18. Meditation on Character Moves: Part I

Moves are central to Apocalypse World and deserve a little general discussion before getting into any particular move.

My first thought about moves is that they facilitate discovering your character through play.

In a lot of RPG systems, you need to design the details of your character before play can start because those details are critical in determining resolution of their various tasks and actions. This might take the form of a completed skill list so you know what your character can do. It might take the form of the character’s professional history to suggest their skills more amorphously. It might take the form of a set of personality traits or a defining motivation that give bonuses to your rolls when using them. In all these cases, you start play with a clear picture of who your character is on the inside so you can know what bonuses effect the building of dice pools or anything else needed to determine resolution.

As I observed in my other posts about the playbooks, Apocalypse World lets you discover your character from the outside in, determining their looks and working toward who they are through play. You have your array of stats that give you a sense of what they are like, but all the details are still vague. Every decision you make from there tells you a little more about your character.

Because Apocalypse World uses Basic Moves as its mechanical backbone, characters’ skills and history and personality play no part in determining what to roll or how to determine resolution. All you need to know is how Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, and Weird they are. How you go aggro on someone, or manipulate someone, or read someone is entirely up to you; the move remains unchanged, the roll remains unchanged, and the possible resolutions remain unchanged. Moves detach the narrative moment from tasks and minutiae and focus on the whole of the conflict.

The beauty of this is that your character unfolds before you as you make each decision, which allows for rich and potentially complex characters. There is of course the danger that a player will take advantage of the loosely defined nature of their character to make decisions and take actions without even thinking about their character as a character, but every design opportunity the opens a door also lets in danger.

Skills, backgrounds, and defining traits do not mean that a character is set in stone, but they do calcify the character to some extent, and if that’s the way you like to play, bully. Moves are of course not the only way to create a game featuring character discovery through play, but damn it is an effective way to do so.