94. Moves Snowball: Part IV – Misdirection

“Which of my enemies is the biggest threat?” she says.

”Plover,” I say. “No doubt. He’s out of his armor, but he has a little gun in his boot and he’s a hard fucker. Mill’s just 12 and he’s not a violent kid. Isle’s tougher, but not like Plover.” (See me misdirect! I just chose one capriciously, then pointed to fictional details as though they’d made the decision. We’ve never even seen Mill onscreen before, I just now made up that he’s 12 and not violent.) (127)

I like this moment in the example, because I wouldn’t have thought of answering the question that way - with shit you just made up - as misdirecting. Isn’t that just what you have to do to answer the question? By calling it as an act of misdirection, the text emphasizes what misdirection is. Any time you as the MC say a thing about the fiction, whether you are aware of it or not, you are making a decision about what you say based on real-world concerns. You might be thinking about dramatic possibilities or how to put pressure on the scene or how to add to the tone or themes you’ve been playing with - whatever. Even if your decision amounts to “wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” you are deciding the thing outside of the fiction. The command to misdirect is to present that made-decision to the players as fiction.

So what I think is cool here is that the example takes a moment that most of us would just do instinctively and points out that we are following a principle just by doing it. Being mindful of that is not necessary to MCing the game, but it is an important insight into how the game functions. It’s easy as an MC to think that you are playing only within the fiction, that sometimes you aren’t picking moves so much as the moves are practically picking themselves. The players are giving you fiction and you are responding by giving them fiction. That’s how it can feel, especially if you are excited by the fiction unspooling before you. But as the example shows us, the choice to make Plover the biggest threat is actually a capricious one. The fictional details are pointed to “as though they’d made the decision,” but they didn’t. The MC could have easily said that Isle was the biggest danger and have come up with fictional reasons why, or Mill as well. Truly, the answer could have been anyone and it would have been just as good. What “misdirect” means here is cloaking that capricious decision in fictional details.

In fact, it is the fictional details themselves that constitute the misdirection. If the answer had simply been, “Plover,” with no explanation, there would have been no misdirection, just an incomplete answering of the question. It’s the grounding of the decision in fictional details that makes the answer appear to have come from the fiction itself. Why is that important? Because those fictional details are what the player needs in order to make her next move. Those fictional details are used by the player to decide what her character does, how she approaches the scene. If the answer had been, “Plover, but not by much, they all look sickly and unable to put up much of a fight,” that changes everything, right?

And that’s the magic of Apocalypse World. The fiction isn’t just something that comes out of play; the fiction is critical to play, the substance of play itself. Details can’t be glossed over in a couple of vague statements because the players need those details to say what they do, need those details to trigger their moves. And the MC needs those details from the players to know what MC move to pick and how to detail the fiction of the move back into the scene. Back and forth, each player requires concrete fiction from the other player in order to do her thing. Without that fictional detail, play grinds to a halt. When that happens questions need to be asked back and forth until that fictional details are properly established and play can move on.

Now you don’t need to know any of that for the game to function. The game will force you to misdirect with fictional details whether you like it or not because the players will ask for clarification in order to trigger their moves. But while you can MC without the understanding, I suspect that you can MC more powerfully with it. The details that misdirect in this example all affect the encounter. We know that Plover is a hard fucker and that he is currently without his armor, but has a gun in his boot. We know that Isle is no push over. And we know that there is a kid present, who if not innocent, isn’t violent. And Mill isn’t just any kid, he’s Isle’s little brother. That collection of people makes knowing what to do tough for Marie’s player. She might be okay getting in a fight with Plover, but does she want to do so in front of Mill? Even if Marie’s not sensitive to possibly traumatizing Mill, could Mill run off to get more of Isle’s family? The MC is only answering the player’s question, but she is doing so with details that make the next decision of what to do a hard one.

You as the MC are in control of the fiction in these moments of misdirection, not the other way around.