42. look through crosshairs

The first principle is the overarching principle. The 2nd through 4th principles are about surrounding the players with fiction. The 5th principle is the first to tell us how to shape the Fiction:

Look through crosshairs. Whenever your attention lands on someone or something that you own—an NPC or a feature of the landscape, material or social—consider first killing it, overthrowing it, burning it down, blowing it up, or burying it in the poisoned ground. An individual NPC, a faction of NPCs, some arrangement between NPCs, even an entire rival holding and its NPC warlord: crosshairs. It’s one of the game’s slogans: “there are no status quos in Apocalypse World.” You can let the players think that some arrangement or institution is reliable, if they’re that foolish, but for you yourself: everything you own is, first, always and overwhelmingly, a target (83-84).

Let’s take a moment to praise great writing. “Look through crosshairs” is another one of the book's great phrases. We have to be more than merely willing to destroy anything we own as MCs, we have to actively see them as targets, like cold-blooded snipers. I love the concision and the strong visual image it conjurs. The other standout sentence is the rhythmic overkill of “consider first killing it, overthrowing it, burning it down, blowing it up, or burying it in the poisoned ground.” Not only is that a fantastic list of destruction, it’s poetic in structure, rhythm, and even rhyme: each phrase in the list grows longer than its predecessor, the middle pairing plays off the opposing “down” and “up,” and it all slide into the delicious “burying it in the poisoned ground.” That conclusion is even more satisfying because of the unexpected rhyme of ground with down. Did I mention that I love that sentence?

What is this principle all about? Why is it important to be willing—nay, determined—to burn to cinders everything in our purview? When a GM falls in love with her NPCs, her evil organizations, her plans for the future—that’s when the player characters are in danger of no longer being able to decide their own future. All this talk of destruction is about letting go of those things you love in order to let the story breathe and change, because change is really what is at issue here. “There are no status quos in Apocalypse World.” This is the first time we hear that slogan, but it really is the central idea behind looking through crosshairs. Apocalypse World is a game whose central propelling idea is that in this world actions have consequences, which beget actions that have their own consequences. Think of a chain of dominoes, a series of causes and effects. But if your love for one of those dominoes keeps it from falling, then we will never get the important chain reaction that is at the heart of the story we are creating. So when the players do a thing, let it have consequences. No, make it have consequences, because everything destroyed by their actions will propel the story irreversibly forward.

This principle alone will allow the stories created through your game to mirror some of the great TV dramas that you know and love. What would Game of Thrones be like if George R. R. Martin was not willing to look at every one of his beloved characters through crosshairs? Pick an epic drama you love, and you will probably find a trail of broken and bled-out bodies, the fallout from irrevocable decisions the heroes have made. Be like that. Knock down those dominoes and play to find out what happens from there.