47. Think offscreen too.

When it’s time for you to make a move, imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that now becomes evident? Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quite notice? This is part of making Apocalypse World seem real – and if you pay attention to your threats, it’s part of making the characters’ lives not boring too.

This short principle exists hand in hand with “name everyone, make them human.” Both principles are about the prep work you do between sessions, both principles are tied to your threats, and both principles serve to make the world seem to exist beyond the lives of the players’ characters.

Apocalypse World demands that the MC understand the internal logic and causality of the world. That’s where the prep comes in. The first session might be close to prep-free, but between sessions, the MC is required to put in a little work to make the game function as it is designed. You need to learn who your NPCs are, what they want from each PC, and what their own plans are. Gathering this information allows you to hit all of your agenda items; Developed and focused NPCs will make Apocalypse World seem real, make the characters’ lives not boring, and allow you to play to find out because all the NPCs have their own pre-reasoned trajectories. Moreover, your prep work allows you to say what your prep demands and what honesty demands. And those same developed and focused NPCs can keep doing what they are doing even when they are offscreen.

This principle is part of what makes the game emulate fantastic serial TV dramas. When the world and NPCs are in motion even as the players’ characters are busy elsewhere, the world feels alive and real. When played this way, the PCs’ actions aren’t only consequential; those consequences keep on consequencing far beyond this one time and place. That internal chain of cause and effect keeps going no matter where the PCs have placed their bodies and their attention.