147. Seize by Force, Example

Keeler decides that enough’s enough and goes to take Birdie’s magnum away from her. (Who gave Birdie a magnum in the first place? Jesus.) Keeler doesn’t want to kill Birdie, so she’s not using a weapon, just her bare hands. She seizes the gun by force and hits the roll with a 9. She chooses to take definite control of it and to impress, dismay, or frighten Birdie.

In the exchange of harm, Keeler hits Birdie for 0-harm for grappling and restraining, minus 0 because Birdie’s wearing no armor, for a total of 0-harm. Birdie hits Keeler for 3-harm for her magnum (3-harm close reload loud), minus 2 for Keeler’s body armor, for a total of 1-harm. “As soon as Birdie realizes that she’s shot you,” I say, “and she sees the look on your face, she panics. She throws the gun down and runs.”

“She better,” Keeler says (168).

This example has it all: a clear dramatic situation with both humor and danger that shows the how the move works, what its limitations are, and how its results can be worked cleverly back into the fiction.

By this point in the text, we know that Birdie isn’t right. We’ve seen Bran put her into his isolation chamber, and we’ve seen Marie try to read her to find out what she should be on the lookout for. The examples are not in chronological order, but they are clearly from the same storyline. What begins for us as a set of names become recurring characters, and the example act as highlight reels from a TV series that we’ll never get to see. The familiarity is a clever way to have the examples point to the larger storylines that the game can create. So the first sentence of this example bring together Keeler (whom we know from previous examples is a snarky badass) and Birdie, who occupies the difficult land between friendly and threatening, and who is now armed, much to Keeler’s displeasure.

The character’s goals are simple: get the gun away from Birdie without killing her, so the player’s choices will be guided by those goals. The move is triggered by the simple declaration that Keeler “goes to take Birdie’s magnum” by using just her bare hands. The move forces the characters to exchange harm, so Keeler’s player’s choice to use only her bare hands reduces the risk of hurting Birdie. Birdie is equally bound by the move to fight back, which in this case means using the gun. If Birdie didn’t want or wasn’t prepared to fight back, grabbing the gun would be Keeler going aggro on Birdie.

With a hit on a 9, Keeler’s player chooses two options. She gets the gun (her goal) and impresses, dismays, or frightens Birdie. By choosing to impress, dismay, or frighten Birdie, Keeler’s player is trying to end the conflict without further injuries to anyone.

The math happens outside of the fiction, and then the MC works the results into the fiction. The MC can narrate the results anyway they like as long as Keeler ends up definitively with the gun and Birdie changes her behavior. I like the MC’s choice to have Birdie throw down the gun after shooting Keeler and seeing the expression on Keeler’s face. It gives Birdie agency in the shooting rather than having the gun go off during the struggle. I also love the phrase “sees the look on your face” because it leaves some ambiguity in the scene. Is Keeler pissed, or emotionally hurt, or offended? What did Birdie see on Keeler’s face, and did she flee because she was scared of what Keeler would do or because she was ashamed of what she herself had done? We don’t know, and there’s nothing in the example to suggest that the players know or choose to clarify. Finally, choosing to have Birdie flee the scene drives the drama forward. Where will she go? Will Keeler pursue? How awkward will their next meeting be? We want to know and the players will want to know, and only through play will we learn the answer.