|
We are looking at the short section in the Character Creation chapter that is titled “Say this First and Often,” on page 70.
Before we get to the text, let’s take a moment to talk about the title. Specifically, I am interested in that word, “say.” As we saw at the end of the last section, character creation in Apocalypse World is undertaken as a group, not separately. The role of the MC during character creation is to answer questions from the players. Character creation is where the game goes from being in the playbooks (including the MC’s playbook—aka, the rulebook) to being a social event. There might be paper and dice and books, but everything that really matters is happening in the conversation that these material items spur on and guide. “Say” in the title drives home the fact that we as players are talking to each other and through that conversation we are creating either the play itself (in the form of the collective Fiction) or the boundaries of that play (in the form of the rules that govern the collective Fiction). In another thread, Rob Bohl pointed out that he was annoyed with the playbooks because information that could have easily been provided on the sheets was not. What does +1forward mean? What does a character’s Hot measure? Etc. It’s possible that the Bakers were not able to figure out how to include this information on either the playbooks or the reference sheets, but it seems to me that this information was instead purposefully left off to make character creation a time of finding our sea legs, as it were, for the social journey that lay ahead. Much of what is in this Character Creation chapter is stated elsewhere in the book. The information about the apocalypse and the psychic maelstrom are in the Basics chapter, as are the stats definitions and limits, for example. They are presented here again to allow the MC to have ready answers to the questions the players are sure to ask—are in fact forced to ask by the design of the playbook if they are at all new to the game. “Somebody’s sure to ask.” “For basic questions about the stats. . . ” “For questions about a character’s move . . .” This chapter provides the answers to those questions (or where to find them) so that the players can begin their conversation in familiar ground, discussing rules that will be reappearing during play. In the section that is our focus for today, the MC is directed to say the following to the other players: To the players: your job is to play your characters as though they were real people, in whatever circumstances they find themselves—cool, competent, dangerous people, larger than life, but real. My job as MC is to treat your characters as though they were real people too, and to act as though Apocalypse World were real. Here we have a declaration between players that becomes part of the social contract by which Apocalypse World must be played. Everything else we create in the Fiction via play must meet these requirements. The section might as well be titled “Agree to this First.” Anyone experienced with AW will recognize the first item on the MC’s agenda in that second sentence: “Make Apocalypse World seem real” (80). The first sentence, then, is essentially the only item on the other players’ agenda: play your characters as though they were real. As long the players follow their agenda and the MC follows hers, then AW will be half way to providing you an awesome experience. This notion of making Apocalypse World and all the characters in it seem real is hammered home several times in the rest of the text, typically under the language of following the internal logic of the world and the moves. For example, “You have to commit yourself to the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters” (80). Or, “Always choose a move that can follow logically from what’s going on in the game’s fiction” (89). Or, “taking turns or rolling simultaneously as you think best, always following the logic of the moves themselves” (133). Or, “Push the situation, following the logic of your threats, to its conclusion.” In order for Apocalypse World to create meaningful and enjoyable play, it has to have an internal consistency, and it has to be sure that actions have significant consequences. No amount of rules or mechanics can make that happen—that is something that can only be achieved through the social agreement at the table that that is how we are going to play the game. And that social agreement occurs when the MC says this first and the players assent. That social agreement all begins here during character creation.
0 Comments
26. We are back and approaching a new chapter: Character Creation (70-78). The opening section of the chapter outlines the things you as MC need to print out, gather, and bring to the table for the first session of play:
Print out a set of the character playbooks and pass them around. Have everybody choose one, no duplicates. Set the rest aside and keep them handy. Print out the players’ reference sheets. Put them on the table where everybody can reach them and pass them around. Print out your playsheets: a threat map, a threat sheet. You can print more threat sheets as you need them, after the first session. You’ll also need notepaper, pencils, and at least two 6-sided dice. For the most part, the players should be able to create their characters fine just by working through their playbooks, so let them. Your job for now is just to answer questions and think about what you’re going to bring to the game (page 70). The first thing that stands out is the instruction that you cannot have duplicates of the playbooks among the players. This idea is expounded upon in the “Setting Expectations” section of this chapter: Your characters are unique in Apocalypse World. There are other medics, and they might even be called “angel” by their friends, but you’re the only angel. There are other compound bosses and warlords who might be called “hardholders,” but you’re the only hardholder. Why have this limitation at all? If there are other angels and hardholders in the world, why can’t the players play them? In RPGs with character classes and skills, the desire to have diversity among the characters usually comes down to niche protection (which helps ensure balanced time in the spotlight) and greater survivability for the party (I’m of course thinking of D&D here where modules expect you to have a rogue, a cleric, a wizard, and a fighter of sorts— and where any missing ingredient can cause problems for the group as a whole). But in a game with no pre-planned modules and a spotlight controlled by the MC and the players’ willingness to move the story through their actions, there is not the same need for that diversity. Niche protection gets closer to the point, but in a game like Apocalypse World that niche is not defined by a skill set; it is defined by Character Moves. The moves, as we’ve noted before, drive the story by allowing the characters’ actions to impact the narrative and change it irrevocably, which then sets the characters up to make more moves, etc. If you were allowed a party of gunluggers, it’s not so much that the characters will steal each other’s thunder; it’s that you drastically limit the moves available to the players, which limits the breadth of the narrative that can unfold through play. I would argue then that banning duplicate playbooks protects not the individual players and characters but the narrative itself by ensuring that the players have a variety of moves and approaches for interacting with their Apocalypse World. In addition, because so much of the character is baked into the playbook, duplicate playbooks would lead to repetitious characters. See for example my posts on Hx and sex moves, through which the game tells you how these characters feel and behave to some extent. Four drivers will have a hard time interacting since they are all built to have intimacy issues. Three skinners? Five battlebabes? The characters would have a difficult time interacting with each other—and the game is made to have the characters interact with each other as well as the world around them. Finally, the Hx section does a ton of work in creating the particulars of the Apocalypse World and the portion of it that the characters inhabit. The wider variety you have in those questions, the more you will be able to learn about the world during the character creation portion of play. To limit those questions is to hamper the building of the world. Now let’s turn our attention to the final paragraph of the section. If “the players should be able to create their characters fine just by working through their playbooks,” why is it important to make character creation a group activity? Obviously, the players need to come together to do introductions and Hx, but before that, why is it important that the rules explicitly state (several times, in fact) that you “start the game with character creation” (8)? In the rest of my discussion about this chapter, I am going to be looking at character creation as a pivotal part of play, especially as a time for each group of players to learn how they can negotiate the building of the Fiction as equal contributors. It is during character creation that the characters take shape, the world takes shape, and the way this group of players will interact and build the narrative together takes shape. It is during character creation that the players will learn how Apocalypse World shapes the conversation that is the very act of roleplaying the game. That’s what we’re going to be looking in the next handful of posts, but even now in this opening section we are given a clue: “Your job for now [as the MC] is just to answer questions.” It turns out that questions are one of the major chambers of the conversational heart of Apocalypse World; questions from players to the MC, from the MC to the players, and between players. The entire Character Creation chapter is set up to help the MC answer the questions they players will ask and to help the MC figure out what questions she needs to ask in return. 25. This is our final post about the playbooks. It will also be my final post for a week or two as a big work project needs to be faced head on. When I come back, we’ll pick up with the chapter on Character Creation.
But for now, the last area of the playbooks to discuss is Improvement. The text for Improvement is the same on all the playbooks: Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase. Each time you improve, choose one of the options. Check it off; you can’t choose it again. Every improvement you might make to the character is listed right there on the front page of the sheet. You can improve stats, gain character moves, choose moves from another playbook, get new Crap (holding, gang, followers, vehicle, etc.), or expand and improve the Crap you already have. Once you improve five times, you can start choosing from the second list if you want to and think about the end or evolution of your character. The thing that I want to focus on here is not the particulars of a character’s improvement but the fact that all those improvements are listed on the playbook from the moment you create the character. The entire range of potential futures is always there to meet the player when she looks down at the playbook. The Gunlugger knows that she can have a holding of her own if she wants one. The Battlebabe can have an ally or a gang. The Skinner knows she can open an establishment of her own if so inclined. All the unmarked character moves tell us what kinds of dramatic scenes we might be able to introduce into the fiction as our characters grow. Putting all the improvements on and in the playbooks accomplishes two things. First, as we’ve noted before, everything the players need to play the game from the first session to the last, are in the playbook and the printed reference sheets, so the cognitive load on the players is kept to a minimum. Second, the players are constantly reminded that their characters are personally heading somewhere in the story that is unfolding. It allows the player to keep one eye on the present and another eye on the future so that the Fiction is always pushed forward. Does my Savvyhead seem like she’s going in the direction of adding a life support bay to her workspace? Which NPC might become my Battlebabe’s ally? I’m excited for the moment my Hocus can put her followers in a frenzy! Goddamn I need to move my gang from being a bunch of savage hyenas to a well-disciplined bunch of hyenas! All future improvements are laid out for the player to aim for when pushing the fiction in one direction or another. Since the course of the fiction is determined first and foremost by the players and their characters’ decisions, the game provides these flags and goalposts to aim for when driving the story. And with that, we’ll consider the first two chapters and the first 67 pages covered. If there’s something I’ve overlooked, let me know. I’ll see you all with another post sometime late next week. Today we delve into Hx as it appears on the playbooks of the 2nd edition of Apocalypse World. To give us something solid to discuss, let’s look at the Driver’s Hx:
Everyone introduces their characters by name, look, and outlook. Take your turn. List the other characters’ names. Go around again for HX. On your turn, ask 1, 2, or all 3. Which one of you once got me out of some serious shit? For that character, write Hx+1. Which one of you has been with me for days on the road? For that character, write Hx+2. -Which one of you have I caught sometimes staring out at the horizon? For that character, write Hx+3. For everyone else, write Hx-1. You aren’t naturally inclined to get too close to too many people. On the others’ turns, answer their questions as you like. At the most basic level, determining Hx is the moment in character creation to tie your characters together and to build up a bit of the world surrounding them by sharing stories about the past. Notice that players are not prompted to get together and work out how their characters met. Only one player is responsible for the fiction at any given time. “Which one of you once got me out of some serious shit?” The player who says, “I did” is then going to detail what that shit was and how it all went down. The answer to the question tells us who these characters are, how they relate to each other, and how they fit into their particular Apocalypse World. Importantly each player has a say about their character’s past. It is the asking player’s right to choose which of the three questions she wants to ask. Maybe she doesn’t like the idea of her character having been in serious shit out of which another character had to bail her—then she doesn’t ask the question and it never happened. She only has to choose one of the three questions, though she can opt for as many as she likes. Similarly, the other players have the right to choose which questions they want to answer. If you can’t picture your character being in a car for days on end with the Driver, keep mum and let someone else jump in there. But then again, the question prompts you to examine who your character is—is she the kind of person who stares out at the horizon? You wouldn’t have thought about it before, but yeah, it turns out she is that kind of person. Even if someone else answers first, you’ve learned a little bit about your character. The Driver may not have caught you, but it’s something you think your character has done in the past. This system of questions preserves the agency of each of the players in deciding the past of their characters. The other thing that the Hx questions do is that they tell us how the character understands and is aware of other people. You might think that you would better know the person who saved your ass than the person you went on a road trip with, but not the Driver. Save her ass, you get Hx+1. Spend some time on the road, you get Hx+2. For the Hx+3, the Driver doesn’t have to have even talked to the other character. For another character, seeing someone staring at the horizon would tell them nothing, but for the Driver, it tells her everything. And for everyone else, the Driver gets an Hx-1 because “you aren’t naturally inclined to get too close to too many people.” These aspects of the Driver’s social behavior are baked right into the playbook in the same way that the sex move tells us how the character deals with intimacy. In fact, the inclination to not get close to people is echoed in the Driver’s sex move: If you an another character have sex, roll+cool. On a 10+, it’s cool, no big deal. On a 7-9, give them +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet, but give yourself -1 to your Hx with them on yours. On a miss, you gotta go: take -1 ongoing, until you prove that it’s not like they own you or nothing. The Driver has huge commitment and intimacy issues and hates to feel tied down of bound to another individual. The best the Driver can hope for is that an encounter is “no big deal.” As soon as someone gets through their defenses and gets to know them (gaining a +1Hx with them), the relationship starts to suffer. So, no, the Driver is not “naturally inclined to get too close to too many people.” Hx serves the dual functions of being mechanical (by being a stat that affects helping or interfering and a means by which experience is gained and improvement made) and of being character-defining color. The Savvyhead understands broken things, and the stranger and more broken you are, the more she understands you. The Skinner is so used to being desired, the she gets -1Hx with those who are in love with her. The Angel is a creature of hope; if you are “doomed to self-destruction” she cannot wrap her head around you and gets an Hx-2 with you. The hardholder needs to know people and anticipate their desires and potential machinations; she starts out knowing everyone at no less than +1. All the playbooks’ Hx’s tell us how the character makes sense (or doesn’t) of the other people of Apocalypse World. We’re looking at Gear & Crap today as they are presented in the playbooks.
Oddments worth x-barter; fashion suitable to your looks, including at your option fashion worth x-armor; and the possibility to start play with prosthetics and/or a vehicle are present on almost every playbook and are pretty straightforward. My favorite thing about the weapons is how their description is a comment on the character. The Angel has a “small practical weapon.” The Brainer has a “small fancy weapon.” The Chopper wields “no-nonsense weapons.” The Driver’s weapon is “handy.” The Gunlugger totes a “fuck-off big gun,” two “serious guns,” and a “backup weapon.” The Maestro D’ carries a “wicked blade.” And the Skinner gets it done with a “gracious weapon.” The Driver’s handy .38 revolver has all the same tags as the Skinner’s gracious sleeve pistol, but the spirit of the weapon has been altered to fit the character. In doing so, it reveals how the character thinks about their weaponry. What I really want to focus on are the big items, the hardhold, gangs, followers, establishment, and workspace. These items are exciting for a number of reasons. First, their very introduction creates large chunks of the world that will make up the foundation of the story you are about to tell. Second, each item comes with dramatic ingredients whose possibility you can see before you ever breathe life into the character. A Maestro D’s establishment, whatever its main and side attractions and whatever its atmosphere, promises all kinds of drama. Five NPCs (all of them threats, of course) come with the package, one your best regular and one your worst. The remaining 3 NPCs have active interests in the establishment, one wanting in on it, one owed for it, and one who wants it gone. Damn. No matter what particulars attach themselves to the establishment, there will be a ton of drama and excitement; moreover, you are willingly signing up for it—nay, asking for it—as soon as you opt for the Maestro D’. I recently read Orkworld, and in it, the players are given a single pool of points from which they must create their household and their individual orks. Put too many points into the household, and your characters will be weak; put too many points into your characters, and the household won’t survive the winter. When building your household, you have to decide if you want to have a strong leader, reindeer to ride, a smithy to forge weapons, a household bard to promote your history and legacy, a large number of warriors, or a well-equipped winter home. Everything costs a certain number of points, so you select the strengths and weaknesses you want to characterize your household. If you like figuring out how to best optimize your numbers to create the perfect balance of strengths and weaknesses, it’s a bang up system. A lot of people dig playing with currency like that, and that’s cool. I do not dig playing with currency like that. What Apocalypse World does with its lists of choices is to create the same balance of strengths and weaknesses without the currency (and without the time investment into figuring it out—or the sense of failure when it doesn’t work out (not that I’m bitter)). The holding, for example, can be given 4 upgrades and 2 downgrades. This not only allows for flavorful varieties in hardholds from game to game, but it means that you need to give and take somewhere. And even as you select the downgrades, you know the MC is going to use those elements to create as much drama and tension as possible. Your population is filthy and unwell? Your gang is a pack of fucking hyenas? Your armory is for shit? Your holding owes protection tribute? Expect any and all of those to be an issue in the story that unfolds. Even something as harmless as the Angel Kit has built-in drama. If you don’t have a supplier, you need to figure out how to refill your stock. If you do have a supplier, you’ve got another threat who might kick up more trouble than can be solved with the single stock she brings. Just as the moves you choose declare what kinds of scenes or dramatic events you want, the Crap you mark ushers forth NPCs, buildings, towns, assistants all with their own neon-lit dramatic elements. This is more than just excellent game design; it is specific to the demands of Apocalypse World. Because the setting is wide open and the genre is undefined, and because the MC is under strict orders not to create a plot, the playbooks are made to do the work of laying out a large number of threats and potential conflicts so that before you frame the first scene you know what pressures are lying in wait for these particular characters in this particular Apocalypse World. And whenever a jolt is needed the lifestyle and gig moves (under “Barter” on the playbooks) are there to offer more sources of dramatic narrative. Let’s talk about sex moves, or as they are called in Apocalypse World, special moves. On the 2nd edition playbooks, the special moves are placed front and center on the first page. Here is how MCs are told to introduce the moves during character creation (“Introducing the Special Moves”—page 73):
. . . They’re based on the idea that when you have sex with someone, you get to know them better than you did before. Sometimes they’re straightforward and positive: now you know each other better, and that’s good. Sometimes they’re more complicated: now you know each other better, and is it cool or awkward? Some of them can be a little creepy: now you know each other better, and do you like what you’ve learned? The special moves tell us how each type of character handles initimacy. We know that AW centers not only the protagonists but the relationships between our protagonists. Having the sex moves right there on the front page of the playbooks reminds us of two things. First, that intimacy between these characters is possible and encouraged by the rules of the game. Second, that our character generally interacts with others in particular ways. The Angel, she’s an awesome lover: If you and another character have sex, your Hx with them on your sheet immediately goes to +3, and they immediately get +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet. The Angel pays so much attention to her lover that her Hx goes as high as it can for this level of intimacy. Not only that, the Angel is an open lover, revealing things about herself in such a way that her lover knows her better too. Compare that to the Battlebabe: If you and another character have sex, nullify the other character’s sex move. Whatever it is, it just doesn’t happen. Damn. She gives nothing away and she looks for nothing in return. She might be very competent in the sack, but she guards her secrets even in the most intimate moments, nor does she probe into the secrets of her lover. And if that’s how she is at the most stripped-down moments, imagine her openness the rest of the time. These moves tell us tons about how the archetypical character interacts with people. Or the Chopper: If you and another character have sex, they immediately change their sheet to say HX+3 with you. They also choose whether to give you -1 or +1 to your Hx with them on your sheet. Now the Chopper might be a skilled lover, but she is in it for herself and she gives herself to the act with abandon. Fucking a Chopper tells you everything you can know about them in a single encounter. Meanwhile, you can decide if you give of yourself or if you disguise yourself. The Chopper won’t notice if you fake your orgasms. Hell, she probably won’t notice if you even have orgasms. There are clearly rewards built into these exchanges to make you want to have your characters have sex with each other (gaining Hx leads to XP, the Brainer gets to scan, the Gunlugger gets a +1forward, etc.), but those rewards, to me, seem secondary at best to the flavor of how these characters handle intimacy. Hardholders give of themselves through gifts. Savvyheads are in-tuned to their lovers, but in a clinical way like they approach the machinery they work on (or perhaps they approach their machinery with warmth and intuitive curiosity in the same way they approach a lover). Whenever the Maestro D’ hooks you up with anything, that act is as intimate as sex. So much color and cool shit here. Communicating that information through a move is brilliant, because even if you never trigger the move, that information is there—you now know that. And I think that as a move, it has a greater buy-in with the player (or at least has a chance for a better buy-in with the player). If that same information was told to you just via flavor text, the player could easily say, don’t tell me how to make my character. But as a move, that’s it, there it is; if you don’t want to trigger it, stay celibate, because there is no “may” clause built into the moves. Appropriately, when you do it, you do it. Let’s look at two similar but significantly different moves: Leadership and Pack Alpha:
Leadership: when you have to order your gang to advance, regroup, hold position, hold discipline, or put their damn backs into it, roll+hard. On a hit, they do it. On a 10+, they snap to; take +1forward. On a miss, they do it, but you’ll hear about it later. Pack alpha: when you try to impose your will on your gang, roll+hard. On a 10+, all 3. On a 7-9, choose 1: -They do what you want (otherwise, they refuse) -They don’t fight back over it (otherwise, they do fight back) -You don’t have to make an example of one of them (otherwise, you must) On a miss, someone in your gang makes a bid, idle or serious, to replace you for alpha. Both moves demonstrate a type of leadership, and both moves rely on a character’s hard (fitting for leading in Apocalypse World), but they show two very different relationships between the leader and the led. If we were working in a game with skills, both situations would call for a leadership roll (or some equivalent skill), and the outcome of that roll would be entirely up to the GM and the character player to work out what a success or failure meant. If this were a game with skills and varying degrees of success, then the players would still need to translate that die roll into fiction. If this were a game like Archipelago or Itras By, then the players would still need to work out what the “Yes, and” or “No, but” mean. If one wanted to criticize moves as a design element, I could see an argument that moves tread on player’s freedom, that moves are a case of design-craft dominating play-craft. But I don’t think that is the case. To the extent that moves limit play-craft, they demand a certain consistent truth from the fiction. Choppers do not lead in the same way that Hardholders do, and a Chopper’s gang does not have the same relationship with its leader as a Hardholder’s gang does, and those facts are made plain in the juxtaposition of these two moves. When the Chopper imposes her will, she is playing with fire. When the Hardholder orders her gang, they will do what she says, even if only for the moment. Moreover, everyone in the game knows that difference because Choppers can’t trigger leadership and Hardholders don’t trigger pack alpha no matter what fiction the players create, so all the players at the table are on the same page. This allows for consistency between games and across tables in a way that other systems cannot. The beauty of moves goes beyond consistency, of course. I’m thinking of something Vincent said in one of his Ropecon presentations that I quoted the other day about the conversations created by skill-systems. “Do you succeed at leading your men?” “Yes.” That’s a pretty dull conversation created by the game, and it is left to play-craft to turn that into something more interesting. Skills prompt a conversation about that skill, which, happily, can create situation. Moves, on the other hand, are directly tied to a situation of conflict, and will always exist within that moment of conflict, which means they will always be interesting. When you look at a move from Apocalypse World you see both the nature of the conflict and all the paths leading from that conflict. We know that the Chopper is going to have to impose his will on the gang—that’s already a moment of high drama. We can see that moment in the story as though it were a preview for a film. If you want to see that moment, play the Chopper. And from simply reading the move, we see the tension of the drama built into the roll. Is the Chopper going to be unquestioned? Is she going to be challenged by someone in her gang? Is she going to have to make an example of someone? We want to know, we love not knowing, and we are excited about every possible outcome. All of that drama is present like potential energy within the move. When a lot of people talk about the AW-engine in terms of moves, they reference the miss/weak hit/strong hit division, but it is really this vision of dramatic possibilities that is the heart of any well-written move. Does that limit play-craft? I don’t think so. It directs play-craft. It ensures that every result is going to be dramatically interesting. Moves channel play by first making the player want to create the situation that triggers the move and then they direct the action from the results of the move. But how you get to those moments and how the fiction unfolds once you are propelled from the move is up to you and your playgroup. I finally watched Vincent’s Ropecon 2013 session on Youtube called “D. Vincent Baker: the Man, Career, and Games.” He said a lot of interesting things, but I want to quote a long passage here about what some of his intentions were in the presentation of Apocalypse World:
“So this game [Apocalypse World] was a dick move." "I designed this game to occupy conversation, to—like, I’m gonna say dominate, but I’m a tiny niche of a tiny niche. I dominated conversation for like a hundred people, like that’s what it means to dominate conversation where I am. But I designed this game on purpose to dominate conversation, and it did, and it has.” Witness this whole collection. Anyway, a little after that, someone from the audience asked this question: “You said that you wanted to dominate the conversation. How did you intend to do that? What was the thing you did that was meant to do that?” Vincent answered thus: “I did about ten things to do that. . . ." "At the Forge we talked about how do you create a game that is playable, but we never talked about how do you create a game that will catch on. And with Apocalypse World I really set out to explore for myself—like I had a bunch of ideas about how you would create a game that would catch on based on which of my games had caught on and which hadn’t and what the conversations around my games had been in public. . . ." "When you are selling a game, you want a really large percent—5 or 10 percent—of your target audience to hate your game so much that they can’t shut up about it, because that creates conversation in the world about your game and creates public engagement with your game. . . . " "So in Apocalypse World I designed to alienate 10% of my audience, 5% of my audience, and it worked great. Like, I pissed people off.” Here he read from the first paragraph under “Agenda” in the Master of Ceremonies Section. “And saying that—‘preplan your game and you’ll end up with a boring game that makes Apocalypse World seem contrived’—like, that pisses people off. And people who I could have had as fans of the game, a small number of people I could have had as fans of the game, reach that point in the text and they get angry; they throw the book . . . and that’s great. They go on the internet; they say this game is—like, they say it’s too aggressively written, it’s stupid; they have these emotional reactions that stop them from engaging with the game, but create more widespread engagement with the game." "This is stuff I don’t talk about to people. I can make people very angry talking about this stuff, like my fellow designers, very few designers are willing to do that. . . ." "When you publish a game, you want a third of your audience to understand it perfectly just from reading it. And you want a third of your audience to struggle with it a little bit, to win their understanding the hard way, right? This is somebody who has to reread it and who has to have a little conversation about it in order to understand it. And you want a third of your audience to need to ask questions, and that way you create these three groups of people. And the people who can’t understand it just from the text ask questions, and these people say, ‘I can’t believe how stupid you are; here’s the answer,’ and these people say, ‘I struggled with that too; here’s the answer.’ And this creates a tremendous dialogue about your game.” We should pause to appreciate that 1) this can be said about all art (movies, literature, etc) and 2) your game has to first be really fucking good for any of this to happen. “These are things I did on purpose in Apocalypse World." “I watched—do you guys know Luke Crane, Jared Sorensen? Do you know their game ‘Freemarket’? I learned from ‘Freemarket.’ I watched a conversation happening on story-games.com where somebody asked a technical rules question about ‘Freemarket’ using the game’s very particular, very precise, weird transhumanist jargon, right? . . . And then people answered using that same jargon and I watched the way it created an in-crowd and an out-crowd, and I watched the way it created anxiety in the out-crowd, right? These are people who are being now excluded from a conversation they are interested in. And that’s powerful. Shit. So I learned that there’s jargon designed to create an in-crowd and an out-crowd in Apocalypse World.” Those are 3 of the 10 things Vincent said that he purposefully did in presenting Apocalypse World in order to create discussion about the game. Now, being a student of literature, I know to take anything an author says about his own work with a shaker of salt, but this is something to think about when asking yourself why this passage is written this way, or why this presentation seems vague, etc. I’m one of those people who fell in love with the text right way but needed to read and reread (gladly) to piece together what was happening. This part of the video will be haunting the rest of my reading of the text, whether I say anything more about it or not. One of the recurring features of Vincent’s games is the clear defining of the GM’s role and the delineation of her power. Depending on the whims of the GM for fair and exciting play is dangerous on two fronts. The more a game leaves everything in the hands of the GM the less consistent play will be and the more good play is going to rely on a GM’s abilities. The second front is that there is a clear power imbalance between the GM and the player, and leaving “fairness” of play up to a GM is begging for injustice to be done.
The moves of Apocalypse World necessarily limit the power of the MC. In a lot of RPGs with fortune resolution systems (dice, cards, tea leaves, etc.), the success or failure of a task is to some extent set by the GM. The GM might set a target number to be rolled. The GM might award bonus dice or subtract penalty dice from a pool to represent advantages and disadvantages present. The GM might put together a dice pool for an opposed roll. In short, the GM is making decisions that affect the likelihood of the roll’s success or failure, and while these methods will usually come out alright, they open the door to the possibility of unfairness, both real and perceived. Moves take the MC out of the equation for the roll itself. The MC is part of the conversation about if and when a move is triggered, and the MC is part of the conversation about how the results of the move become a part of the Fiction, but the roll itself never involves the MC. There are no opposing rolls. There are no difficulty factors that affect the roll. There are many other ways that the MC’s powers are limited in AW, and there are many other ways to limit the power of a GM in other games. Character moves are beautiful because they do so without drawing any attention to what they are doing. In that moment, it’s just the player and her dice. Moves are central to Apocalypse World and deserve a little general discussion before getting into any particular move.
My first thought about moves is that they facilitate discovering your character through play. In a lot of RPG systems, you need to design the details of your character before play can start because those details are critical in determining resolution of their various tasks and actions. This might take the form of a completed skill list so you know what your character can do. It might take the form of the character’s professional history to suggest their skills more amorphously. It might take the form of a set of personality traits or a defining motivation that give bonuses to your rolls when using them. In all these cases, you start play with a clear picture of who your character is on the inside so you can know what bonuses effect the building of dice pools or anything else needed to determine resolution. As I observed in my other posts about the playbooks, Apocalypse World lets you discover your character from the outside in, determining their looks and working toward who they are through play. You have your array of stats that give you a sense of what they are like, but all the details are still vague. Every decision you make from there tells you a little more about your character. Because Apocalypse World uses Basic Moves as its mechanical backbone, characters’ skills and history and personality play no part in determining what to roll or how to determine resolution. All you need to know is how Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, and Weird they are. How you go aggro on someone, or manipulate someone, or read someone is entirely up to you; the move remains unchanged, the roll remains unchanged, and the possible resolutions remain unchanged. Moves detach the narrative moment from tasks and minutiae and focus on the whole of the conflict. The beauty of this is that your character unfolds before you as you make each decision, which allows for rich and potentially complex characters. There is of course the danger that a player will take advantage of the loosely defined nature of their character to make decisions and take actions without even thinking about their character as a character, but every design opportunity the opens a door also lets in danger. Skills, backgrounds, and defining traits do not mean that a character is set in stone, but they do calcify the character to some extent, and if that’s the way you like to play, bully. Moves are of course not the only way to create a game featuring character discovery through play, but damn it is an effective way to do so. We’ve talked about names and looks in Apocalypse World playbooks. Now it’s time to look at Stats. Each playbook offers four arrays of stats from which the player can select one. Here, for example, are the arrays from the Maestro D’s playbook:
Choose one set: Cool+1 Hard-1 Hot+2 Sharp=0 Weird+1 Cool=0 Hard+1 Hot+2 Sharp+1 Weird-1 Cool-1 Hard+2 Hot+2 Sharp=0 Weird-1 Cool=0 Hard=0 Hot+2 Sharp+1 Weird=0 The command to pick one array continues the theme of choosing from a limited number of options. As with the other lists in the playbook, this limitation is freeing at the same time. It is clear that the authors have done the work to figure out a handful of options that are all well-suited for the playbook. From looking at the Maestro D’s possible arrays, for example, we see that Hot is important to making the character shine, that Cool and Hard can run the gamut, that Sharp doesn’t want to dip below zero, and that Weird is not important, but if you really like it, you can give it a boost. Every option is a good one (which is of course a requirement any time a designer is going to give a player options), but there is enough variety here to let you think about what your Maestro D’ might be like. If you go through all the playbooks and look at the arrays, you will see that there is a basic mathematical formula behind the numbers. The default construction allots a +3 total with one stat—the character-defining stat—a +2. The exception to that rule is that if two stats are given +2, then the total number of stats (when they are all added together) cannot exceed +2. See the third array option above for an example. The exception to that rule is the Battlebabe and one array on the Driver playbook. The Battlebabe has a Cool+3 in all her arrays, and all but one of her arrays total +4. The one that is +3 is the one that gives her a +2 stat in addition to her high Cool (“Cool+3 Hard-1 Hot+2 Sharp=0 Weird-1”). The one Driver array that is the exception allows two stats at +2 while still granting a total +3 when all the stats are added together: “Cool+2 Hard-2 Hot=0 Sharp+2 Weird+1.” I don’t know if this is the reason, but I suspect that those bonuses are granted because of the low Hard scores associated with those arrays. The Battlebabe is never allowed a starting Hard to be more than 0. And not being Hard in Apocalypse World makes life . . . well, hard. Now imagine if the Bakers had laid all that out as the rule for creating your stats: Assign numbers to your 5 stats so that no stat exceeds +2 or -2 and that when added up equals +3. Unless you give two stats +2, then the total when added must equal +2. Unless you have a Hard-2, in which case your total can equal +4, etc. It would be a mess, it would be confusing, and it would be paralyzing. I’d be scared to put that character together. So instead, the math is all done for us, balance is assured, and all we have to do is pick an array and go. Personally, I’m not a big fan of point currency in character creation because I never feel like I can do well at it; I always feel like I’ve ended up with a character that is weak on all fronts. The point of a point currency (as I understand it) is to ensure a certain amount of balance. It forces you to sacrifice one area of your character in order to make another area strong. I like that in principle, but I hate messing with the point. By creating the list of arrays, Vincent and Meguey have done the math for you and hidden the point currency; they gave us the final result of the calculations and let us get right to the playing. Extremely considerate, really. I spoke yesterday of the lists in Apocalypse World reinforcing the theme of scarcity, and I believe that to be true, but at the same time, what they do is ensure that every choice made is a good choice. The possibilities are hemmed in to guarantee that something interesting comes off the page and into the Shared Imagined Space. Whatever name, look, and stat array you choose, the character is going to be interesting, fun to play, and fun for the other players to watch in action. Working our way through the playbooks of 2nd Edition Apocalypse World, we have arrived at “Looks.” The Looks section is a set of lists from which you choose the character’s body, face, eyes, clothes, and gender-presentation. Let’s look at the lists for The Hocus as an example:
Man, woman, ambiguous, transgressing, or concealed. Tattered vestments, formal vestments, scrounge vestments, fetish vestments, or tech vestments. Innocent face, dirty face, determined face, open face, severe face, or ascetic face. Mesmerizing eyes, dazed eyes, forgiving eyes, suspicious eyes, clear eyes, or burning eyes. Bony body, lanky body, soft body, fit body, graceful body, or fat body. As any writer who has stared at a blank page knows, it is hard to start from nothing. These lists give you a place to start when creating your character. Even if you don’t find the right fit for your character, these items will serve as a leaping off point for you to create your own. (Though, as +Robert Bohl pointed out yesterday, the text says “choose name, look, stats,” etc., not “come up with” or “create.” Choosing is admittedly ambiguous since “choose from the list” is not explicitly said, and from Vincent’s own appearance in yesterday’s conversation, that ambiguity is a purposeful construction, designed to prompt questions and conversation within a play group.) A lot of RPGs give you space to describe your character, but what are the most typical details prompted in such games? Gender, race, height, weight, eye color, hair color, etc. Those categories are clinical and scientific, suitable for textbooks and technical manuals. The lists provided in Apocalypse World focus on how one might be described in a novel. The first thing you see when you look at her face is that it’s an innocent face with forgiving eyes. Holy shit! That tells us oodles more than she has green eyes and long red hair. She’s not described at 5’8”; she has a bony body that juts out of her tattered vestments. This is about character (in the literary sense) not statistics. If you want to work out her hair and eye colors and all that, go for it, but if you never do, your Hocus is still going to leap into the Fiction. An important aspect of these looks is that you meet your character from the outside in, like you were meeting a stranger. The first thing that catches your attention might be her dazed eyes, and then you start building inward and thinking about why her eyes are dazed? How does that reflect her personality or her behavior? Why does she have a graceful body with those dazed eyes? As I pointed out in the last post about names, this is all part of the AW design to discover our characters through play. We meet our characters from the outside and work our way in, knowing only enough to know how to play her, figuring out who she is as we go along and see what troubles she faces and who her friends are. That’s why the title “Look” is so appropriate—“look” tells us nothing about what’s on the inside unless we want it to. The first list looks like a list of genders, but it is not necessarily gender or gender identity. It’s about presentation, looks. She looks like a woman. Or she looks like a man. Or he looks transgressing. Or it looks ambiguous. Or they have concealed their look entirely. It tells us nothing about how the character views herself, only how others view her. So much of play in Apocalypse World is designed to imitate literature and cinema, and that approach is laid out for us from the moment we start building our character thanks to these lists. And since I process things by repeating them, I want to restate something else Rob said in response to yesterday’s post about names. One of the themes running through Apocalypse World are limited choices, for all the players, MC included. This theme of limited choices ties directly into the theme of scarcity. How scarce are things in Apocalypse World? You have twenty names to choose from, that’s how scarce. You have five types of clothing to choose from, that’s how scarce. And as +Alfred Rudzki pointed out, introducing the theme of choice and picking-from-lists in the very first thing you do as a player acts as a kind of primer for the players. We’re into the Playbooks. Let’s talk names.
I love that each playbook has a list of possible names. No fooling. The lists serve a number of purposes. First, they tell us about Apocalypse World (the world itself, not the game). 50 years after the apocalypse, we are in an in-between place. The traditional names of old are still hanging on, but newer names have taken hold as well. Kim, Scarlet, Smith, Francois, and Julia are all still viable, but mixed in with them are Jonker, Juck, Shit head, Inch, Uncle, and Sword. Words have come unglued from their meaning and everything is fair game. The list of names tell us about that cultural world. Second, the name lists make for a quick and easy way to get moving on your character. A lot of Apocalypse World (the game itself, not the world) is designed to discover your character as you play. Grab a name with flavor and implications from the list and figure out through play why this guy seemed, for example, like a Jonker to you. Third, if you insist on creating your own name, the list of names lets you place yourself in the same tonal and referential ballpark. Fourth, the lists together create a giant pool of names from which the MC can draw when creating NPCs. Fifth, because Apocalypse World is a popular game and played by so many people, the lists create a set of alternate universes in which versions of these characters are running around in their own apocalypses. How many versions of Bish the Angel are saving their comrades? How many versions of Cybelle the Brainer are creeping people out? And lord knows how many hundreds of Dremmers and Rolfballs are causing trouble. I have no idea if this was a design consideration, but it is certainly a cool effect all the same. Sixth, . . . okay, I don’t have a sixth, but I feel like there are a sixth through a ninth out there, so if you’ve got ‘em, throw them in. Before we move on to the playbooks themselves, let’s look one more time at the overview of the different characters that precedes the playbooks (16-21). Last time, I focused on the way that characters are setting, but this time I’m interested in the italicized text that comes after each description, what I’m calling play advice.
This play advice is new to the 2nd edition and a fantastic addition. Let’s look at the play advice for the Skinner as our starting point: *Skinners are pure hot. They’re entirely social and they have great, directly manipulative moves, play a skinner if you want to be unignorable. Warning: skinners have the tools but unlike hardholders, choppers, and hocuses, they don’t have a steady influx of motivation. You’ll have most fun if you can roll your own.* All the advice blurbs follow this basic format. There’s a one or two sentence summary, a “play a __ if” construction, and a “Warning.” So altogether, after reading the section you know who the characters are, why you might want to play them, and what you should be aware of when you do play them—that’s who, why, and how: everything you need to know. What I have labeled as the “how” here is actually more about being aware of the narrative pressure points for each playbook. Apocalypse World is driven entirely by the players and what they choose to have their characters do, so it is more important than ever that the setting and the playbooks have built in sources of drama where the world will lean in on the characters and the characters are forced to push back or yield. In many playbooks, the source of narrative pressure is apparent. The Chopper, for example, is warned that “externalizing your power means drama. Expect drama.” The Hardholder is told, “don’t be a hardholder unless you want the burdens.” The hocus: “things are going to come looking for you. Being a cult leader means having to deal with your fucking cult.” The Maestro D’: “If you want to be sexier than an hardholder, with fewer obligations and less shit to deal with, play a maestro d’. Warning: fewer obligations and less shit, not none and none.” In all these cases, selecting a playbook means accepting (and ideally being excited about) the dramatic narrative structure that comes with it. In fact, ideally you are choosing that character because of the dramatic narrative structure that comes with it. In cases like the Skinner, the playbook might suggest possible narrative directions, but the external pressures are not nearly as apparent. That’s when the text suggests an angle to pursue. The Skinner is told, you have all the skills, now find your own goal and use those talents to make it happen. The Savvyhead is advised, “your workspace depends on resources, and lots of them, so make friends with everyone you can.” The Gunlugger is warned that “[i]interesting relationships can keep you in the scene” when there’s no fighting. The driver: “your loose ties can accidentally keep you out of the action. Commit to the other characters to stay in play.” The Brainer: “you’ll be happiest is somebody wants to have sex with you even though you’re a brainer. Angle for that if you can.” The Angel is advised: “Make interesting relationships so you’ll stay relevant” when nobody needs healing. In a game in which the MC is forbidden from creating anything resembling a plot, the thrust of the story falls on the shoulders of the players. You have the freedom to make the story whatever you want; the flip side of that is that you have the obligation to actively create the story through your actions. Don’t whinge if your character isn’t doing anything important; in AW, that’s your job. The final element of the play advice is the note of comparison. We saw it above with the Maestro D’: she’s who you want to be if you like the hardholder but want to be a sexier figure without all the responsibilities. The Battlebabe is warned, “you might find that you are better at making trouble than getting out of it. If you want to play the baddest ass, play a gunlugger instead.” Thinking about playing the Chopper? “If you want weight to throw around, play a chopper—but if you want to be really in charge, play a hardholder instead.” The text invites you to consider what attracts you to the dramatic content of this character, and points you to the other playbooks that offer similar possibilities to help you fine tune what you are looking for. The whole section is supremely helpful and a fantastic way to excite you about the playbooks you are about to dive into. Like every other part of the text that we have looked at so far, there is a ton of valuable information delivered with both style and concision. I lied when I said in my 2nd post of this collection that the 8 sentences that open Apocalypse World make up the entirety of its discussion of setting. The thing that I overlooked then is the important point that characters are setting. A list of possible characters in any RPG is itself a note on the setting of the game. That list says, “these are the things you encounter in this world.” For example, let’s look at the overview of the Angel:
When you’re lying in the dust of Apocalypse World guts aspilled, for whom do you pray? The gods? They’re long gone. Your beloved comrades? Fuckers all, or you wouldn’t be here to begin with. Your precious old mother? She’s a darling but she can’t put an intestine back inside so it’ll stay. No, you pray for some grinning kid or veteran or just someone with a heartshocker and a hand with sutures and a 6-pack of morphine. And when that someone comes, that’s an angel. This tells us a ton about the world of the game. First we know that there are medics in this world and that they are angels. We know that this is a violent world, where you are likely to have your “guts aspilled.” We know that religion is not a big source of comfort in this world (“The gods? They’re long gone”). We know that this is a world of betrayal (“Your beloved comrades? Fuckers all). We know that this is a world with heartshockers and one in which morphine comes in 6-packs. Brainers tell us that there are “weird psycho psychic mindfucks” in Apocalypse World. Choppers tell us that “the Golden Age Past did leave us two things, enough gasoline, enough bullets.” This is a land with Bikers, gangs, and plenty of ammunition. Drivers tell us that “the infrastructure of the Golden Age tore apart. Roads heaved and split. Lines of life and communication shattered. Cities, cut off from one another raged like smashed anthills, then burned, then fell.” Gunluggers tell us that “Apocalypse World is a mean, ugly, violent place. Law and society have broken down completely. What’s yours is yours only while you can hold it in your hands. There’s no peace. There’s no stability but what you carve, inch by inch, out of the concrete and dirt, and then defend with murder and blood.” Hardholders tell us that “there is no government, no society” here, and that the hardhold is the unit of social organization, that “anyone with a concrete compound and a gang of gunluggers can claim the title” of hardholder. Hocuses tell us cults have replaced organized religions as we understand them, and that the best working theory “is that these weird hocus fuckers, when they say ‘the gods,’ what they really mean is the miasma left over from the explosion of psychic hate and desperation that gave Apocalypse World its birth.” Maestro D’s tell us that there are establishments in Apocalypse World, though establishments unlike those we have today. Savvyheads tell us that there are technicians who tap into the psychic maelstrom to do their magic. Skinners tell us that “even in the filth of Apocalypse World, there’s food that isn’t death on a spit, music that isn’t shrieking hyenas, thoughts that aren’t afraid, bodies that aren’t used meat, sex that isn’t rutting, dancing that’s real.” We know, in short, what religion is like, what government is like, what transportation is available, what kinds of money-making opportunities there are, what kinds of weaponry and gangs here are, how people interact with the psychic maelstrom, and that there is still something resembling hope. Characters are setting and setting determines what characters are possible. If you keep out certain playbooks in your game of AW, you might be saying that these things don’t exist in our Apocalypse World. I love that this quick overview of the characters (pages 16-21) precedes the full playbooks so that you, the reader, can understand the scope of the world in which each individual playbook exists. To top it all off, the writing is sharp and amusing, and the text reinforces the tone of the game. This is a part of the book I have come back to enjoy many time over. And with this entry, Beloved, we conclude “The Basics” chapter. You’ve read the overview of the game by this point and have a sense for the setting, the basic mechanic of moves, the stats that define a character, the nature of gear and crap, how harm and healing are tracked, the things that are incentivized in character improvement, and the general structure of play at the 30,000-foot level. Now we get “Why to Play” (page 14). I love the way each item builds off the item before it:
One: Because the characters are fucking hot. Two: Because hot as they are, the characters are best and hottest when you put them together. Lovers, rivals, friends, enemies, blood and sex—that’s the good shit. Items one and two are about the characters you’ll play. Each individual character is hot (let’s remember our definition from “The Stats”: “attractive, subtle, gracious, sexy, beautiful, inspiring, exciting—they will seduce and manipulate you!), but the sparks of the game start flying when the characters have relationships and history. The characters are not a party of adventurers off to accomplish a common goal—things here are going to get messy, and that messiness is part of the point. Three: Because the characters are together against a horrific world. They’re carving out their little space of hope and freedom in the filth and violence, and they’re trying to hold onto it. Do they have it in them? What are they going to have to do to hold it together? Are they prepared, tough enough, strong enough and willing? Item three brings in the post-apocalyptic setting and places the messiness of those relationships into the context of the larger world in which they exist. While there will be friction between the characters, the true antagonism of our stories will come from the outside. Four: Because they’re together, sure, but they’re desperate and they’re under a lot of pressure. If there’s not enough to go around (and is there ever?), who’ll stick together and who’ll turn on whom? Who do you trust, and who should you trust, and what if you get it wrong? Item four is my favorite for the way it brings items two and three together. You can’t live in a world of scarcity and not have that impact your personal relationships. We were already promised that things would be messy, and even as our characters fight together against the apocalypse world, the corruption and need can’t help but infect our home group. The possibility of betrayal will always cast a shadow over the group. The story is the characters and the characters are the story; the characters impact the world and the world impacts the characters. Five: Because there’s something really wrong with the world, and I don’t know what it is. The world wasn’t always like this, blasted and brutal. There wasn’t always a psychic maelstrom howling just out of your perception, waiting for you to open your brain so that it can rush in. Who fucked the world up, and how? Is there a way back? A way forward? If anybody’s going to ever find out, it’s you and your characters. Item five then goes one step beyond the physical world into the psychic maelstrom. In doing so, it points to a thematic possibility in play. Can we piece together through play what brought humanity to this state? And is there a way out of this mess? Not a lot of instances of play will go there, but it’s a fascinating option. The last three points are full of questions, what will later be called Stakes. These are the things we will be playing to find out in any given game of Apocalypse World. The specifics of the questions will change because AW grounds itself in the particular characters fighting for existence in their particular post-apocalyptic world, but the conflict will almost always be instigated and propelled by the limited resources over which they fight. These questions both stir our imaginations now and exemplify what we will be asking ourselves in just about every game. It’s a clever send off into the main body of the text. That’s why. Yeah, that’s why. If none of that gets your juices flowing, then this is not the game for you. As a side note, this is the first time that there is swearing in the book, which of course is a common—even defining—feature of the text. There is an element of fair warning to this, I think. I know that some readers are turned off by the authors’ tone, but I love it. To me, it walks the line between reflecting the subject matter and being rewarding in its own right. To me—and again this is all a matter of aesthetics—Vincent does an amazing job of being simultaneously poetic and direct, explanatory and emotive. The swearing also warns that this is an adult game dealing with adult content and adult themes. New to the 2nd edition is the inclusion of the short section “Timeline of Play” to the opening chapter of Apocalypse World: “The Basics” (page 13). Here’s our text:
Pre-play prep: Read through this book, download and print the playbooks and ref sheets, and daydream some apocalyptica. The 1st Session: Lead the players through character creation and begin play. Get to know the characters and their world, especially where their lives are unstable, tenuous, and unpredictable. Create threats. Subsequent Sessions: Escalate and build. Daydream more apocalyptica. Push the situation, following the logic of your threats, to its conclusion. This is inarguably an excellent addition to a chapter designed to lay out the backbone of the game and to introduce the general scope of both the rulebook and play itself. The heart of prep (other than knowing the rules and printing out the necessary materials) is thinking about cool apocalyptic details. “Daydream” is a wonderful word for it because it communicates a sense of play and leisure. It doesn’t command you to watch movies, read books, find pictures online, and write up some background material—all of that is work. No, you just need to daydream—prime the pump of your imagination and find some cool things lurking in the back of your brain so you can bring them to the table. It may be the Platonic ideal of prep, but I dig it. The overview of the first session is the first time it’s made clear that the plot of this game is created at the table rather than prepared ahead of time. Hell, you don’t even have an inciting incident or set piece prepared according to the rules laid out here. Instead, play is about exploration of the characters themselves, “where their lives are unstable, tenuous, and unpredictable.” You are watching the characters and poking and prodding them to see how they act and where they are susceptible to drama. Character will be revealed through decisions and actions, so make them decide and act and compare who they think they are to whom they really are. Everything comes from the particular characters at your particular table. After that first session, the goal is simple: “Escalate and build” and “[p]ush the situation.” “Build” is an important word because Apocalypse World is about consequences, about every action and decision building upon the fallout from the last set of decisions and actions. Equally important is the use of the word “conclusion.” AW is not about playing characters until the playbooks turn yellow with age. It’s about creating a complete story with not only a beginning and a middle but also an end. The themes and concerns that have been building from the first session don’t mean anything if the arc is not brought to a conclusion. Not a word is wasted. The section is short and straight-forward, but it provides a lot of details about the nature of the game and how the stories it prompts are born, evolve, and come to a rest. Today we are looking at the antepenultimate section of “The Basics” chapter in the 2nd Edition of Apocalypse World: “Character Improvement” (page 13)
A player marks experience—fills in one of the little experience bubbles on her character sheet—under three circumstances in play. First is when she rolls one of her two highlighted stats. Second is when her Hx with someone goes to +4 or to -3. Third is when a move tells her to. When a player marks her fifth experience bubble, she improves her character. Toward the back of each playbook are the rules for that character’s improvement: she can choose new moves, sometimes get a gang or holding or whatever, improve her stats, things like that. When she improves, she erases all her little experience bubbles and starts over at 0. Once a character’s improved 5 times, as MC you’ll open new options for her. See the ungiven future section of the improvement chapter for details, page 262. Before getting to the “three circumstances in play” by which experience is gained, let me first say that I love the phrase “mark experience.” We are of course literally marking the playbook in the appropriate bubble, but mark has that secondary meaning of “to take careful note of,” as in “mark my words.” Yes, you are putting a mark on a piece of paper, but there is a subtle command to observe and appreciate that experience gained. Now, the two reliable ways to gain experience in AW are to 1) take an action using a highlighted stat, and 2) to turn over your Hx with someone by going to +4 or -3. In the first case, you are interacting with your fellow players, and in the second case, your character is interacting with her fellow characters. Apocalypse World is explicitly about the community formed by the PCs and the shared experience of the players, and both of these parts of the reward system reinforce that. Highlighting stats (which the Bakers connect to keys in Clinton Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday and to fan mail in Matt Wilson’s Primetime Adventures (see Ludography, page 290)) is about each of us saying about the other, “I want to see your character engage in these kinds of activities.” I think your character is awesome, and I want to see her manipulate and seduce others, etc. And Hx (which owes a debt to the trust mechanic in Timothy Kleinart’s The Mountain Witch) is a measure of how well our characters know each other and share past experiences. We are rewarded for getting our characters into each other’s business and we are encouraged to play our characters with the audience of the other players in mind. Even the third circumstance for experience gain - moves telling us to mark experience - are often the result of our characters interacting with each other, such as being manipulated by another PC and getting the reward for doing what they want. We will look later at what “improvement” means when we look at the playbooks (since, as we've noted before, everything the player needs to play is located in those playbooks.) Experience is as much of a pacing mechanism in AW as anything else, I think. There are not a lot of ways the change your character’s Hx with another character, but it does happen at least once per session, with the end of session move. Oftener, you will mark experience for rolling on one of your highlighted stats. So the reward system here encourages play behavior and narrative elements (Hx) while allowing the characters to progress in power and narrative abilities (new moves) at a reasonable rate. The final paragraph has two interesting elements. The first is the wonderful word “ungiven.” To me, it means on the one hand that no one gave you this future, that this is a future you fought for and one. On the other hand, the second meaning (because there is always a second meaning) is that this future is the opposite of being a given, or a sure thing. This future is not a given. In the harsh landscape of want and need, most lives are short and brutal without a future at all. The second element is the odd phrasing, “as MC you’ll open new options for her.” This one I don’t get at all. The ungiven future is a player’s right regardless of your role as the MC, so why is the MC given any agency in this sentence? You don’t open the options at all, do you? Am I missing some element of play or rules here that make the MC responsible for those additional paths being available to the other players? Today we’re talking about “Harm and Healing” (pages 12-13)
When a character gets hurt, the player marks segments in her harm countdown clock. Mark one full segment for each 1-harm, starting with the segment 12:00 to 3:00. Typically, when a character takes harm, it’s equal to the harm rating of the weapon, attack, or mishap, minus the armor rating of the character’s armor. This number—harm minus armor—is called “harm as established.” Harm before 6:00 heals automatically with time. Harm after 9:00 gets worse with time, unless stabilized. If the player marks the segment 11:00 to 12:00, the character’s life has become untenable. When a character’s life becomes untenable, the player has to choose how to continue. Death is one option, but there are others. Angels are all about healing and stabilizing harm. The first thing to note is that harm is tracked via the countdown clock. Functionally, the clock is the same as saying that each characters has 6 hit points, but several things are gained by giving the harm track the form of the countdown clock. First, there is the important thematic connection to the fear of nuclear holocaust in the ‘80s, as explained on page 293. Additionally, the clock reappears as a way to track Threats, making the clock a recurring motif. (The clock also appeared as an optional technique in battles in the 1st edition, but neither the clock nor the technique made it into the 2nd edition.) Second, the countdown clock makes the crisis point visible and palpable. It provides drama in its very structure. The first 45 minutes of the clock are these large, leisurely segments, but as soon as you hit 9:00 you can see at a glance that shit is getting real, real fast. If I were to write the numbers 1-6 on a page and say that nothing bad happens with the first three injuries (or events, if we’re dealing with a threat), but everything ramps up for the final three injuries, you might understand that intellectually, but the equal weight given to each number on the page belies my words. The clock is able to make the dramatic rhythm visible. The second thing to note is how differently AW uses harm than many other games use hit points. In a lot of games, hit points are a character resource that increases with advancement. The function of harm--which of course never increases with improvement--is not as a resource, but as a narrative cue: “Harm before 6:00 heals automatically with time. Harm after 9:00 gets worse with time, unless stabilized.” What is important to the game and its players is how harm affects the narrative, so the important line is that moment when the injuries become critical to the story, i.e. when they start getting worse and demand attention. As with hit points in other games, the damage is mechanically abstract, but unlike those other games, that tipping point in the injury helps the players create the fiction surrounding the harm. At that point, the countdown clock truly earns its name and we are counting down the moments to when the character’s life becomes untenable. As a sidenote, damn I love the word “untenable” here. The word means not able to be defended and not able to be occupied. You have passed the point of defending this life, and in the case of a player choosing either death or a new playbook, the character will no longer occupy the current playbook. So both as a visual clock and as a narrative cue, the harm countdown clock is all about facilitating narrative and instilling drama into the matters of life and death in Apocalypse World. |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
July 2020
Categories |
RSS Feed