1 on her actions in pursuit of her already existing goals, but if the story has slowed down, the move is an opportunity for the MC to point to movement on the threat map and potentially launch another set of character-driven events. In either case, the move is a moment that the player and the MC can come together and direct the drama without ever stepping outside of the fiction.

We see this in action in the section’s example:

Dust the hocus makes it her habit to consult with her insightful cult early in every session. This time, I quickly skim my threat map and tell her that her cult’s pretty concerned about Jackabacka’s interest in her water. They think she should make an effort to secure it.

Imagine that conversation without the move. Dust’s player says to the MC, “I don’t know where Dust should focus her energy now. Is there something you think she can do that would be good for the story?” “What if she starts shoring up her defenses around her water because Jackabacka’s going to launch an attack?” “Oh cool! Let’s do that!”

As it is, without ever breaking the fiction, the MC has told Dust’s player that Jackabacka is going to make a move on Dust’s water supply and that if she doesn’t secure it there will be trouble. Of course, thanks to the other rules and mechanics, even if she does secure it, there is likely to be trouble; she’ll just be in a better position to defend it when trouble comes. And moreover whatever it takes to “secure” the water is likely to be troublesome itself. In this way, the move adds something extra to the fun, yeah? Without this move, Jackabacka would very likely have made a move on the water and the ensuing struggle would hopefully be fun; but with the move, there is not only Jackabacka’s attack, but the anticipation of the attack and the struggle to secure the water before the attack in addition to the attack itself.

Insight is a peripheral move because the game functions perfectly well without it, but some players might like the way it affects play. Those players have the option of playing the hocus and making their followers rigorous and argumentative. If players want to be the ones to give meaningful insight, they can play the savvyhead and choose the oftener right move. If the MC wants to see more insight in her game, well, that’s what custom moves are for. The MC can create those “other circumstances” that “might give it.”