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This is it. We’re at the end of the MC section. Up to this point, we have read all the rules for the MC when conducting her part of the conversation, always focusing on what the MC says. What you say, when you say it, what you need to achieve with you speak—all the rules in the section are about guiding the conversation. But this section isn’t “A Few More Things to Say”; it’s “A Few More Things to Do.” :
These aren’t principles or moves. They’re just good practice and I recommend them. In traditional RPGs, recommended “good practice” is pretty much the entirety of the GM section. In Apocalypse World, you get 8 short paragraphs. But the question is, why are they recommendations instead of rules? Let’s look at them and see. Make maps like anything. Have the players make maps like anything too. And sketches, and diagrams, and any kind of ephemera that seems good. Making maps can certainly be a part of the conversation. Sketches and diagrams can make Apocalypse World seem real. Such ephemera can follow what honesty demands and what your prep demands. In short, making maps can follow your agenda items and your principles, so why is it just a recommendation? Making maps is just another form of conversing, an additional way to ensure that the Shared Imagined Space is clearly defined. Some people will find helpful and others will find unnecessary, but nothing about the rules or the conversation requires the making of maps for the game to work. Maps do not interact with any other rules in the game. PC moves, MC moves, harm, threats, gear, character advancement—no system in the game requires maps, so there is no reason for the designer to insist on the practice. The next three recommendations are similar. They are all ways to enhance the conversation, particular approaches that let you achieve your agenda goals but that are not required to make the game run correctly because they don’t interact with any of the game’s system. Turn questions back on the asker or over to the group at large. ‘Good question, actually. What does the rag-waste outside the holding look like?’ Digress occasionally. Include details sometimes as though you were looking idly at a scene and some detail, something not at all the point, caught your attention. ‘She’s pinned rat furs to her wall. The pins are, like, souvenir push pins, the heads are tiny glass lenses with pictures of national monuments under them. Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial…’ Elide the action sometimes, and zoom in on its details other times. Play out a battle in precise and exacting detail, but in the middle of it say ‘so they keep you both pinned down there until nightfall.’ Sometimes pick one session up in the moments where the last left off, other times let days or weeks pass in between. If I were to write an advice book on MCing Pbta games, I’d title it “The Art of the Conversation.” That’s what these recommendations are, ways to make the conversation as interesting and compelling as possible. Specifically, these are conversational techniques that are desirable but cannot be mechanized. (Well, maybe they could be mechanized, but they aren’t in Apocalypse World.) This goes for moves, too. Making a dash under fire might mean crossing 3 meters of open ground in view of one of Dremmer’s snipers, it might mean crossing 100 meters of broken ground with his gang arrayed thereupon, it might mean crossing the whole damned burn flat with Dog Head and his grinning-dingo cannibals in pursuit. Let the moves expand and contract in time, all through the range from their smallest logical limit to their greatest. This recommendation is about how the moves can be used to cover small details or whole sets of actions in one roll, which is part of the magic of resolution systems that don’t rely on task-specific rolls. Making you aware of how you can use and interpret moves is important to do, and obviously belongs in this section. You don’t need to do this, but you are needlessly limiting the game if you don’t. The last two recommendations are different from the previous ones because following them will not help you meet your agenda goals or follow your principles: Go around the table. Over the course of a session, make sure that everybody gets some good dedicated screen time. ‘While this is going on, Dune, where are you? What are you doing?’ When interesting things are happening simultaneously, cut back and forth between them. Take breaks and take your time. Breaks are important, they let everybody reflect on what’s happened and plan a little about what their characters might do next. Little breaks in play when someone else’s character is on screen, longer play-stopping breaks for tea cigs or pee, breaks between sessions, even taking a whole session off now and then. A player worn out and at a loss now, after a break might have great ideas and enthusiasm. Better to call a break early, even, than to go past anyone’s endurance. Making sure everyone gets time in the spotlight does not make Apocalypse World seem real, make the characters’ lives not boring, or play to find out what happens. It is designed to make the players’ lives not boring. This advice is about directing the conversation. It is not about what you say but who you say it too. Similarly, taking breaks is about knowing when to pause or end the conversation. And that brings me back to where I started this post: the “Do” in the title to this section. Each of these items, even the ones focused on the conversation, are about things you can do as the MC to give everyone a shot at an awesome play experience. What can you do as an MC to make the conversation gripping and everyone at the table involved? What can you do to make the players’ moves reach their full potential? What can you do to make your part of the narrative full of surprises? These 8 things. That’s what you can do.
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The game’s rules give you things to say. When a player’s character goes aggro on someone and the player rolls 7–9, for instance, the rules give you a list of things to choose from. Choose one of them, and that’s what you say. Say it according to the principles as always. For instance, for they get the hell out of your way: “she dives into the mucky ditch and elbow-crawls away.” Or, for they give you what you want: “she puts the night-vision goggles down in front of you. ‘Fine, I didn’t realize you needed ’em so fucking bad,’ she says. ‘But don’t come over tonight, asshole, swear to god.’”
Your threat map gives you things to say, too. When a player’s character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, for instance, the rules might tell you to reveal something interesting. Something interesting? Look to your threat map: Joe’s Girl has joined the water cult, I’ll bet they didn’t know that. So say that, and of course say it according to the principles. Maybe “deep under the brain-howling, you come to hear … is it chanting? A list of people’s names, chanted over and over by a hundred subliminal voices. ‘Tum Tum … Gnarly … Fleece … Lala … Forner … Joe’s Girl … Shan …’” (Player: “wait, Joe’s Girl? Shit FUCK.”) Up until the discussion of the MC’s moves, the Master of Ceremonies chapter focuses on the ground rules for everything the MC says as her part of the conversation. Whatever the MC says, it has to accomplish at least one of the agenda items and satisfy what the principles, rules, honesty, and prep demand. Discussing the MC moves is the first time the text looks at the actual substance of the MC’s share of the conversation. But of course, the MC doesn’t just make moves or ask provocative questions; and that’s what the rest of this chapter is about. In this section, “Rules and Your Prep,” we look briefly at the MC’s conversational role when the PCs are making their moves. The key phrase in this passage is that elements of the game “give you things to say.” How comforting is that?! There’s a lot of pressure on the MC, and the game goes out of its way to never leave the MC high and dry for what tho say. Either the game will explicitly “give you things to say” or you can make a move, which is just another list of “things to say.” Stick to your agenda and principles and you’re good to go. But it’s not really just things the game gives you to say, is it? The game is designed to give you interesting, compelling, and dramatic things to say. For both the MC moves and the PC moves, your part of the conversation is guided by the rules to create exciting talk at the table. The examples in this passage, like the examples of the MC moves, exemplify the conversation created by the moves as much as they exemplify how the moves work from the MC’s perspective. Threats are referred to several times in this chapter. The “prep” that makes demands on us has plenty to do with threats, one of our MC moves is “make a threat move,” and here we learn that our threat map exists in part to give us “things to say.” I have already talked about how the threat map helps the MC say what honesty demands by working out in her prep along what trajectories different elements in the game world are travelling. What this passage drives home is that the threat map is a vital tool in the conversation to let us know what to say at all. In a recent interview with Jason Pitre, on his excellent podcast RPG Design PanelCast, episode 119, “Powered by the Apocalypse,” Meguey and Vincent Baker share a ton of thought-provoking insights. At one point, they are talking about the construction of PC moves, and Vincent says the following: “So one of those ghost moves allows you to ask the GM, ‘what does the ghost tell me?’ And I wouldn’t choose to use that move unless I was confident the GM would have an answer. Right? The GM has thought about it or can answer by gut or the GM is properly set up. . . . So that doesn’t put the GM in the uncomfortable spot of ‘I don’t know what this ghost tells . . . you!’” (0:48:44 -0:49:17). In light of this, we can see that the Open Your Brain move puts the MC in just such a spot, but the rules of threat maps supply you with the necessary material to answer the questions. It’s easy to think of the threats section as advice, a good way to organize your NPCs and storylines, but as we can see here, the game as written expects that prep work to be done in order to you to hold up your end of the conversation. A week or so ago, +William Nichols posted the following question: “What is necessary and appropriate to hack apocalypse world into a game wherein the characters are friends, and go on adventures together?” +Vincent Baker responded with: “1. Shared xp. 2. Collaboration moves, not seduce & manipulate and help or interfere. 3. GM prep that doesn't create pc-npc-pc triangles.”
That last one, number 3, didn’t sit right with me. PC-NPC-PC triangles are the best! Why would you ever NOT make those?! I let that rattle around in my brain for the past couple of days. What do PC-NPC relationships look like in different stories? That’s not a question I had ever asked myself before. It never occurred to me that they might look different in different stories or that that difference could be important information to translate into RPGs. But of course they do look different and that difference is important. Deadwood, Game of Thrones, The Shield, The Sopranos - these are the type of shows where the PCs and NPCs have triangulated relationships. We see scenes with all kinds of character-pairings that demonstrate to us all the facets of these characters. The different relationships are central to the drama and plot of these stories. But then there are shows like The X-Files and Star Trek. In those, the minor characters (which I am equating with NPCs) act pretty much the same no matter who they are with. Similarly, we don’t often get odd pairings of the major and minor characters in revealing scenes. The nature of those characters are set and displayed in ways other than through interactions with other characters. You can certainly play a Star Trek-like game with PC-NPC-PC triangles, but the flavor and feel will differ noticeably from the source material. That aspect of RPGs is not something I had ever considered. I’ve known of course that NPCs are always a valuable tool for the GM, but that they are differently shaped tools with different narrative purposes in different games – that is something I foolishly overlooked. Because the MC moves “aren’t technical terms or jargon,” there is no need to define them further; they mean exactly what they say. So instead of giving definitions, the Bakers gives examples of each move. What’s cool is that these are examples of the conversation created by these moves as much as they examples of the moves themselves.
For example, when showing what “Inflict harm (as established)” might be in play, the authors could have written: “this move can mean more than just having the players fill in a wedge on their harm clocks. If you send a warning to one player by having a nearby NPC gunned down, that is a kind of inflicting harm as well.” Instead, we get this: ”Oh Jesus, Audrey, they’ve got a sharpshooter above you. You find out about it when Mamo grunts and sits down hard, and doesn’t move again. What do you do?” (91) I think we can all agree that that is a bazillion times better than talking about what a move would look like. In the end, moves only exist in the conversation as things said by the MC, so there is no better way to discuss them. Moreover, the moves are the nexus for everything else that precedes them in this chapter. The moves are the things that the MC says, and as such they follow the agenda, the principles, and what must be always said. The examples demonstrate for us the coming together of all the MC’s requirements. In the example above, we see the principles in action. Apocalyptica is barfed forth in the harshness of the world. The MC addresses the character. The move is misdirected through the fiction. The move’s name is never spoken. Poor Mamo has been looked at through crosshairs. In the above example, we see that the MC says what the principles demand, potentially what her prep has demanded, and certainly what honesty demands. The MC is advised earlier in the chapter to “always be scrupulous, even generous with the truth. The players depend on you to give them real information they can really use about their characters’ surroundings, about what’s happening when and where” (81). Here we see that in action. Mamo doesn’t just hit the ground while the MC toys with Audrey to see if she can figure out what killed Mamo. The information that there is a sniper is given free and clear. That Mamo is dead and not just injured is given free and clear. That the sniper is above her is given free and clear. The drama is provided through the situation, not through the confusion the situation could cause. And in the example above, we see the agenda items have all been met. Apocalypse World is indeed made real; Audrey’s life is anything but boring; and the MC is playing to find out what happens. All of that is communicated through a single example. The aggregate of the examples puts into practice everything that has come before them. Oh, and of course the example above also shows that Mamo’s death is serving as the “set . . . up,” the “start to the action,” as moves are supposed to do. How hard the move is is a bit of mystery. On the one hand, Audrey wasn’t shot, but we don’t know how big and NPC Mamo was or how important Mamo was to Audrey. The MC might have intended this to be an incredibly hard and direct move, or it could have been little more than a warning shot. In a lot of ways, I feel like the examples are the breath of reassuring fresh air that comes at the end of the chapter. As MC, you’ve been ordered around, given lists of things to do and not to do, read over bullet points and warning and commands—and then it is all filtered down into a couple of lines of dialogue that lets you know this is no more complicated than saying these awesome things. The language is colloquial and familiar. It’s a way of saying, don’t sweat it. You’ve got this. At the same time, the examples are a sort of promise. Follow your principles, mind your agenda, and always say what honesty demands, and you will have exciting scenes, moments of intense drama, and great storytelling happening naturally and spontaneously at your table. 51. Today we are looking at the “guidelines for choosing your moves” in the MC section of Apocalypse World.
Here are guidelines for choosing your moves: Always choose a move that can follow logically from what’s going on in the game’s fiction. It doesn’t have to be the only one, or the most likely, but it does have to make at least some kind of sense (89). That the move must fit the fiction seems pretty obvious, but the bar here is set pretty low: “it does have to make at least some kind of sense.” What that low bar makes clear is that the move exists separate from the fiction as a thing unto itself, and moreover, that the move takes priority over the fiction. You need to clothe the move in sensible fiction, yes, but what comes first is the move, not the fiction. You do not, to continue the analogy, pick out an outfit and cram a move inside it. Of course, in actual play there is a mental back and forth between moves and fiction as you find the right one of each, but the text itself prioritizes the move. This makes sense by the rules of the game: while you can make a move that only makes “some kind of sense” in the fiction, you cannot say something that is great fiction but that is not a move (unless you are of course asking or answering a question). Generally, limit yourself to a move that’ll (a) set you up for a future harder move, and (b) give the players’ characters some opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its conclusion. However, when a player’s character hands you the perfect opportunity on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you like. It’s not the meaner the better, although mean is often good. Best is: make it irrevocable. When a player’s character makes a move and the player misses the roll, that’s the cleanest and clearest example there is of an opportunity on a plate. When you’ve been setting something up and it comes together without interference, that counts as an opportunity on a plate too. But again, unless a player’s character has handed you the opportunity, limit yourself to a move that sets up future moves, your own and the players’ characters’. These four paragraphs are all about the hardness and directness of your move. (While “soft” moves entered the vocabulary from the first games to use the Apocalypse World engine, AW itself does not use the word, and the Bakers felt no need to include it in the 2nd edition, so we’ll follow suit here.) The definition of a typical move is a great one: “A start to the action, not its conclusion.” It’s a little misleading because even the hardest move typically doesn’t end the action; after all, you still need to ask “what do you do?” no matter how hard and direct a move you make. That said, “a start to the action” refers to the dramatic build-up of a scene; the music is quickening and mounting because trouble’s at hand, but all the horns and cymbals have yet to come crashing down. The standard move should “set . . . up” further drama. Your move sets up two things, really. It sets up something nasty to befall the characters should they fail to act or fail in their action, and it sets up the characters to respond to your move and make moves of their own. It’s that nastiness being set up that comes to bear when a “perfect opportunity on a golden plate” presents itself. Such an opportunity comes in two forms: (1) a missed roll, and (2) the characters’ failure to interfere with what you have been setting up. If you make a move that suspends some nastiness over the character’s head, and she doesn’t address it, bring that nastiness on down. If she tries to address it and misses, bring it on down. But outside of those two possibilities, your moves should keep the characters responding and making moves of their own. The kinesis of that back and forth is the engine that drives the drama of play. That back and forth is then punctuated with (1) your hard and direct moves should they PCs miss, and (2) the consequential results of a PCs’ strong hit. The best thing to do when making your hard and direct move is to make it “irrevocable.” This is in keeping with the way Apocalypse World approaches narrative. Making your moves “irrevocable” follows the same line of thought that says “there are not status quos in Apocalypse World.” Making a move that’s “irrevocable” is part of making successes “consequential” and part of “looking through crosshairs.” The long-term play of Apocalypse World is based on the notion that the world itself changes in response to the characters’ interactions with it. The very rules prevent the game from becoming a serial tale in which everything returns to normal between episodes. To play the game according to its rules is to fill both the world and the characters with scars and reminders of what used to be and the promise of what could be. If a character is defined by her choices and actions, those choices and actions must have real and permanent consequences in order to have any meaning at all. Otherwise those choices are play choices and they put no pressure on the characters and reveal nothing real about them. As a final note, I want to say that I love the final sentence quoted above, particularly the phrase, “unless a player’s character has handed you the opportunity.” Golden opportunities and hard moves are determined entirely by the PCs – they must hand the MC the opportunity for the MC to use it. This requirement is part of the same approach that keeps MCs from rolling dice or determining difficulty levels. The rules of Apocalypse World attempt to limit the destructive powers of the MC’s whim as much as possible and still have a functional game with a GM/player split. The MC can monkey with the fiction and create all kinds of trouble, but they are under strict orders to give the PCs what they worked for and to not make hard moves unless a golden opportunity on a plate has been handed to them by the PCs themselves. This is about as just as an unjust world can get. But maybe that’s not right. How do you interpret “guidelines” as used in this passage? I have interpreted them as rules still, but it’s certainly a weaker word, suggesting things you should do rather than must do. It’s certainly stronger than “good practice” that is used to introduce the “Few More Things to Do” section on page 93, but is it as strong as “rules”? And then there’s that “generally” that kicks off the third paragraph I quoted. There’s a hesitancy to raise these guidelines to the status of rules, isn’t there? The softness of the presentation suggests that sometimes the story demands a hard and direct move even when the PCs haven’t offered up a golden opportunity. It’s an unusual position for a game full of hard rules. We’re moving on to MC moves! There are 14 basic moves you can make as an MC of Apocalypse World:
1. Separate them. 2. Capture someone. 3. Put someone in a spot. 4. Trade harm for harm (as established). 5. Announce off-screen badness. 6. Announce future badness. 7. Inflict harm (as established). 8. Take away their stuff. 9. Make them buy. 10. Activate their stuff’s downside. 11. Tell them the possible consequences and ask. 12. Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost. 13. Turn their move back on them. 14. Make a threat move. After every move: “what do you do?” For today, I just want to talk about the order in which the moves are presented. Why not, for instance, start the list with the most common move: announce future badness? They are not presented alphabetically, and they are not presented in order of importance or anticipated frequency of use. But you know that the authors spent some time stacking them in this order, so we should spend a moment ruminating on why. It seems to me that the list begins with the most visual, dramatic, readily understood, and easily interpreted. Placing these at the top of the list puts the reader in the proper mindset to understand what a move is and how it relates to the fiction unfolding at the table. Just as important, when the MC consults the list at the table, these first three items put her in mind to keep the story dramatic and active. In addition, all three moves directly affect the PCs’ physical bodies—separating, capturing, and putting them in a spot. The two moves involving harm (trading and inflicting it) also directly affect the PCs’ bodies, but they are not lumped together; instead, they are separated from each other. I don’t have a good reading for why they would be separated. It could be that trading harm has more in common with the first three moves and that inflicting harm has more in common with taking away their stuff than either harm move has with each other. Trading harm suggests a mutual struggle between a PC and an NPC. This struggle fits nicely with the first three moves as an easily grasped dramatic device. Inflicting harm on the other hand puts the character on the receiving end only, just as taking away their stuff does. Both of these two moves fall naturally on the harder end of the spectrum and can be quite hard if the MC is so inclined. If the moves aren’t hard, they really fall more into the “announce future badness” territory. Coming between the two harm moves are the “announce badness” moves. These two moves point to the dangers that may separate, capture, harm, or put the PCs in a spot. Why does “off-screen badness” come before “future badness?” I think “off-screen” is favored because it is an easily understood term, whereas “future,” at least in this context, is initially vague. Once you read the explanation of the move, its meaning becomes very clear, but for the purposes of the list, “off-screen” is much more immediately graspable. Moves 8-10 are all concerned with the PCs’ “stuff”: take away their stuff, make them buy, and activate their stuffs’ downside. “Stuff” is another aspect of the PCs that the MC can poke and prod at and these moves provide an avenue for doing so. After covering their persons, the dangers before them, and their stuff, the next three moves target ways to play with what the characters themselves do. Telling them the possible consequences and asking and offering an opportunity with or without a cost are two sides of the same coin. You want to do this thing? Here’s what you stand to gain or lose by doing so; want to go for it? If the previous MC moves put the PCs in situations to see what they do, these moves highlight the situation they are already in to see what kind of choice they make. What kind of choice the characters make is always the name of the game, because it is through choice and the action that follows that the characters will reveal who they are, what’s important to them, and how they engage with the world. This is where the gears of the characters’ moves mesh effortlessly with the gears of the MC’s moves, each one directly powering the other. The final move of course gives the MC access to all the moves specific to her threats. The common theme behind all the moves is that through them, the MC puts the characters in a position to (1) make a choice, and (2) act. Each move on this list forces the character to react, which leads naturally to the MC making a move as a reaction to their reaction. That’s the engine that makes the game move forward. But it’s more than the propelling of plot, as I said earlier; it’s the revelation of who these characters are through the choices they make and the actions they take. It’s not just that you should ask “what do you do” after every move; it’s that you should design all your moves to compel everyone at the table to ask themselves “what will they do?!” We’ve walked through the principles one at a time to see how each one works. Now it’s time to look at them together:
Barf forth apocalyptica. Address yourself to the characters, not the players. Make your move, but misdirect. Make your move, but never speak its name. Look through crosshairs. Name everyone, make everyone human. Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards. Be a fan of the players’ characters. Think offscreen too. Sometimes, disclaim decision-making. Barfing forth apocalyptica is the flavor that seasons everything you say. Addressing yourself to the characters and making your move but misdirecting and never speaking its name ground the conversation in the Fiction in spite of non-fictional motivations. Looking through crosshairs colors your attitude toward the things you control and gives you permission to avoid status quos and to make the players’ characters’ actions consequential and meaningful. Naming everyone and making everyone human makes NPCs that will allow you to satisfy your agenda items. NPCs are the meat of your world and the main way the MC interacts with the Fiction; they are her number-one tool. Asking provocative questions and building on the answers forces the MC to share the creation of the fictional space in the conversation, and it allows the conversation to go deep inside the characters’ heads to reveal their feelings and attitudes. Responding with fuckery and intermittent rewards and being a fan of the players’ characters dictate the way you react to characters’ actions and your attitude toward them. Knowing these two things lets you respond appropriately to anything the players’ characters do. Thinking offscreen forces the scope of your narrative and the consequences of the characters’ actions to be far-reaching. Disclaiming decision-making gives you the tools to play to find out what happens. Each principle places a restraint upon what you can say on your end of the conversation. But they restrain you in order to guide you and make Apocalypse World work. They are (to use an admittedly clumsy analogy) like the track of a luge slide, channeling your energy and propelling you forward to take you where you need to go when playing. Most importantly, they teach you how to MC the game by directing what you can and cannot say. You can think of each principle as answering a crucial question to MCing Apocalypse World. How do I make everything I say bring the post apocalyptic world to life? Barf forth apocalyptica. How do I guide the conversation so that it’s grounded in the fiction whenever possible? Address yourself to the characters, not the players. Make your move, but misdirect. Make your move, but never speak its name. How do I build the tools I need to create the stories this game needs? Name everyone, make everyone human. How am I supposed to respond to what the PCs do? Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards. Be a fan of the players’ characters. Look through crosshairs. How do I make the players’ characters’ actions consequential? Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards. Be a fan of the players’ characters. Look through cross hairs. Think offscreen too. How do I make the focus of the Fiction both broad and deep? Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. Think offscreen too. How do I share the act of creation with the players? Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. How do I balance having ultimate power with playing to find out? Sometimes, disclaim decision-making. Moreover, if you always say what these principles demand (while also being mindful of what honesty, your prep, and the rules demand) you can be certain that everything you add to the conversation will make Apocalypse World seem real, make the players’ characters’ lives not boring, and let you play to find out what happens. And the text communicates all that in fewer than 8 pages. In order to play to find out what happens, you’ll need to pass decision-making off sometimes. Whenever something comes up that you’d prefer not to decide by personal whim and will, don’t. The game gives you four key tools you can use to disclaim responsibility: you can put it in your NPCs’ hands, you can put it in the players’ hands, you can create a countdown, or you can make it a stakes question (86-87).
This is the only principle that is directly concerned with playing to find out what happens. Making everyone human, making your move but misdirecting, responding with fuckery—they all concern themselves with making Apocalypse World real and the characters’ lives not boring. Asking provocative questions demands that you use the answers to inform your understanding of the world, so in a sense it prevents the MC from controlling all the details, forcing them in the direction of playing to find out. But this final principle is the only one that tells us how to play to find out and what playing to find out looks like. According to this principle, it is all about “decision-making.” Specifically it is about letting the Fiction, the characters’ actions, the rules, and your prep work inform your decision-making rather than simply relying on your “personal whim and will.” Putting “it in your NPCs’ hands” is about “saying what your prep demands”: You can (1) put it in your NPCs’ hands. Just ask yourself, in this circumstance, is Birdie really going to kill her? If the answer is yes, she dies. If it’s no, she lives. Yes, this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity. Who an NPC is, what she wants, and what her attitudes toward all the PCs are—those are all things that the game wants you to nail down between sessions so that they have their own trajectory and momentum within the Fiction. Then you can turn to your NPC and ask, what would you do in this situation? Following their answer allows you to make the decision “with integrity,” which is just another way of saying what honesty demands. Saying what your prep demands and what honesty demands is the way you play to find out what happens. This is why the game text says several times over some version of “you have to commit yourself to the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality” (80). Let’s jump to the 3rd tool: You can (3) create a countdown. . . . Just sketch a quick countdown clock. Mark 9:00 with “she gets hurt,” 12:00 with “she dies.” Tick it up every time she goes into danger, and jump to 9:00 if she’s in the line of fire. This leaves it in your hands, but gives you a considered and concrete plan, instead of leaving it to your whim. I love the distinction that’s drawn here between leaving it “in your hands” and leaving it “to your whims.” As the MC, the impact that the PCs have on the world is always in your hand, but the “discipline” needed to be an MC (to borrow a word from the first section of this chapter—page 81) keeps you from deciding on a whim when it’s important. That “when it’s important” is a crucial clause because the text itself suggests that you can decide on a whim when you want. But remember: declaring things on a whim is still subject to what you must always say; you can only declare something on a whim if you are not going against what honesty, your prep, the rules, and the stated principles demand. There is a delicate and difficult line to walk as an MC, and the rules do everything they can to equip you to walk it. On the one hand, you have to be an invested audience of the tale being played out. You have to be a fan of the characters and care about the NPCs and the world you all have pieced together. On the other hand, you have to resist using your awesome MC power to override the internal logic of the Fiction. This is where that discipline comes in. As the text says earlier: “You have to open yourself to caring what happens, but when it comes time to say what happens, you have to set what you hope for aside” (80). This principle is all about how you walk that line. Stakes questions are presented as a separate tool, but they are really the starting point for the first three tools in this section. Making a stakes question is about being willing to see what happens rather than making determinations about what happens: Or you can (4) make it a stakes question. . . . “I wonder, will Dou live through all this?” Now you’ve promised yourself not to just answer it yourself, yes or no, she lives or she dies. Whenever it comes up, you must give the answer over to the NPCs, to the players’ characters, to the game’s moves, or to a countdown, no cheating. That question – “I wonder, will Dou live through all this?” – is a question you ask yourself when watching a movie or reading a book, when you are consuming fiction rather than creating it. In the text, to ask that question is to “promise” to play to find out. You can think of each of these tools as really the same tool, just implemented at different times in the Fiction. At the start of the session, if you know Dou is in a precarious position, you can make a stakes question. If in play, you start noticing the danger to Dou, you can whip up a countdown. If in the middle of the action, Dou gets hurt, you can leave her survival up to the players’ actions. And if Dou finds herself in Birdie’s hands in the thick of battle and you have a hard move to make, then you put the answer in your NPCs’ hands. They are all versions of the same thing and they all start with the willingness to let the Fiction dictate the course of events rather than MC fiat. As a side note, I also like how this principle exists in tension with looking through crosshairs. Together they say that you need to be willing to destroy any- and everything you create, and when decision-by-whim is permitted, go for it. But you still need to play to find out in those cases that deciding something by whim contradicts what honesty, the rules, and your prep demand. That’s actually quite a bit of tension for the MC to maintain, and I think that tension is one of the things that makes being an MC of Apocalypse World so exciting and rewarding. When it’s time for you to make a move, imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that now becomes evident? Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quite notice? This is part of making Apocalypse World seem real – and if you pay attention to your threats, it’s part of making the characters’ lives not boring too.
This short principle exists hand in hand with “name everyone, make them human.” Both principles are about the prep work you do between sessions, both principles are tied to your threats, and both principles serve to make the world seem to exist beyond the lives of the players’ characters. Apocalypse World demands that the MC understand the internal logic and causality of the world. That’s where the prep comes in. The first session might be close to prep-free, but between sessions, the MC is required to put in a little work to make the game function as it is designed. You need to learn who your NPCs are, what they want from each PC, and what their own plans are. Gathering this information allows you to hit all of your agenda items; Developed and focused NPCs will make Apocalypse World seem real, make the characters’ lives not boring, and allow you to play to find out because all the NPCs have their own pre-reasoned trajectories. Moreover, your prep work allows you to say what your prep demands and what honesty demands. And those same developed and focused NPCs can keep doing what they are doing even when they are offscreen. This principle is part of what makes the game emulate fantastic serial TV dramas. When the world and NPCs are in motion even as the players’ characters are busy elsewhere, the world feels alive and real. When played this way, the PCs’ actions aren’t only consequential; those consequences keep on consequencing far beyond this one time and place. That internal chain of cause and effect keeps going no matter where the PCs have placed their bodies and their attention. Like “play to find out,” “be a fan of the players’ characters” has become a common phrase. It’s a phrase that RPG players have wanted and needed to hear, eagerly embraced because it’s why we all play in the first place: to see awesome characters do awesome things and create awesome tales.
It is no surprise that this principle follows immediately after “respond with fuckery.” After talking about how the MC’s part of the Fiction should respond to player characters’ actions, it is only appropriate to discuss the MC’s general attitude toward PCs. Having just said that part of your job is fucking with the PCs, the text makes it explicit that fucking over the PCs is not your job. The word “fan” here is a perfect word choice. It positions the MC as an audience member of the story unfolding (something the game text does repeatedly). When we are fans of a character in other media, we root for their success and want to see them reveal the quality of their character through trials and tribulations. We want to see them get into trouble so we can enjoy seeing them get out of trouble. We want to see them face hardship and come out the other side better for it in some way. The language of the explanatory text of this principle drives home this notion of the MC as audience. In the second paragraph, we learn: The worst way there is to make a character’s life more interesting is to take away the things that made the character cool to begin with. The gunlugger’s guns, but also the gunlugger’s collection of ancient photographs – what makes the character match our expectations and also what makes the characters rise above them. Don’t take those away (86) The language here is laced with evaluative words. “More interesting,” “cool,” “expectations” – all of these position the MC as audience member, one with an opinion about and an interest in the characters. “More interesting” is in reference to making “the players’ characters’ lives not boring,” of course, but boring for whom? Boring for the characters and their players, certainly, but also boring for us, the MC. As audience members, we want their lives to be interesting to us. Same with “cool.” They are cool to us. And whose expectations are we thinking about? Our expectations. If you do not think they are cool, do not find their lives to be interesting, and do not have expectations for the characters to meet and exceed, you are not putting yourself in the position of audience and fan and you should probably pack it in and play something else. To jump to the end: When you highlight a character’s stats, try to choose one that’ll show off who the character is. Find what you find interesting about their characters, and play there. You have phenomenal power in playing the world. Through your NPCs, you can push and prod and poke the players’ characters. How do you decide where to push and prod and poke? By thinking as a fan who is watching a great narrative play out before her eyes. You “find what you find interesting” and go there, see what happens. This is the basis of stakes questions. This is the heart of MCing Apocalypse World. You know how when watching a TV show you think, I wonder what would happen if this gal had to make a choice between x and y? Now you have the ability to get an answer to that question! Think like an invested audience member, that is what this principle demands. The other part of this text I want to focus on is the third paragraph, from which we get this gem: The other worst way is to deny the character success when the characters fought for it and won it. Always give the characters what they work for! No, the way to make a character’s success interesting is to make it consequential. . . . Let the characters’ success make waves outward, let them topple already unstable situations. There are no status quos in Apocalypse World (86) I have many times heard that a 10+ is often the least exciting throw in the game—you get what you want without complications. Yeah, maybe It’s exciting to roll high, but where’s the thrill of the 7-9 results? The Bakers accurately pinpoint this as a moment that an MC might be mistakenly tempted to subvert the success "for the sake of the story." But AW is designed so that the story will take care of itself if you just focus on making everything have consequences, success as well as failure. So to avoid the potential pitfall of an MC subverting a success to be “interesting,” this bit of the rules tells you how to celebrate their successes and make them interesting at the same time: make them every bit as consequential as failures. All that work you put into creating NPCs with simple desires and straightforward relationships gets to pay off yet again when you think about how this success would impact the NPCs and their wants and opinions. Follow the internal logic of the Fiction and all the trajectories you have in place and see where the successes can impact them. Cause and effect doesn’t stop because characters get what they worked for. As in “fuck around with,” not “fuck over.” This is like when you barf apocalyptica onto someone’s answer, but do it all the time. How about an example?
Marie makes it super clear to Roark that she doesn’t care who he kills, but he’s to bring Joe’s Girl (an NPC) back to her alive. For “questioning” or “examination” or something—Marie wants access to Joe’s Girl’s living brain. So Roark goes out, murders a batch of people, and comes back with Joe’s Girl alive. Here’s where I fuck around, though: he’s beaten the SHIT out of her. Marie has access to her brain (because always give the characters what they work for) but she’s in a coma, her back is broken, her face is smashed in. Joe’s Girl is alive for now, but ruined for good. I gave Marie what she worked for, but not really what she hoped for. See it? Throw curves. Put your bloody fingerprints all over everything you touch. Intermittently, though, right, give one of the players’ characters exactly what she hoped for, and maybe go a little beyond. Do it just enough, and not when they expect it, so that they always hope that this time is one of the times that it’ll work out. A third of the time? Half? Not rare, just not predictable. This principle is all pretty clear, so I don’t have much to say here, but I must point out another one of my favorite sentences in the book: “Put your bloody fingerprints all over everything you touch.” Gah! It’s directly related to barfing forth apocalyptica, but it’s so much more personal. It’s a perfectly evocative phrase that says not only are you breaking things and fucking with them, but that the signs of your fuckery will linger long after you have gone. Fingerprints are unique identifiers as well, which suggests you as the MC fuck with things in your own unique way—put your particular stamp of fuckery on everything that passes through your hand, and as MC, nearly everything passes through your hands. That’s a gem of a sentence right there. The other thing I’d like to point out is how carefully and thoughtfully these principles are worded. Every word in them has their place, as becomes apparent when you read the explanation that follows them. Here, the first paragraph defines what “Respond with fuckery” means. The second paragraph exemplifies the definition and makes clear what a “reward” is: “always give the characters what they work for.” And the final paragraph explains “intermittent.” Each word has a specific weight and meaning so that when you are looking at your principles during play, the whole meaning is there for you to grasp. Look back at the ones we’ve covered already and you’ll see that there is nothing casual in their seemingly casual appearance. Ask provocative questions and build on the answer. Name everyone, make everyone human. The explanations spend time with each word in the title, filling each word with meaning so that the principle says everything it wants to say, not a word more and not a word less. This is a carefully constructed text that teaches the reader that each word is laden with meaning and purposefully chosen. If you enjoy that kind of reading, you’ll love the text. If you don’t, you won’t. |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
July 2020
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