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I had an odd confluence of media lead me to an unexpected proposal: character sheets are simply a collection of what we need to know in order to play our part in the conversation of a roleplaying game. To use the language that recurs in Apocalypse World, the character sheet gives the player things to say.
In Apocalypse World, the phrase “gives you things to say” only appears in reference to the MC. We are told of the MC moves, “Whenever there’s a pause in the conversation and everyone looks at you to say something, choose one of these things and say it” (2nd edition, 88). The tags on weapons and gear serve several functions, one of which is they “tell you, the MC, things to say when the character uses the thing” (12). Elsewhere we are told “the game’s rules give you things to say” (92), and “your threat map gives you things to say, too” (93). Finally, “remember that the purpose of your prep is to give you something interesting to say when the next session starts” (121). Because the MC in Apocalypse World has to be completely reactive to the actions of the PCs, the game needs to give the MC the necessary tools to uphold their side of the conversation, “things to say” no matter what unexpected thing might happen. Of course, the other players who are driving the narrative in Apocalypse World also need things to say, and those things are found in their playbooks. Since the stats are tied to specific moves, each stat tells us not only something about the personality of the character but what approach they would be more likely to take when solving a problem. The gear and crap tells us how the character can interact with the scene and others. The look and features gives us things to say when we present our character in a scene or react to the other players’ characters. The moves we choose tells us not only what the character can do, but they also tell us something about the character. A Savvyhead with Things Speak and Deep Insights is inherently different from one with Bonefeel and Oftener Right. As I observed in my post on Sex Moves (#22), the sex moves tell us things about how our character handles intimacy, what they observe and what they give away in those intimate moments. And whether you ever trigger a sex move or not, that fact is sitting right there on the sheet. The harm clock tells us at a glance how injured we should play our character and whether they are getting better or worse. Hx gives each of us a quick detail of a past with at least two other players’ characters and a score for the rest of the players, telling us how they generally interact with others. Some of that information may have mechanical purposes, but they all give us things to say to participate in the conversation. At the end of character creation, we are given everything we need to start creating scenes and reacting to each other and the world around us. Now take a game like early D&D. You didn’t need to know anything about your character’s past or personality because your main purpose was to kick ass and take experience and gold. Your part of the conversation is where do you go in the dungeon, how do you try to keep alive, and how do you try to overcome the obstacles before you. Stats, saving throws, armor, thac0, your weapons, and your basic equipment were everything you needed. Alignment is the closest thing to a character trait or a guiding principle of behavior, and that often feels like a useless, half-developed appendage. And what about Primetime Adventures? The players are responsible for a much larger part of the conversation. They set up scenes. They interact with each other dramatically to reveal who the characters are. They need to know who their character is within the world (their role), who their character is in relation to the other protagonists (their relationships), what they are striving for (their issue) and how they express themselves when that issue is at stake (their impulse). They need to know how far into the spotlight they should step, which the screen presence tells them. Then they have notes about their personality and manner or speech to know how they are going to say what they have to say. Their personal set even gives them a default location to set a scene. The character sheet is full of things to say! A well-designed RPG gives the players the tools to have a dynamic, exciting, and meaningful conversation, and to do that, it needs to give the players things to say when it is their turn to speak. A poorly-designed RPG doesn’t give the proper tools to create and sustain the conversation it wants to create. I realize there is nothing remarkable or probably even impressive in this observation, but seeing the character sheet as a resource for your part of the conversation is something of a revelation to me. It remains to be seen if that approach bears fruit or clears up murky waters.
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RPGs have long used maps to keep track of what is important to game play. The most common map is of course the physical terrain, be that the graphed layout of a dungeon, the floor plan of a single room, the vast sweep of landscape surrounding the protagonists, or the details of a clearing in a forest. Maps visually organize information that exists in relation to the other elements on the map. The desk is in this corner, next to the standing lamp, and the fireplace is over here. With that information, reasonable and consistent decisions can be made about the fiction by anyone privy to the map.
If a game demands the use of maps, those maps should be critical to game play. For a dungeon crawl, the dungeon is the game. The GM can’t change their mind and move rooms around at will. To do so would not only be unfair to the players but would also break the shared reality being constructed during play. Other games may not care about the physical terrain except in the most general terms, but instead care greatly about who is connected to whom and who owes whom what. Relationship maps connect those dots by laying out complex matters in a visual landscape. You can tell what is important to a game by what it chooses to map. You can tell even more by what it needs to have mapped. Now to Apocalypse World. We are advised in the Master of Ceremonies chapter to “[m]ake maps like anything. Have the players make maps like anything too. And sketches, and diagrams, and any kind of ephemera that seems good” (93). Sketches, diagrams, maps—these all ensure that the players are on the same page of the fiction as it is being created. But none of this mapping is required: “They’re just good practice, and I recommend them” (93). The only map demanded by the game is the Threat Map. In the passage we are looking at today, we are specifically concerned about the tiny threat map that appears on the individual threat summary sheet, but what is said here applies equally to the larger threat map that is to be consulted during play and revised between sessions. Mark on the map the threat’s location and, if it’s moving, its direction. • The innermost circle is for the PCs’ gangs, holdings, vehicles, etc. • The first ring out is for threats near the PCs. • The outer ring is for threats at and past the PCs’ horizons. • Mark notional threats, rumors, fears, “here be monsters,” outside the map. • N, S, E, and W are the cardinal directions. • U and D are up and down, for threats above and below the characters. • I is inside, for threats within local landscapes and populations, like cults, diseases, parasites. • O is outside, for threats originating in the world’s psychic maelstrom or even elsewhere (116-117). The threat map is wonderfully well-conceived. The PCs are always at the center and the crazy world whirls about around them. Visually, it is a reminder that the PCs are the protagonists, and as much as you might love the threats you have created, their movement and existence are only important insofar as they affect the characters at the center of the wheel. Moreover, every direction from which a threat can come is covered in the chart, from the cardinal directions, to above and below, to within and without. In a lot of ways, the threat map is very much like a dungeon map, in that it tells the MC at a glance where the threats are in relation to where the PCs are and what directions they are moving. A dungeon map tells us that if the PCs go here, they will encounter these bad dudes. A threat map tells us that if the PCs take actions affecting these things, these bad dudes will have a reaction. Aesthetically, I love that the threat map echoes the radar screens we see in movies (and in real life, of course), in which the green line sweeps around the central point to reveal all the objects in the detectable vicinity. This resemblance is especially true for the individual threat sheets, in which a dot is placed in the appropriate quadrant, like a blinking danger on the screen. On a final note, I love the aesthetic similarities between the countdown clock and the threat map. Both are circles with radiating lines. Both are used to physically track the possible dangers to the PCs, the threat map detailing threats spatially while the countdown clock details threats temporally. I realize that those radars upon which the threat map is based are not unique to the 80s, but in my mind they are very reminiscent of cold war suspense films, which makes the threat maps physical design doubly echo the countdown clock, which is based on the nuclear alerts in America from the 1980s (see page 293). All these similarities give the game a pleasing graphic and thematic consistency. Two of the recent RPG Design PanelCast podcast episodes have featured Vincent Baker talking about Apocalypse World and GMing, and in both episodes he makes a distinction in the rules between orientation and instruction. I think it’s a fascinating distinction not because it gets at the heart of why the MC rules in Apocalypse World have spurred so much discussion, I think.
Here’s what Vincent says in episode 120, “Game Master Techniques,” at about 46:30: Q. ”Is it more useful for you to say ‘the GM must do this’ or is it more useful for you to say ‘the GM can’t do this’?” A. I have feelings about that. I think it’s not useful to say either. I think you have to make it inevitable that the GM do that. You do that by arranging the GM’s interests so that that is what the GM chooses to do every single time. And that’s challenging stuff, but I don’t think a game text can ever actually give you permission or actually put expectations on you just by saying, “here’s what you’re allowed to do” and “here’s what you’re expected to do.” . . . In Apocalypse World it says “Always Say,” but that is a piece of orientation to how the system works; it’s not an instruction. You know what I mean? . . . Nobody can possibly know what I mean when I say nonsense like that. Let me try again. . . . When you say, “This is what we’re playing to find out,” at that moment the GM buys into that or is playing a different game, and so at that moment it’s either a done deal or it’s out of your hands, right? And so once the GM has bought into what you’re playing to find out, then you can say, “And here’s what this system requires of you.” And it’s appropriate to say the system now expects you to always speak the truth or make your move without speaking its name, or whatever. . . . But that isn’t instructions to the GM that you have to follow; that is what the game expects you to do as you’re pursuing your agenda. And so once the GM has bought into that agenda, all the rest of your design falls into place behind that. And if the GM doesn’t buy into that agenda, there is no amount of . . . “Always say what your prep demands” that can make the GM do that. . . . And In episode 119, at about the 47:20 mark: ”So, in the GM chapter, the MC chapter in Apocalypse World, some of that is orientation and some of it is support, and some of it is structure. And so, I want you to be sure to understand that. Like . . . when it says, ‘Look at NPCs through crosshairs,’ part of that is an instruction to you, but much of it is just this sort of warning that says, ‘These rules will kill your NPCs. They really, really will. If a player character decides to kill an NPC, there is really nothing you can do about it by the rules.’ And so, there’s this element of just orientation that says this is what you should expect the rest of the rules, the player-facing rules, to do to your ideas. And then the other half of it is structuring your ideas so that you’re making fun, interesting, useful decisions. But the whole point is to allow you—to put you in this mindset where you’re curious to know what will happen, and you don’t want to sway it one way or the other. So you can just say whatever you think is interesting; you can ask any question you want to know the answer to, and you can play very freely within these wide bounds of playing to find out what will happen. So that’s why the MC in Apocalypse World works that way.” This distinction—and the natural muddiness of the distinction that makes the distinction pretty indistinct—is at the heart of what makes the MC section in Apocalypse World so fascinating. We are used to thinking of rules as purely instructional: “When a character gets hurt, the player marks segments in her harm countdown clock”; “When a player marks her fifth experience bubble, she improves her character”; “The rule for moves is if you do it, you do it, so make with the dice.” The MC section, on the other hand is presented as instruction—and it is—but it is simultaneously orientational. You must do it this way and you must be prepared for things to happen this way. You must engage in these behaviors because doing so will align your perceptions and expectations to make the game run the way it needs to run and wants to run. And as you align your perceptions and expectations, your behavior will naturally follow what is outlined. The rules attempt to shape both what you do and what you think simultaneously by giving guidance in the form or commands and commands that act as guidance. These are based very closely on stakes in Ron Edwards’ game Trollbabe.
Write a question or two about the fate of the threat, if you’re interested enough in it to wonder how it will turn out. You can write your stakes questions at a wide range of scales. Start here: • A person’s or a small group’s circumstances or living conditions. • A person’s life or the lives of a small group of people. • The safety, success, failure, growth, or decline, in some particular, of an organized group of people. And if one of the players is playing a hardholder, include: • The safety, growth, or decline, in some particular, of the entire holding. Examples: I wonder, will Birdie get a better place to live? I wonder, will Roark live through this? I wonder, who will join Tum Tum’s cult? I wonder, will Foster break Uncle’s holding? Stakes should be concrete, absolute, irrevocable in their consequences. People’s lives. Maybe not necessarily their lives or deaths, at least not every time, but always materially significant changes to their lives. Resolving the outstanding question means that nothing will ever be the same for them. It may seem backwards, but it’s especially important to disclaim responsibility for the fates of the NPCs that you like the best. It’s the central act of discipline that MCing Apocalypse World requires: when you write a question as a stake, you’re committing to not answering it yourself. You’re committing to letting the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters, answer it. That’s the discipline and also the reward. Your control over your NPCs’ fates is absolute. They’re your little toys, you can do anything to them you choose. Raise them up and mow them down. Disclaiming responsibility for the two or three of them you like best is a relief. And when you write down a question you’re genuinely interested in, letting the game’s fiction answer it is uniquely satisfying (115-116). Let’s start at the beginning, with Ron Edwards’s Trollbabe. In Trollbabe stakes are part of the adventure the GM sets up for the PCs. In the who-what-when-where-why-how of the scenario loosely constructed for the PCs to encounter, the stakes are related to the why. Someone in the scenario wants something of someone else. The stakes tell us not only what that something they want is, but the two possible outcomes of that trajectory if that want is met or not. The stake is what puts the story into motion; without it, you have NPCs standing in a location with nothing to spur them to action. Stakes in Apocalypse World are indeed based upon those in Trollbabe. They are both concerned with scale, with concrete and irrevocable consequences, and they both demand that the fiction played out by the game determine the outcome of the stakes. But the difference between the two games is revealing. In Trollbabe, the players must become aware of the stakes and decide whether and to what extent to interfere. In Apocalypse World the players are left out of the question entirely. The MC might wonder if Birdie will get a better place to live, but neither the players nor the characters have to give two shits about Birdie. The MC might wonder if Roarke will survive, but the players neither have to care nor ever know that Roarke’s survival is of interest to the MC. To disclaim decision-making when setting the stakes of Roarke’s survival, the MC must push Roarke into the PCs’ paths and let their actions and decisions determine whether Roarke lives or dies, but the players’ interest in or knowledge of the stake is irrelevant. In short, stakes are a game the MCs play with themselves during the game, which is an incredibly interesting approach. I have been saying for many a post that the MC is positioned in Apocalypse World as the primary audience of the story unfolding through play, but this section takes that idea to its full extent. Traditionally in RPGs, the GM has been focused on the players, whether that is as an antagonist bent on playing against the players or as a caregiver responsible for everyone’s happiness and well-being during play. We have seen since the days of the Forge a healthy reexamining of the relationship between GM and player and have moved toward GMs and players being equal and independent participants, each responsible for their own happiness and comfort, with everyone being mindful of the other people at the table. What we see in Apocalypse World, I propose, is an effort to give everyone at the table the tools to drive the story exactly where they want and to build the interaction of the mechanics so that the collisions of those desires creates a productive and interesting story in its wake. Apocalypse World is certainly not the first RPG to take this approach. Universalis, for instance, depends on everyone at the table working aggressively for what they most want to see in the game in order to create a story larger and better than anything one mind would create on its own. But of course Universalis is a GMless/GMful game. In a game with a GM, the power dynamic is usually such that if the GM wants something to happen, it can happen. The trick of any game with a GM-player split is to make the GM behave responsibly. The efforts in Apocalypse World to limit the power of the MC is to allow them to push as hard as they’d like without ever upsetting the game or overpowering the player characters. The first part of that approach is to limit when the MC can speak and what the MC can make happen on their turn. The structure of moves—both of the characters’ moves and of the MC moves—takes care of that. The second part of the approach requires the fine tuning of that attitude and perspective of the MC. That’s where agenda, principles, and the always-say bullet points come in. By saying everything you say as the MC needs to accomplish one of these goals and needs to be in line with all of these principles, the game attempts to shape the MC’s desire and purpose. The balance that the principles and agenda attempt to strike in the MC is the simultaneous presence of intense personal interest and curious detachment. I need to be a fan of the players and be willing to beat the shit out of them, as a fan. I need to be invested in my NPCs even as I look at them through crosshairs. I need to want to keep my thumbs off the scale to see what happens, and to do that I need to know that if I make as hard a move as I’d like on a miss, the game’s mechanics will catch us all as we plummet into the unknown future. Stakes is an important part of this mental conditioning of the MC. The Bakers know that as an MC you will fall in love with some of the NPCs you create. The principles and agenda can address nearly every aspect of the MC’s approach to the game, but how do you keep those personal attachments from interfering with the position of curious detachment? Stakes. As the text says, stakes are there especially for (exclusively for?) the NPCs you love the most. And to get you there, the text promises rewards sweeter than the power you are ceding to leave the fates of your darlings up to the actions of the players. Try it, the text promises, and you will find the whole experience, “uniquely satisfying.” And of course it is uniquely satisfying. Once the game can get you to see that, to believe that, then you can go forth as the MC, armed with and conditioned by the principles and agenda and push as hard as you like against the PCs knowing that the rest of the mechanics will take care of story no matter what happens. Bangs are Ron Edwards’s suggested method for the GM to push players toward compelling play in Sorcerer:
Bangs are those moments when the characters realize they have a problem right now and have to get moving to deal with it. It can be as simple as a hellacious demon crashing through the skylight and attacking the characters or as subtle as a voice of the long-dead murder victim answering when they call the phone number they found in the new murder victim’s pocket. In order to get to the Bangs if the players are being dense, or if the GM is letting them flounder around, the GM should begin to ask leading questions or remind them of things they might check out. Every group is a little different in terms of how much prompting they need; it’s best to err on the overgenerous side at first. The amount of ‘What do we do next?’ should be very low compared to ‘Oh, crap, I try to convince him we’re on his side!’ or ‘I tell Frick to grow big and rip the car door off!’ (77). What occurred to me this weekend while looking through the threat moves is that MC moves in Apocalypse World are a way to take Bangs from being a suggested way for GMs to act to being built in to the very structure of the game. As we know, the rules of Apocalypse World structure the conversation happening at the table. When the MC looks over their lists of possible moves, picks one, and clothes it in fiction to present to the players, they will in essence have created a bang, something that calls for the players’ attention. Some moves will obviously be more pressing and immediate, but even announcing future and off-screen badness are bangs. What is Edwards’s example of the long-dead murder victim answering the phone if not announcing off-screen badness? It has been said many times by many people: one of Apocalypse World’s strengths is that it turns solid GMing techniques into mechanized rules for the MC. Bangs are the gold standard for creating drama during play when the players themselves are responsible for driving the narrative, and MC moves allow those bangs to happen even when an MC is unaware that that is what they are doing. Moreover, the lists of moves ensure that the bangs created are interesting contributions to the conversation and appropriate to Apocalypse World. I have been forthcoming in my love for this text not just as a manual or a played game, but as a piece of written art. It is capital-L-Literature. I will stand by that claim all damn day.
Please indulge me, then, as I take a moment to be a literary geek and direct your intention to the motif of bullet-pointed lists. They are a stylistic decision that is part of the very aesthetics of the text. Flipping through the pages, the little bursts of lists catch the eye like little poems breaking up the blocks of text that surround them. I propose that they don’t only look like poems; they act like poems too. They are discrete aesthetic packages with their own varied rhythms and line lengths, phrased and ordered as much for their sound as for their meaning. This notion first struck me as I was pondering the MC’s principles and moves. Why are they presented in this order? Why are they phrased in this way? Surely there are easier ways to say “Make your move, but never speak its name”! “Never speak its name” sounds like the insistence of an old witch who has entrusted you with powerful magic that can have catastrophic side-effects if not handled properly. Phrasing it that way not only gives a dramatic flair to the last half of the principle, it also allows the principle to exist as a visual couplet with the preceding move, “Make your move, but misdirect.” And look at that alliteration there, all those Ms mumbling over each other. These are phrases created for their sound and music as much as for their meaning. Nowhere is the bullet-list-as-poetry more apparent than in the threats chapter, the first half of which is practically a collection of small poems. Here is the Afflictions Threat Moves poem: • Someone neglects duties, responsibilities, obligations. • Someone flies into a rage. • Someone takes self-destructive, fruitless, or hopeless action. • Someone approaches, seeking help. • Someone approaches, seeking comfort. • Someone withdraws and seeks isolation. • Someone proclaims the affliction to be a just punishment. • Someone proclaims the affliction to be, in fact, a blessing. • Someone refuses or fails to adapt to new circumstances. • Someone brings friends or loved ones along (110). Look at those first two lines. The first line is metrically the longest of the stanza, matched by the penultimate line. Everywhere in between there is a kind of rollercoaster ride of rhythm supported by couplets of repeated phrases. After the long climb of the first lines, the reader is given a short and metrically regular line: “Someone flies into a rage.” Those are two dactyls that land on a single hard beat: SOME-one flies IN-to a RAGE.” (Yeah, I love that.) There are the “less”-es in the next line, “fruitless” and “hopeless,” followed by the syntactical couplet of the next two lines. The line following the couplet is a thing of beauty as it opposes “someone approaches” with “someone withdraws,” but keeps the notion of “seeking.” In this case, Vincent and Meguey could easily have written “seeking,” but chose not to. Why? It could be for the sake of variation, which is a good enough reason. But in this case, “seeking isolation” is a much less rhythmic phrase than “seek isolation.” The emphasis for “isolation” falls on the third syllable, so the hard “seek” helps us find an early rhythmic foothold where as “seeking” gives us four un-emphasized beats in a row, which feels weak and wandering. Also, the “and” in that line gives “withdraws and” the same metrical weight as “approaches,” so “seeks” falls metrically in the same place as “seeking” in the previous lines. Then the line lengths build up again with another high-count couplet before coming to a resolution of dactylic feet, echoing the second line of the poem, er, list. SOME-one re-FUS-es or FAILS to a-DAPT to new CIR-cumstances. By not ending on a hard beat, the line feels unfinished and lingering, a whimpering end that leads us into the final line, which echoes but varies the dactylic feet and ends on the emphasized “long” of “along.” I’m not shitting around here. If you think this list was not labored over to get the rhythm and movement of the words and sentences right, you are not paying attention. For those of you who think I am going to far, just look at the threats lists for brutes and landscapes. You’ll note that the Bakers condense opposites into one move in the brutes list: “Rigidly follow or defy authority,” and “Cling to or defy reason.” But in the landscape threat moves list, the different notions are given different lines: “Bar the way,” and “Open the way.” Those two could easily have been condensed into “Bar or open the way,” but they were not. The music of the list demanded the short lines to bounce off each other like you are tumbling down a verbal mountain. Seriously, pull any bullet-point list out of the book and read it aloud to yourself and you’ll hear the music in the language and feel the importance of short lines and long lines as they pull you through the list with sometimes-coasting and sometimes-bumping rhythms. Hear the assonance and consonance and feel the weight of repetitions and echoes. The Bakers pay just as much attention to their regular prose in Apocalypse World but the poetry of their language is nowhere as apparent as it is in their bullet-point lists. Brutes are the last of the human threats. The good book defines them as such:
A brutes threat is a group of people, with or without a leader, acting in crude, perhaps provisional, concert (111) Warlords and grotesques are individuals (though of course they can be associated with gangs). Afflictions are about an entire population (though of course they can take the form or individuals within or without that population). Brutes bridge these two poles to define social units, groups of two or more people with a shared identity. At a purely mechanical level, brute threats exist to give guiding impulses to gangs and groups to let the MC disclaim decision making and say what honesty and prep demand when the paths of the PCs and group cross. Thematically, brute threats support Apocalypse World’s tension between the individual and the society that resides at the heart of the game. NPCs not only following their leading body parts, but they exist in a social context as well, feeling the tug of those social impulses. According to the essential threats, all PC-generated NPCs should be categorized as brutes (unless they are already a warlord or grotesque). So the individual has their own body part to lead them while at the same time existing within a group which in turn exists within the larger population, which ultimately exists within Apocalypse World. The social identities can co-exist and crossover without ever erasing the individual identity. Back to the text: An individual person within a group of brutes might not share the group’s impulse, and might even fight against it. It’s the group’s impulse, not necessarily any person’s. Individual NPCs can even exist within multiple social groups. In the Moves Snowball sections we’ll see that Plover, Church Head, and Pellet belong both to Isle’s family and to Keeler’s gang. In a way, this layering of social organization mirrors the PC-NPC-PC triangles as a technique for creating three-dimensional characters out of a collection of one-dimensional impulses. Plover has his own drive, the drive of the Isle family, and the drive of Keeler’s gang all pulling at him, and following or rebelling against any of those impulses is perfectly in character. Each of those impulses is positioned to interfere with or aid the PCs at any given crisis. Here are the 6 classifications of Brutes: • Hunting pack (impulse: to victimize anyone vulnerable) • Sybarites (impulse: to consume someone’s resources) • Enforcers (impulse: to victimize anyone who stands out) • Cult (impulse: to victimize & incorporate people) • Mob (impulse: to riot, burn, kill scapegoats) • Family (impulse: to close ranks, protect their own) There are a couple of recurrences here that deserve a brief discussion. The first is the heretofore unused “anyone” and “someone” (at least they are unused in defining impulses). There are no direct objects in the impulses of the warlords and grotesques, and the affliction impulses only speak of “people” and a “population.” “Anyone” and “someone” cast wide nets, making the targets of the brutes’ impulses singular and broad. Anyone who is vulnerable is at risk of a hunting pack. Anyone with resources can fall victim to sybarites. Anyone who stands out can find themselves targeted by enforcers. And let’s be honest, everyone will be vulnerable, stand out, and have some resources at some time, which makes all these brutes looming and indiscriminate threats. Which brings us to the second recurrence: the word “victimize.” Half of the brute threats are driven to victimize people, and those who aren’t victimizing are consuming resources, shutting outsiders out, or rioting, burning, and killing scapegoats (which is simply another way to victimize). The thematic revelation here is that more likely than not, when a group of people identify as a group in Apocalypse World, horrible things are going to happen. What I find interesting is that the threat moves both back up and soften this view of group behavior: Threat moves for brutes: • Push reading a situation. • Burst out in uncoordinated, undirected violence. • Make a coordinated attack with a coherent objective. • Tell stories (truth, lies, allegories, homilies). • Demand consideration or indulgence. • Rigidly follow or defy authority. • Cling to or defy reason. • Make a show of solidarity and power. • Ask for help or for someone’s participation. Bursting out in uncoordinated, undirected violence and making a coordinated attack with a coherent objective show the violent actions that lead directly to the victimizing of others. Rigidly following and defying authority and clinging to or defying reason define the all-or-nothing attitude that drives unswervingly toward trouble. But amidst those options is one of my favorite moves: tell stories. “Stories,” of course, covers a lot of things from lies and cautionary tales to origin myths and rumors of the world. Stories are a way for a community to talk to itself, to reinforce its way of life and its strongly held beliefs. Whenever two people gather they will tell stories. For goodness sake, telling stories is precisely what we do when we gather to play Apocalypse World. Having that little move tucked in this list humanizes and reveals the vulnerability of the very group that is bent of victimizing the vulnerable. “Ask for help or for someone’s participation” has the same effect. They don’t demand help or extort other for help; they ask for it. “Ask” is such a docile word. And when the brutes make demands, it is for consideration or indulgence. Together, the threat subcategories and the threat moves exist in beautiful tension, revealing the brutes’ humanity and monstrousness simultaneously. In Apocalypse World, it is often our pursuit of our own survival and tribal identity that allows us to deny the humanity of those we victimize, use, scapegoat, and close off. |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
July 2020
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