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Marie practically keeps house in the world’s psychic maelstrom. She thinks ghosts live in there and maybe she’s right. She goes in there to consult with them, and (unusually) misses the roll. I’m tempted to capture her, but instead for my hard move I decide to announce future badness—not often a hard move, but in this case it counts. We play out her conversation with the ghosts, but they aren’t helpful and she comes out frustrated. “Roark’s there,” I say. “He looks happy, his face has this look of wonder on it. ‘Marie!’ he says. ‘Marie, such a gift you’ve given me!’” “I what?” she says. “‘Roark, are you okay?’” “‘I’m not Roark,’” I say, and not in Roark’s voice. “‘It’s me, Monk!’” (149)
As usual, we begin with the missed roll. There are several things I love here. I love the phrase “keeps house”; it suggests that Marie not only lives in the world’s psychic maelstrom a large portion of the time, but that she keeps things orderly in there, cleaning in the corners, stacking the magazines, and wiping down the counters. I love the uncertainty in the second sentence of “thinks” and “maybe she’s right.” Do ghosts live in the world’s psychic maelstrom, or is that just how her brain interprets what she encounters there? The psychic maelstrom is a place of fuckery and bloody fingerprints, so players can only say how they experience and perceive their encounters in it, and the MC is free – no, practically ordered – to mess with those perceptions. I love the phrase “goes in” to describe Marie’s opening her brain, that for her it is a physical entrance into the in-between space of the world’s psychic maelstrom. And I love that the MC is “tempted to capture her.” This last one is a reminder that all the MC moves are still in play when a character opens her brain. What would being captured in the psychic maelstrom look like? What would it look like to the people standing beside Marie’s body in the world of the game? If you are interested in the hardness of this move, I discuss it further in post number 90. Bran has this scheme to reboot Jeanette’s brain and he’s trying to figure out if it can possibly work. As part of his research, he opens his brain, and hits with a 9. I tell him that the world’s psychic maelstrom is of the opinion not only that it will work, but that it’s a really great idea. “All you see is the world’s psychic maelstrom’s beatific and radiant smile,” I say. “Oh by the way, whose face is the world’s psychic maelstrom wearing?” “Um,” Bran’s player says. “It’s mine” (149). You had me at “reboot Jeanette’s brain.” I want in that game. Of course a weak hit is supposed to result in an impression, and that impression here is that “it’s a really great idea,” which I love because you can practically see the players exchanging quick glances hear the nervous laughter in response to this declaration. Bran just wanted to know if it could be done; that the world’s psychic maelstrom is excited about the effort is enough to give anyone pause. The question here is wonderful too because it builds off a detail of the maelstrom’s radiant smile, which presumably popped into the MCs head during play. What would that look like? It’d need a face to do that, yeah? Whose face? Ask Bran’s player because no matter what the player answer tells us something about Bran and the psychic maelstrom and the relationship between the two, and it does all that while creating concrete and gripping fiction. Keeler, against every instinct in her body and soul, opens her brain once to the world’s psychic maelstrom, because she’s once-in-a-lifetime desperate. She hits with a 10. I tell her that the vultures are circling and they aren’t real, but they all have the faces of Tum Tum. “Wait, what?” she says. “Tum Tum’s behind this shit? God damn it.” “One of the vultures lands in front of you,” I say. “It croaks out, ‘I’ll take a message for you.’ What message do you give it, and who do you want it to take it to?” (149-150) What I love about all of these examples is that they inspire the MC to have fun with the fictional possibilities that the world’s psychic maelstrom opens up. The psychic maelstrom can speak to the characters in dream-like imagery in any tone desired. The examples act as little seeds for the reader to churn into the soil of their imaginations for when they are daydreaming up apocalyptica. Here, the vultures at first simply reveal Tum Tum’s involvement, which seems to give Keeler’s character exactly what she was looking for. But then the MC decides to give Keeler’s player something more for her strong hit and uses what she has already created – the vultures – to give the character a chance to send a message. The rules surrounding the world’s psychic maelstrom are designed to be pretty slim so that it can be whatever your story needs it to be. The designers cannot anticipate and do not wish to restrict what you might do with the psychic maelstrom in your fiction, so the text sets up that it exists, that is related to the apocalypse, and that it is an essential threat for your PCs. But whereas all the other threats are restricted by their kind and their impulses, the psychic maelstrom is left wide open. The text prompts you with a question, not a command: “what kind of threat is the world’s psychic maelstrom?” Think about it. Wonder about it. See where the fiction and the play take you. As long as it is a threat, you’re doing it right. These examples act as permission to follow the fiction where it goes and use the world’s psychic maelstrom however you would like. They show us that there are no limits to what you can do with the infinite playground of the world’s psychic maelstrom as long as you barf forth apocalyptica, respond with fuckery, and get those bloody fingerprints over everything that passes through your hands.
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As to the good details versus the impressions, look to your threats to provide them. The “you already know all there is to know” clause is there, but I’ve never used it and I hope you never do too.
Open your brain is unique in that it asks the MC to have at her fingertips “something new and interesting” to say about any given situation or topic that the characters might open their brains to. Most moves call on the MC to react to specific fictional prompts, but opening your brain puts the MC on the spot. Thankfully, Apocalypse World might ask a lot from its players but it always provides the tools to do the job right. In this case, your threats preparation assures you always have something to say. Your threat maps, your threat countdowns, your stakes questions, and your general “I wonder” questions give you a whole list of things to draw from to tell the players either what they asked for, something that is interesting to you, or something that they need to know if only they knew to ask. A fleshed out threat map and an inquisitive MC with an evergrowing list of stakes and things to wonder about will rarely find themselves in a position of having nothing to say, or not knowing something new and interesting. If you have failed to do your prep or if the player has asked about a topic entirely off your threat map, you can of course always make things up and work that into your prep before the next session. The game is designed to be flexible enough for that as well. Finally, you are given an out if your prep is incomplete and your brain is sluggish; you can say “you already know all there is to know.” I love both that the option is given and that the hope that you never use it is expressed. It makes me think of something Vincent says in one of his blogs: “In my imagination, a rule is like if you take a nail and scratch a line in dry dirt, and what people actually do is like where the water actually runs. Some water will run down the line you scratched, because you scratched it. Other water will run down the line you scratched but would have run there even if you hadn't. Other water will go wherever it goes. And (and here this picture breaks down, now I'm talking about bizarro-world water) some water will respond perversely to your line, bouncing off of it or testing its limits or sliding around it or flowing in the opposite direction out of plain orneriness” (http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/430). That water is going to run where it will, and it seems useless to tell the water it cannot run down the “I have nothing to say about this” path since some MC somewhere will inevitably feel the desire to say it. So the Bakers have scratched their line in the dirt to accommodate those fringe cases. The secret to a good set of rules of course is to make the players want to follow them, to make it so that following your rules is more rewarding than not following them. And that’s certainly what is going on here with open your brain. As the MC, it’s fun to have a way to tell the other players about the cool things happening off screen with your threats, and it’s fun to try to make the other players gasp or groan with some cool revelation that they had been ignoring or hiding from. The fact is, it is more fun to draw something from your prep or to make something up than it is to say, “I’ve got nothing. You already know all there is to know.” Were that clause not there, I suspect some players would resent its absence and want to buck against the design “out of plain orneriness,” so including the clause is a psychological move. To then say “I hope you never do too” is equally psychological in that it suggests you’ll be letting someone down if you do. You’ll be letting your player down, you’ll be letting yourself down, you’ll be letting your story down, and you’ll be letting the designers down. It’s a pretty brilliant inclusion. I concluded my last post by observing that the world’s psychic maelstrom occupies an interesting place in the game in that it is simultaneously unnecessary to play with (by which I mean the game functions fully if the maelstrom is never accessed or explored) and vital to the nature and feel of Apocalypse World as created in the text of the rule book. Vincent and Meguey have said in several different interviews that the first thing Vincent wrote when starting on Apocalypse World was the Brainer playbook and the descriptive blurb that introduces the Brainer: “Brainers are the weird psycho psychic mindfucks of Apocalypse World. They have brain control, puppet strings, creepy hearts, dead souls, and eyes like broken things. They stand in your peripheral vision and whisper into your head, staring. They clamp lenses over your eyes and read your secrets” (17). The world’s psychic maelstrom is central to the creative vision of Apocalypse World, so let’s take a moment to look at it up close.
Let’s start by breaking down the phrase itself. You’ll notice that for the most part I’ve been using the full phrase “world’s psychic maelstrom” without abbreviating it; that’s because it’s seldom abbreviated in the book, which tells us that the entirety of the phrase is important. First, it’s a maelstrom. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a maelstrom as “a powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius” and “something resembling a maelstrom in turbulence.” Cool. The maelstrom is chaotic and turbulent, and I love the idea that it is “sucking in objects within a given radius,” the “given radius” being all those who open their brains to it, and “objects” being the thoughts, memories, and mental space of those same people. Remember that the maelstrom is described as always being eager to flood the brains that are opened to it (“waiting for you to open your brain so that it can rush in” (14)), and that the maelstrom is one of your “essential threats” (107). If your version of the maelstrom is not “sucking in objects,” it is at least a danger to the PCs that cannot be ignored without risk. Second, the maelstrom is psychic in nature. Let’s return to Merriam-Webster and see that psychic is defined as “lying outside the sphere of physical science or knowledge : immaterial, moral, or spiritual in origin or force” and “of or related to the psyche,” the psyche being the soul or personality of an individual. The text of Apocalypse World points to this definition when it instructs you to “ask questions about the characters’ . . . psyches, souls” (148). This isn’t just about mental powers and supernatural chaos; it’s about moral and spiritual turbulence. Finally, the psychic maelstrom is “the world’s.” That little possessive says that the moral and spiritual turbulence hovering just on the edge of perception is unique to our world within the game. This isn’t some cosmic level psychic maelstrom; it’s specific to this place and this time. Either the moral and spiritual turbulence brought about the apocalypse, or the maelstrom was born from the even that shattered our world, but either way, it’s ours. As the text says, “It caused the apocalypse, or else the apocalypse caused it, nobody knows” (71). I have been tempted several times to refer to the maelstrom as “otherworldly,” but the very title reminds us that it is not otherworldly, that it is uniquely of this world. (I feel like there is also a pun in the homophones of “world” and “whirled” as it is paired with maelstrom, but perhaps that is going a step too far. And writing that makes me want to puzzle over the very title of the game, which is a strange one. I have not read anything about the how the Bakers settled on the title Apocalypse World and why. Would be interesting to know, no?) All together, then, the world’s psychic maelstrom is the moral and spiritual turbulence that is part and parcel of the physical apocalypse in whose remnants our characters struggle. And of course, this moral and spiritual turbulence is at the thematic center of the game and what we are playing to find out, even if we as players have never thought about it like that. It is, after all, the fifth reason we are given for why we should play this game: “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” (8). Even if your characters never struggle with those big questions, and even if they don’t often open their brains to the world’s psychic maelstrom, it’s there all the same, and it impacts the nature of the apocalypse and the world the players play in. Just as the sex moves say something about the characters even if the moves are never triggered, the presence of the world’s psychic maelstrom says something specific about this post-apocalyptic world even if open your brain is never triggered. The want and shortages of this world are not just the physical things that keep us alive – shelter, food, protection, raw material – they are the moral and spiritual things as well, like justice, love, support, camaraderie. Like humanity in a game of Sorcerer, the nature of the world’s psychic maelstrom is unique to each game of Apocalypse World, and the nature of the world’s psychic maelstrom is intimately bound up with the specific themes of that specific game. Unlike humanity in Sorcerer, the nature of the world’s psychic maelstrom is created during play rather than from the outset of the game. The rulebook speaks of the maelstrom only in vague terms, and the MC is not prompted to come to the table with a prepared notion. Moreover, no one person can dictate what the nature of that game’s world’s psychic maelstrom is because it is developed through questions as characters open their brain. The players each get their say, and the MC gets to put her bloody fingerprints and fuckery over the whole thing. The maelstrom can even mean and be different things to the different character, so that a unique psychic maelstrom develops from the interactions of all the players so that the unique themes of the game are entirely and unavoidably emergent through play. It’s been over a month since my last post and I’ve been itching to get back to it! Partly I’ve been swamped with work, partly I’ve been distracted by all the prep that went into my son’s graduation from high school this past week, and partly I’ve been putting this off because I’m afraid I won’t do justice to the topic of the world’s psychic maelstrom in the next couple of posts.
Let’s go ahead and get the text for the move out there: When you_ open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom_, roll+weird. On a hit, the MC tells you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two; answer them. On a 10+, the MC gives you good detail. On a 7–9, the MC gives you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the MC will tell you that. On a miss, be prepared for the worst (148). The world’s psychic maelstrom has been mentioned several times up to this point in the text, but how the maelstrom affects the game mechanically has been unclear. The first thing to note is that you have to actively “open your brain” to gain access to the world’s psychic maelstrom. We know that it is always “[a]t the limits of perception . . . howling, everpresent” (8), but it cannot penetrate your thoughts without your inviting it in like a vampire. Once it is in, the exchange is a two-way affair; you give a little and you get a little. Technically, the move says the MC “might” ask you a question or two, but come on, it’d be a sad day if the MC didn’t. That two-way street is not without its risks. Let’s remember that the world’s psychic maelstrom is one of the “essential threats” that you start thinking about after the first session; and yet in spite of that, characters are supposed to willingly invite this threat into their heads? How does the game engineer that, especially since the only bait on that hooks is “something new and interesting”? The player will want to choose a topic, naturally. She’ll say “I open my brain about Tum Tum” or something. It’s fine to give her what she wants, much of the time—after all, you want everybody to be opening their brains, you don’t want to chase them away from it—but not all the time. Sometimes you should tell them about your favorite topic instead, and sometimes you should tell them what they need to know, if only they knew to ask. First, the game tempts you with information. You want to know more about something? All you have to do is open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom and you can have plenty of information at your fingertips! In this way, opening your brain is a third type of perception move, only it doesn’t rely on your sharp the way reading a sitch or a person does, and the conditions to meet the fictional trigger are easily met. This one you can do any time about anything. That’s an offer that is hard to pass up, even with a game like Apocalypse World that doesn’t rely on mysteries for its narrative oomph. The instruction for the MC is to “give her what she wants, much of the time” because you want to encourage players to open their brains as much as possible. Even when you aren’t giving her what she wants, you’re still telling her things that are interesting and new, whether it’s a thing that interest you or a thing that they should know. All in all, this paragraph makes it seem like a pretty good deal really. Remember to respond with fuckery and put your bloody fingerprints on it no matter what. Oh right! There’s the thing that makes this Apocalypse World and not Hey Neat I Have Psychic Powers World. Giving them what they want happily coexists with responding with fuckery and putting your bloody fingerprints over everything that comes out of the world’s psychic maelstrom. The second lure for players to want to trigger the move and access to the world’s psychic maelstrom is how cool the play is that results from the move: At first when you ask questions, they can be simply to establish facts and images, questions like “what’s the psychic maelstrom like for you?” and “how do you learn things from it?” As the game progresses, though, ask questions about the characters’ lives, pasts, psyches, souls. “Who was your first kiss? Tell about it.” “Are you happy?” “What’s the worst hurt you’ve suffered that you can’t remember?” “If you could take one conversation back, undo it, what would it be?” “If you were to kill Bran right this minute, how would you do it?” Make time for the players’ answers, and don’t let the players squirm out of them just because they never thought about it. “I know you don’t know who your first kiss was. Make it up!” For me, this is the real gold at the center of the move, those questions about the characters’ “lives, pasts, psyches, souls.” Open your brain provides a mechanized way to dig in to the quiet and often unseen parts of a character, parts that you might never have even thought of otherwise and that certainly could not become “true” in the fiction without an opportunity to make it officially part of the narrative. In another game, you might have reams of backstory for your character, but until it makes it into that shared fiction at the table, they are nothing more than ideas that guide the way you play. Because playbooks in Apocalypse World are designed to build characters quickly from physical cues and narrative abilities, the “lives, pasts, psyches” and “souls” of the character are left to be discovered in play. Some parts of your character you discover by the choices they make when faced with various challenges and problems; the rest is set up to be discovered by the probing fingers of the world’s psychic maelstrom. And look at those sample questions! They’re so personal and intimate! Are you happy? If you could take one conversation back, undo it, what would it be? Who was your first kiss? These are not casual exchanges you have with strangers you just met; these questions mirror the kinds of conversations you have with close friends or with people you wish to be close with in the small hours of the morning. The questions probe not just for “facts” about the character, but for the messy stuff of feelings, ambitions, and unspoken desires. Who doesn’t love to have those conversations?! And now you can have them with your fictional characters, building up their complex internal lives one small conversation at a time. Obviously, I’m not the only one who loves the fiction born from this move. Once the move is triggered and the power of the questions is witnessed at the table, many players are eager to trigger the move and see it triggered by other. It’s an organic and beautiful way to learn about the characters piece by piece, and because the human brain is always making connections, those little tidbits and stories are ripe for the players to tie into other elements of the fiction that have come before or are yet to come. The next paragraph from the text is all about these types of connections our big ol’ brains like to make, and it gives us the third incentive to trigger the move: the world’s psychic maelstrom offers a whole new depth to the stories you can tell and crises you can explore. Also take full advantage of the characters’ open brains to barf forth apocalyptica. What if there’s somebody in the maelstrom that they know? What if some part of the maelstrom stays inside their brain when they close it again? What if the maelstrom sweeps a certain key memory out of their brain while it’s in there, or gives them a brand new fresh one? Dealing with warlords, brutes, grotesques, and hostile landscapes is challenging enough, but the world’s psychic maelstrom provides a whole new axis for dangers in Apocalypse World. It gives the game a fourth dimension beyond the physical world of want and suffering, and it invites you as players to think of all the ways that the maelstrom can play with the minds, perceptions, memories, and pasts of the characters. And like all the other questions you ask yourself when MCing the game, these are questions that you don’t want to know the answers to beforehand. What happens if some part of the maelstrom stays inside their brains when they close it again? Play it out and see, together. What if the maelstrom swaps out old memories for new? Make it happen and explore the results, together. The game gives you permission, urges you in fact, to dive into the unknown with the apocalyptica you barf forth. The nature of open your brain puts the move in the interesting position of being simultaneously unnecessary for successful play - in the sense that characters can do everything they need to do without ever opening their brain – while being vital to the nature of Apocalypse World and the feel of the game. A game of Apocalypse World that ignores the world’s psychic maelstrom would be a hobbled and deflated one. |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
July 2020
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