36. always say

We continue our exploration of the Master of Ceremonies chapter. Today we are looking at what an MC must “Always Say” (pages 81-82):

• What the principles demand (as follow).
• What the rules demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What honesty demands.

Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.

Always be scrupulous, even generous, with the truth. The players depend on you to give them real information they can really use, about their characters’ surroundings, about what’s happening when and where. Same with the game’s rules: play with integrity and an open hand. The players are entitled to the full benefits of their moves, their rolls, their characters’ strengths and resources. Don’t chisel them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha.

If you’re playing the game as the players’ adversary, your decision-making responsibilities and your rules-oversight constitute a conflict of interests. Play the game with the players, not against them.

The MC’s agenda says that everything you say as an MC should accomplish one of those three goals. Now that you know the goals of your speech, you need to know what to say to achieve those goals. That’s what this section is for. And just so you know that the text still isn’t fucking around, these aren’t things you need to say some of the time or even usually. They need to be behind everything you say--always.

Being an MC for Apocalypse World turns out to be a very demanding job. The principles, the rules, your prep, and honesty itself are all making demands on what you say, and you are beholden to them all. The first paragraph above tells you why without saying it directly. The roles of the player and the the GM are indeed “divvie[d] . . . up in a strict and pretty traditional way.” (I love that the text doesn’t actually say roles—it says “conversation” of course because that is all roleplaying is. Your role as MC is really just your part of the conversation, meaning what you are allowed to contribute to the Shared Imagined Space. That’s why this section focuses on what you “say” rather than “do” or what powers you have.) The players can say things about their characters’ actions and speech; their character’s thoughts and feelings; and, when asked, about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Everything else in that conversation is given to the MC. That’s why the MC needs to have all these rules governing their speech. Your power is too great to be left unchecked.

Apocalypse World wrestles valiantly with the problematic role that GMs play in RPGs. Given the nature of RPGs, the rules need to allow for the unexpected at every turn, and games have traditionally turned to the GM to be the arbiter for all those moments. A number of games published this century have broken the GM’s powers and responsibilities into bits and pieces and distributed them among the players, or built them into the mechanics of the game (these are the GM-less/GM-ful games). But any game that adopts the traditional divisions of players and GMs needs to decide what limitations, if any, it is going to put on the GM. Apocalypse World’s solution is to methodically break down everything a GM does during the game and label those pieces. Then it tethers those pieces to a tri-partite agenda and a number of principles to make the MC aware of each individual piece and where possible corruption comes in. The genius of naming all these parts and dissecting what it is that the MC is doing is that to do so is to be able to exert control over the process. Other RPG’s GM’s sections resort to advice because what else could they do? GMing was so big and messy and everyone was going to do it their way anyway, so why bother to dictate? Uh-uh. Not so for the Bakers. They laid it all bare, and in doing so they can first and foremost make us aware of what it is we are doing and second of all dictate how we do it. Goddamn that’s smart.

And it was a move with a lot of chutzpah. The GM and game designer have always had an alliance. The game designer essentially partners with the GM to make the game happen at the table. Without the GM (again, for games with player/GM divisions) the game is nothing more than a book. The GM takes that book and facilitates a conversation with the players to make the game happen. In fact, game texts are often buddy-buddy with the GM-reader, right? I’ve read many a text with jokes about power gamers or players who try to pull a fast one with the rules and plenty of winking aren’t-players-cute language. But Apocalypse World bosses the MC around. Don’t you fucking do that. Seriously, cut it out. And don’t do that either. You know this other thing you do, you can do it, but do it like this. No wonder a number of readers chucked their copy across the room and denounced the game!

In one of his Ropecon talks in 2013, Vincent describes using a forceful tone in the book because he’s kicking a door down in a sense. You can’t introduce a major paradigm shift in something as fundamental as GMing without being forceful; hence all the “never do this” and “always do that.” Just look at that second paragraph in this section: “Always be scrupulous, even generous, with the truth.” “Don’t chisel them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha.” Bossy bossy bossy. Some people read that tone as befitting an apocalyptic world, but I think it is much more about function than it is about flavor.

As a final note, I just want to say how much I love the call for honesty, giving the players real information they can really use, and playing with an open hand. That simple act alone says to the players that the MC is playing with you, not against you. As much as we all love a mystery and a surprise twist, there is nothing better than the drama of knowing the stakes and the risks and watching the protagonists figure out a way through it or around it by their guts and their wits. Playing with that honesty forces the drama to come from characters’ decisions and choices rather than from anything else, and that is what Apocalypse World is all about.