21. Meditation on Player Character Moves: Part III

Let’s look at two similar but significantly different moves: Leadership and Pack Alpha:

Leadership: when you have to order your gang to advance, regroup, hold position, hold discipline, or put their damn backs into it, roll+hard. On a hit, they do it. On a 10+, they snap to; take +1forward. On a miss, they do it, but you’ll hear about it later.

Pack alpha: when you try to impose your will on your gang, roll+hard. On a 10+, all 3. On a 7-9, choose 1:
-They do what you want (otherwise, they refuse)
-They don’t fight back over it (otherwise, they do fight back)
-You don’t have to make an example of one of them (otherwise, you must)
On a miss, someone in your gang makes a bid, idle or serious, to replace you for alpha.

Both moves demonstrate a type of leadership, and both moves rely on a character’s hard (fitting for leading in Apocalypse World), but they show two very different relationships between the leader and the led.

If we were working in a game with skills, both situations would call for a leadership roll (or some equivalent skill), and the outcome of that roll would be entirely up to the GM and the character player to work out what a success or failure meant. If this were a game with skills and varying degrees of success, then the players would still need to translate that die roll into fiction. If this were a game like Archipelago or Itras By, then the players would still need to work out what the “Yes, and” or “No, but” mean.

If one wanted to criticize moves as a design element, I could see an argument that moves tread on player’s freedom, that moves are a case of design-craft dominating play-craft. But I don’t think that is the case. To the extent that moves limit play-craft, they demand a certain consistent truth from the fiction. Choppers do not lead in the same way that Hardholders do, and a Chopper’s gang does not have the same relationship with its leader as a Hardholder’s gang does, and those facts are made plain in the juxtaposition of these two moves. When the Chopper imposes her will, she is playing with fire. When the Hardholder orders her gang, they will do what she says, even if only for the moment. Moreover, everyone in the game knows that difference because Choppers can’t trigger leadership and Hardholders don’t trigger pack alpha no matter what fiction the players create, so all the players at the table are on the same page. This allows for consistency between games and across tables in a way that other systems cannot.

The beauty of moves goes beyond consistency, of course. I’m thinking of something Vincent said in one of his Ropecon presentations that I quoted the other day about the conversations created by skill-systems. “Do you succeed at leading your men?” “Yes.” That’s a pretty dull conversation created by the game, and it is left to play-craft to turn that into something more interesting. Skills prompt a conversation about that skill, which, happily, can create situation. Moves, on the other hand, are directly tied to a situation of conflict, and will always exist within that moment of conflict, which means they will always be interesting.

When you look at a move from Apocalypse World you see both the nature of the conflict and all the paths leading from that conflict. We know that the Chopper is going to have to impose his will on the gang—that’s already a moment of high drama. We can see that moment in the story as though it were a preview for a film. If you want to see that moment, play the Chopper. And from simply reading the move, we see the tension of the drama built into the roll. Is the Chopper going to be unquestioned? Is she going to be challenged by someone in her gang? Is she going to have to make an example of someone? We want to know, we love not knowing, and we are excited about every possible outcome. All of that drama is present like potential energy within the move. When a lot of people talk about the AW-engine in terms of moves, they reference the miss/weak hit/strong hit division, but it is really this vision of dramatic possibilities that is the heart of any well-written move.

Does that limit play-craft? I don’t think so. It directs play-craft. It ensures that every result is going to be dramatically interesting. Moves channel play by first making the player want to create the situation that triggers the move and then they direct the action from the results of the move. But how you get to those moments and how the fiction unfolds once you are propelled from the move is up to you and your playgroup.