3. Setting up to play

Today’s text is from “Setting Up To Play” in the Basics chapter:

Get three or more players, including you. Choose one player to be the Master of Ceremonies. Since this is the Master of Ceremonies’ playbook, that’s you.

Apocalypse World takes quite a few sessions to play, so choose friends with space in their schedules for a commitment. The game really kicks in around the 6-session mark, and it can go much longer.

Once you’ve got your group together, start the game with character creation. Before that, though, you have some prep to do. Read through the first part of this book—the basics, the playbooks, character creation, the MC, and the First session—and skim the rest, to get a handle on your job as the MC. (page 8, 2nd edition; page 11, 1st edition)

There are a bazillion choices you have to make when constructing an RPG text. What information do you give? When do you give it? How much detail do you go into, and when? How much handholding do you do, and what can you assume your audience already knows? I note all that because I’m about to praise AW’s presentation, but I don’t mean it as criticism of other texts.

The Bakers go with a single overview section that walks the reader through the layout of the whole text. Everything in The Basics is going to be expanded on in the main text. The Basics serves two functions. First, it’s what the potential buyer can read to decide if this is the game for them. Second, it lays out all the special terms that are key to understanding the game. This whole section is successful, I think, because it keeps everything short and simultaneously filled with information so that it never feels like filler, never feels like your understanding of the game is being delayed. A lot of opening sections in RPG texts are easily and gleefully skipped over. Long description of the setting and color of the game? Long description of what a roleplaying game is? Long section on how to use this book? There’s none of that here.

In this passage, we have our first use of Master of Ceremonies, and it is presented without explanation. All you know is that you are it, since you are reading the book. Why that term? What does the MC do? The first question is never answered (so far as I can remember--though I'm sure we'll talk about it later) and the second question will be answered much later. The term is casually thrown out and we are trusted to not freak out about it.

And, man, do I love that the entire text is called “the Master of Ceremonies’ playbook.” If the players’ playbooks “contain all the rules that the other players need to play” (as quoted in the next section), then the MC’s playbook contains all the rules we need to play as the MC. Of course, an important philosophical position in AW is that the MC is simply another player—a player with their own unique responsibilities, but still a player on equal footing with the other players—and the naming of the rulebook as a playbook demands that very equality.

The second paragraph of “Setting Up Play” is all about how long you can expect to play. This is not a game designed for one-shots, nor is it expected to go on indefinitely. Why that is will become clear later; for now, we just need to know what we’re getting ourselves into. The Bakers even tell us where the typical sweet spot is for campaign length. This is great information to specify.

The three sentences of the final paragraph basically take the place of the “How to Use this Book” section of other RPG texts. Read these sections and skim these other ones before you play. The little extra that they throw in is the casual announcement that character creation is part of play itself, that the game starts with character creation.

Does the text assume that you’ve played other RPGs and read other RPG rulebooks? Does anyone know someone for whom Apocalypse World was their first textual introduction to RPGs? Those are not rhetorical questions. I suspect that it would end up being everything you need to get into the art of play, but that is pure speculation on my part. I think the writing show tremendous respect for the reader and that, on top of its being excellently written, is why it’s such a joy to read.