81. Stakes

These are based very closely on stakes in Ron Edwards’ game Trollbabe.

Write a question or two about the fate of the threat, if you’re interested enough in it to wonder how it will turn out.

You can write your stakes questions at a wide range of scales. Start here:
• A person’s or a small group’s circumstances or living conditions.
• A person’s life or the lives of a small group of people.
• The safety, success, failure, growth, or decline, in some particular, of an organized group of people.

And if one of the players is playing a hardholder, include:
• The safety, growth, or decline, in some particular, of the entire holding.

Examples: I wonder, will Birdie get a better place to live? I wonder, will Roark live through this? I wonder, who will join Tum Tum’s cult? I wonder, will Foster break Uncle’s holding?

Stakes should be concrete, absolute, irrevocable in their consequences. People’s lives. Maybe not necessarily their lives or deaths, at least not every time, but always materially significant changes to their lives. Resolving the outstanding question means that nothing will ever be the same for them.

It may seem backwards, but it’s especially important to disclaim responsibility for the fates of the NPCs that you like the best. It’s the central act of discipline that MCing Apocalypse World requires: when you write a question as a stake, you’re committing to not answering it yourself. You’re committing to letting the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters, answer it.

That’s the discipline and also the reward. Your control over your NPCs’ fates is absolute. They’re your little toys, you can do anything to them you choose. Raise them up and mow them down. Disclaiming responsibility for the two or three of them you like best is a relief. And when you write down a question you’re genuinely interested in, letting the game’s fiction answer it is uniquely satisfying (115-116).

Let’s start at the beginning, with Ron Edwards’s Trollbabe. In Trollbabe stakes are part of the adventure the GM sets up for the PCs. In the who-what-when-where-why-how of the scenario loosely constructed for the PCs to encounter, the stakes are related to the why. Someone in the scenario wants something of someone else. The stakes tell us not only what that something they want is, but the two possible outcomes of that trajectory if that want is met or not. The stake is what puts the story into motion; without it, you have NPCs standing in a location with nothing to spur them to action.

Stakes in Apocalypse World are indeed based upon those in Trollbabe. They are both concerned with scale, with concrete and irrevocable consequences, and they both demand that the fiction played out by the game determine the outcome of the stakes. But the difference between the two games is revealing.

In Trollbabe, the players must become aware of the stakes and decide whether and to what extent to interfere. In Apocalypse World the players are left out of the question entirely. The MC might wonder if Birdie will get a better place to live, but neither the players nor the characters have to give two shits about Birdie. The MC might wonder if Roarke will survive, but the players neither have to care nor ever know that Roarke’s survival is of interest to the MC. To disclaim decision-making when setting the stakes of Roarke’s survival, the MC must push Roarke into the PCs’ paths and let their actions and decisions determine whether Roarke lives or dies, but the players’ interest in or knowledge of the stake is irrelevant.

In short, stakes are a game the MCs play with themselves during the game, which is an incredibly interesting approach. I have been saying for many a post that the MC is positioned in Apocalypse World as the primary audience of the story unfolding through play, but this section takes that idea to its full extent. Traditionally in RPGs, the GM has been focused on the players, whether that is as an antagonist bent on playing against the players or as a caregiver responsible for everyone’s happiness and well-being during play. We have seen since the days of the Forge a healthy reexamining of the relationship between GM and player and have moved toward GMs and players being equal and independent participants, each responsible for their own happiness and comfort, with everyone being mindful of the other people at the table. What we see in Apocalypse World, I propose, is an effort to give everyone at the table the tools to drive the story exactly where they want and to build the interaction of the mechanics so that the collisions of those desires creates a productive and interesting story in its wake.

Apocalypse World is certainly not the first RPG to take this approach. Universalis, for instance, depends on everyone at the table working aggressively for what they most want to see in the game in order to create a story larger and better than anything one mind would create on its own. But of course Universalis is a GMless/GMful game. In a game with a GM, the power dynamic is usually such that if the GM wants something to happen, it can happen. The trick of any game with a GM-player split is to make the GM behave responsibly.

The efforts in Apocalypse World to limit the power of the MC is to allow them to push as hard as they’d like without ever upsetting the game or overpowering the player characters. The first part of that approach is to limit when the MC can speak and what the MC can make happen on their turn. The structure of moves—both of the characters’ moves and of the MC moves—takes care of that. The second part of the approach requires the fine tuning of that attitude and perspective of the MC. That’s where agenda, principles, and the always-say bullet points come in. By saying everything you say as the MC needs to accomplish one of these goals and needs to be in line with all of these principles, the game attempts to shape the MC’s desire and purpose.

The balance that the principles and agenda attempt to strike in the MC is the simultaneous presence of intense personal interest and curious detachment. I need to be a fan of the players and be willing to beat the shit out of them, as a fan. I need to be invested in my NPCs even as I look at them through crosshairs. I need to want to keep my thumbs off the scale to see what happens, and to do that I need to know that if I make as hard a move as I’d like on a miss, the game’s mechanics will catch us all as we plummet into the unknown future.

Stakes is an important part of this mental conditioning of the MC. The Bakers know that as an MC you will fall in love with some of the NPCs you create. The principles and agenda can address nearly every aspect of the MC’s approach to the game, but how do you keep those personal attachments from interfering with the position of curious detachment? Stakes. As the text says, stakes are there especially for (exclusively for?) the NPCs you love the most. And to get you there, the text promises rewards sweeter than the power you are ceding to leave the fates of your darlings up to the actions of the players. Try it, the text promises, and you will find the whole experience, “uniquely satisfying.”

And of course it is uniquely satisfying. Once the game can get you to see that, to believe that, then you can go forth as the MC, armed with and conditioned by the principles and agenda and push as hard as you like against the PCs knowing that the rest of the mechanics will take care of story no matter what happens.