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It is technically possible to play a series of Apocalypse World sessions without any reference to the world’s psychic maelstrom. If you’re inspired by the Mad Max movies or any number of the books and films listed in the “Immediate Media Influences” on pages 291-292, you might not even give the world’s psychic maelstrom much thought heading into the game. For you, it’s about hard times in a hard world where brutal characters have to make the best of a shitty situation. If no one plays the brainer, or the hocus, or the savvyhead, and no one opens their brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, your game can conceivably go from start to finish without ever accessing the weird and wonderful maelstrom.
But I’ve never heard of that happening. Have you? What I’m interested in today is how the game ensures that the world’s psychic maelstrom is a part of the game without ever making it a requirement. In a lot of ways, the thrill of the world’s psychic maelstrom is discovered through play unlike any other element of the game. We know what violence is going to look like in the game. We know what hotness and seduction are going to look like in the game. The range of possible acts of violence and social interactions are naturally limited, which is why the moves involving them can have a few reliable picklists and fail to create appropriate and rewarding fiction only rarely. Augury (162-163), on the other hand, has to outline five different ways a character might interact with the world’s psychic maelstrom and four variables of how that interaction could play out. Opening your brain can’t even create a pick list because the move has no real limits but the players’ imaginations. You ask a question and get asked questions, and that’s about as close to nailing things down as the game can get (or rather wants to get). It’s the same on the MC’s side of the game. There are 7 kinds of threats, and they all lead to potential violence or social interactions. The designers couldn’t (or wouldn’t) even create a generic threat type for the world’s psychic maelstrom, asking the MC instead to think about “what kind of threat is the world’s psychic maelstrom” (107). But for all the vagueness surrounding the world’s psychic maelstrom in the rules of the game, the text itself – both for the MC and the players – is constantly reminding you what the world’s psychic maelstrom is there. The back of the book, the two-paragraph introduction at the front of the book, the “Why to Play” section, the character creation chapter—they all put the world’s psychic maelstrom front and center in their description of what Apocalypse World is. Another way to make sure the world’s psychic maelstrom naturally comes up in play is to make sure that the playbooks bring it with them. The three characters who naturally have weird+2 are very different in nature, increasing the possibility that someone will play one. There’s a huge gap between the brainer and the savvyhead in both flavor and playstyle, not I think coincidentally. And even if none of those three playbooks is chosen, there are weird-based moves on the angel’s playbook (healing touch and touched by death), the skinner’s playbook (lost), and the battlebabe’s playbook (visions of death). So six of the playbooks draw your attention to the world’s psychic maelstrom and invite you to choose moves that call upon it. Moreover, because the way the playbooks are chosen from a pile at the start of play, even when players don’t choose any of the playbooks that have weird moves or that have a weird+2 stat option, those players have seen the playbooks that do and are made aware of the existence of the world’s psychic maelstrom. No matter what playbooks the players choose, the MC is encouraged to have the world’s psychic maelstrom intrude upon the characters’ actions. In addition to all the ways that the book naturally gets you thinking about the maelstrom as an MC (e.g. examples, threats, etc.), the game makes weirdness one of only three ways to effectively interact with Apocalypse World. There are five basic stats. Cool is almost entirely reactive, responding to the fire of the world. Sharp is all about perceiving and assessing what is going on. So when characters take action to shape the world around them, they are relying on hard, hot, and weird. Hard is the road of physical violence, and hot is the road of social manipulation. Imagine if these were the only two options available to characters in Apocalypse World? Weird gives the characters a third and critical axis to interact with the world. And of course, it is a third and critical axis available to the MC to apply pressure to the characters. In a thread on the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forum, Vincent talks about the trap that the hardholder presents to players who believe that the apocalypse can be fixed by an individual with a plan, a bunch of guns, and an iron rule. Here’s what Vincent says about why that’s a trap: “Then in play, for the hardholder to actually make her hierarchy function on her own strength, (a) she has to roll 10+ on every single wealth roll, AND (b) the MC has to present no threats that violence can't solve, AND (c) the MC has to offer no opportunities that violence can't seize. As soon as there's a threat or an opportunity that hot or weird is better for than hard and sharp, the hardholder's relying on the anti-hierarchy - the skinner, the brainer, the hocus, the savvyhead - for help” (see reply #9 at http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=5823). The MC has to present no threats that violence can’t solve and no opportunities that violence can’t seize. The three prongs of the game – hardness, hotness, and weirdness – give the MC enough angles to always apply pressure and dangle opportunities to propel play in difficult and enervating directions. So even if no players choose playbooks that embrace the weird, the MC is encouraged to exploit the weakness naturally present in the characters. My point is that you cannot separate the world’s psychic maelstrom from a game of Apocalypse World any more than you can remove violence or social interactions. But unlike violence and social interactions, the expression of the world’s psychic maelstrom and what it reveals will always surprise you. Opening your brain takes both the MC and the players into unexpected and unforeseeable territory. Augury will likely “call for you to make snap decisions about the workings of the world’s psychic maelstrom,” and the game encourages you to embrace that: “Do” (162). The text to augury calls the move “big exuberant fun,” just as the text to open your brain tells you that “you want everybody to be opening their brains” (148). Neither move pressures you to use it; they both want to entice you instead. Why do that? Why have the world’s psychic maelstrom be something the players discover in play, knowing that once they begin the process of discovery the more they will lean into it? It seems to me that that’s part of the point of play. No, not just part of—it may be the main point of play. You learn about who the characters are by the choices they make to individual pressures, but you learn about the world and the apocalypse and the themes of your own game through the choices you make as players about the world’s psychic maelstrom. In that same thread on Barf Forth Apocalyptica, Vincent says something else worth quoting: “In the first ever playtest, after a few sessions the players asked me when the Apocalypse had come. Like, 10 years from now, in (then) 2018? 20 years from now in 2028? I said that nah, I figured it had been Reagan-Bush” (see the footnote to reply #5 in the same link above). The apocalypse of Apocalypse World was never really about the physical dissolution of society, but about the moral and spiritual dissolution that came with trickle-down economics, the repeal of regulations that insured people’s safety, the growth of our private prison system, and the insistence that ketchup could be considered a vegetable. And that dissolution doesn’t play out primarily in the physical violence and manipulative social interactions of Apocalypse World. That’s what’s howling away in the world’s psychic maelstrom. As Vincent and Meguey write on the back copy of the book: “the world’s psycic maelstrom, the terrible desperation and hate pressing in at the edge of all perception, it is the world now.”
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By default, nobody has access to augury, but a hocus’ followers, a savvyhead’s workspace, or other circumstances might give it.
When you are able to use something for augury, roll+weird. On a hit, you can choose 1: • Reach through the world’s psychic maelstrom to something or someone connected to it. • Isolate and protect a person or thing from the world’s psychic maelstrom. • Isolate and contain a fragment of the world’s psychic maelstrom itself. • Insert information into the world’s psychic maelstrom. • Open a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom. By default, the effect will last only as long as you maintain it, will reach only shallowly into the world’s psychic maelstrom as it is local to you, and will bleed instability. On a 10+, choose 2; on a 7–9, choose 1: • It’ll persist (for a while) without your actively maintaining it. • It reaches deep into the world’s psychic maelstrom. • It reaches broadly throughout the world’s psychic maelstrom. • It’s stable and contained, no bleeding. On a miss, whatever bad happens, your antenna takes the brunt of it. You know what’s strange about this move? Its name. In ancient Rome, augurs were the dudes who interpreted the flight patterns of birds to divine the will of the gods. We commonly use the word augury to mean the act of reading physical signs and omens to predict what will happen. Now look at that list of things you can choose from on a hit. None of them have anything to do with reading signs or omens, and they certainly don’t have any predictive powers. The choice that most closely resembles this traditional meaning is to “open a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom.” Presumably you then would get to see the omens and signs within the world’s psychic maelstrom to then interpret. But the other four options are ways to interact with or control the world’s psychic maelstrom in some way--to pull something out of it, to put something into it, to protect something from it, or to reach something through it. So why use the word augury for this move? It’s a really interesting choice, and for some reason it feels like an important choice to me, even a revealing one. The Bakers are smart folks with impressive vocabularies and a poetic command of the language, so I have no doubt they could have found another word or phrase if they wanted. But no, they chose the word augury. The latinate root of augur is the verb augere, which means “to increase.” Nothing in the move seems to suggest that “increasing” is an important aspect of it, so the root is probably not what they were after. What I do think is important is that augury was performed solely by priests, people who bridged the gap between the desires of the gods and the actions of mortals. Similarly, all the acts of augury in this move bridge the space between the howling maelstrom and the mortal world. By using the word augury, the game signals that the augurs of Apocalypse World are priests and the world’s psychic maelstrom is something extra-human, perhaps a kind of primordial and spiritual paste made from the crushed and ground together parts of a pantheon of gods. There’s a whiff of the religious about the world’s psychic maelstrom, but not some Judeo-Christian religion. Augury points to Roman mythology, and what were the Roman gods but extensions of humanity, powerful beings with all the emotional turmoil and social drama that mortals possess? They are the most human-like of gods. The religious overtones of augury are nothing like those of Dogs in the Vineyard or Poison’d, but it’s there nonetheless. It’s a humanitarian and rather secular religion, but all the same it smells of souls and morality and life beyond this mortal coil. So if that’s the case, who are the priests of Apocalypse World? The hocuses, certainly, with their followers and their ability to perform augury if they have the right kinds of followers. Brainers are gifted with a high weird, but they don’t really act as any kind of go-between, do they? They use the world’s psychic maelstrom for their own ends. An angel with the touched by death move can use the body of a dead or unconscious character to perform augury. And then there are the savvyheads of Apocalypse World. Other than brainers and hocuses, savvyhead is the only basic playbook that insists that each character has weird+2. What the hocus can do with her followers, and the Angel can do with an unconscious body, the savvyhead can do with machinery. I like the idea of the savvyhead being a kind of priest without a flock communing with people through the things they create rather than with them directly. Following this line of thought there’s an interesting analysis to be made about the relationship between humans and machinery in Apocalypse World. As a side note, the only other basic playbook that even has the option to start with a weird+2 is the gunlugger. Why the gunlugger? What does that say about Apocalypse World? And is it significant that to gain a high weird the gunlugger must give up their cool? By default, nobody has access to insight, but a hocus’ followers or other circumstances might give it.
When you are able to go to someone for insight, ask them what they think your best course is, and the MC will tell you. If you pursue that course, take +1 to any rolls you make in the pursuit. If you pursue that course but don’t accomplish your ends, you mark experience (161). This is a simple move, and one that will not occur often. As the passage says, no one can access the move by default. You can ask for insight from anyone you’d like, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to give it, but that advice will just be a lot of hot air. Unless you create a custom move or custom circumstances, this move is only available to the hocus and even then it’s only available if the player chooses followers who “are rigorous and argumentative.” And even if you have a hocus who has rigorous and argumentative followers, she only gets access to the move if her fortune roll gives her a surplus. That’s pretty fucking peripheral. So why include it? Why take up the space in the rulebook for a move that will occur in only this rare circumstance? First, I think, it’s a great way to characterize the Hocus’s followers. There’s a lot of variety packed into the choices available to the Hocus player. Always there is a give and take between the Hocus and her followers; sometimes she has to come to them, and sometimes they come to her; sometimes she has something for them, and sometimes they have something for her. With insight, the Hocus comes to her followers for advice and wisdom, which makes them sound more like advisors or counselors than followers (which goes along well with the characterizations of “your family,” “your staff,” and “your court”). This move allows that fictional relationship to have mechanical presence in the game. More importantly, that mechanical presence has teeth so that the advice the followers give has meaning in the game. Just as Reading a Sitch makes what the MC says true by giving you +1forward, so this move gives you +1ongoing in pursuit of the followers’ recommended course. Here of course is the added bonus that if your followers have led you astray, you get to mark XP, so no matter what the outcome, you gain something. Second, the move models the way that typically non-gamish events can have mechanical significance. Ten years out from its own publishing and a hundred published games inspired by it later, it seems silly to talk about the moves of Apocalypse World modelling what moves can do, but there is a wide variety of moves as Vincent and Meguey explored the ins and outs and each individual element of moves’ structures. In insight, we see that something as simple as seeking advice can have mechanical juice and a way of ensuring that what the MC tells you is most likely true. Functionally, the move is a way for the player to ask the MC for direction. The move is written specifically to answer the question “what is my best course of action.” If you ask for insight into something about which you cannot take concrete action, the move will technically trigger I suppose, but you’ll have nothing to put +1 towards. So you need to ask about something actionable, and the MC has to give you an action to take. The MC is directed specifically to draw the advice from their threat map and other prep: Unless there’s a good reason for the followers to be in the dark, you should use your behind-the-scenes knowledge to give good advice. If the player has enough on her plate, she might have her character go to her followers to get a +1 on her actions in pursuit of her already existing goals, but if the story has slowed down, the move is an opportunity for the MC to point to movement on the threat map and potentially launch another set of character-driven events. In either case, the move is a moment that the player and the MC can come together and direct the drama without ever stepping outside of the fiction. We see this in action in the section’s example: Dust the hocus makes it her habit to consult with her insightful cult early in every session. This time, I quickly skim my threat map and tell her that her cult’s pretty concerned about Jackabacka’s interest in her water. They think she should make an effort to secure it. Imagine that conversation without the move. Dust’s player says to the MC, “I don’t know where Dust should focus her energy now. Is there something you think she can do that would be good for the story?” “What if she starts shoring up her defenses around her water because Jackabacka’s going to launch an attack?” “Oh cool! Let’s do that!” As it is, without ever breaking the fiction, the MC has told Dust’s player that Jackabacka is going to make a move on Dust’s water supply and that if she doesn’t secure it there will be trouble. Of course, thanks to the other rules and mechanics, even if she does secure it, there is likely to be trouble; she’ll just be in a better position to defend it when trouble comes. And moreover whatever it takes to “secure” the water is likely to be troublesome itself. In this way, the move adds something extra to the fun, yeah? Without this move, Jackabacka would very likely have made a move on the water and the ensuing struggle would hopefully be fun; but with the move, there is not only Jackabacka’s attack, but the anticipation of the attack and the struggle to secure the water before the attack in addition to the attack itself. Insight is a peripheral move because the game functions perfectly well without it, but some players might like the way it affects play. Those players have the option of playing the hocus and making their followers rigorous and argumentative. If players want to be the ones to give meaningful insight, they can play the savvyhead and choose the oftener right move. If the MC wants to see more insight in her game, well, that’s what custom moves are for. The MC can create those “other circumstances” that “might give it.” When you make known that you want a thing and drop jingle to speed it on its way, roll+barter spent (max roll+3). It has to be a thing you could legitimately get this way. On a 10+ it comes to you, no strings attached. On a 7–9 it comes to you, or something pretty close. On a miss, it comes to you, but with strings very much attached.
As MC, you’re the judge of what’s legitimately available this way. “Strings very much attached,” of course, is just another way to say that you can make as hard and direct a move as you like (161). I like this move as a companion piece to the marketplace move since they both arrive at the same end via different paths. As with the marketplace move, this move will always end with the character getting what they sought. The fact is, the answer to whether you can get a thing or not is necessarily a dull answer, and to spend a dice roll to figure that out is a waste. Either the item can be got or it can’t, and the MC can determine that. If it can, why not give it? A more interesting question, and the one that the marketplace move asks, is what are you willing to do and what risks are you willing to take to get the thing. This move asks a different interesting question, which is what complications might arise from the getting of the thing? The answers to both questions are naturally interesting because they offer to shape the narrative in unexpected directions. This move allows the player to control the likelihood of whether the item will come with strings attached by letting them roll+barter. This is also a clever way to demonstrate that moves with rolls don’t always have to depend upon a stat, and it shows how well thought-out the barter rules are in the game. The move caps the amount of barter you can spend at 3, because no bonus in the game can exceed +3 without unacceptably reducing the possibility of a miss. But nothing about that decision feels arbitrary when applied to barter because the game has already established that 3-barter is an exorbitant amount of jingle. I don’t know if this move is the reason that barter scales the way it does, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it is. To me, the 7-9 result of this move is tricky ground for the MC. What’s the difference between “it comes to you, no strings attached” and “it comes to you”? There’s no middle ground between strings attached and no strings attached. The “or something pretty close” suggests that you can offer a less-than-ideal substitute, but of course it still needs to be close enough to be a hit, so there’s not much room to fuck with the result. The difference between the weak and strong hits seem to be tonal, more than substantive, which makes it a tricky distinction. It would be nice if the accompanying example delineated this distinction, but it focuses instead on the miss: Audrey needs gasoline and lets everybody know. She spends 1-barter to speed it on its way, but misses the roll. I tell her that Joe’s Girl delivers a canful. “She’s happy to donate it to the cause! She just expects you to bring Fleece back with you.” This is a great example that puts a lot of punch into a short passage. The fiction surrounding the move is quick and light, but the impact is meaningful. “She expects you to bring Fleece back” is indeed an MC move, offering an opportunity with a cost. And just like that, the characters have a complication and obligation for the narrative ahead. I love the simplicity and elegance of that effect. The “expects” in the MC’s statement makes the move feel harder than it otherwise would because it is clear that there will be consequences if Joe’s Girl’s expectations aren’t met. Perhaps one way to think of the results is that on a strong hit, the character gets what they want and the MC doesn’t make an impactful move. On a weak hit, the character gets what they want and the MC makes a softer move, perhaps announcing some distant future badness. And on a miss, the character gets what they want and the MC makes as hard a move as they want. Taken together, the three barter moves define the relationship between jingle and the goods and services they can get you. Jingle is powerful stuff, and the recurring theme in these moves is that if you drop the barter, you will get what you want. Period. But getting what you want doesn’t mean getting it the way you want it. As the MC principle says, respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards. These moves set you up to do just that. When you go into a holding’s bustling market, looking for some particular thing to buy, and it’s not obvious whether you should be able to just go buy one like that, roll+sharp. On a 10+, yes, you can just go buy it like that. On a 7–9, the MC chooses 1:
• It costs 1-barter more than you’d expect • It’s not openly for sale, but you find someone who can lead you to someone selling it. • It’s not openly for sale, but you find someone who sold it recently, who may be willing to introduce you to their previous buyer. • It’s not available for sale, but you find something similar. Will it do? On a miss, the MC chooses 1, plus it costs 1-barter more. When it’s obvious whether the character can just go buy the thing, it might be obvious that she can, or obvious that she can’t. “Obvious” is for you to decide, but do remember that your agenda is to make Apocalypse World seem real and to make the characters’ lives interesting, not to arbitrarily deny them things they want or would find useful (160). On the casual once-over, this looks like a move that helps the MC decide whether the player characters can find something that they want at the local market. Can you find that? I don’t know; roll the dice and see. But that’s not what this move is about at all. Even on a miss, the MC chooses one from the list, so once the player throws the dice it’s a foregone conclusion that their character can find what they are seeking. The real question this move asks is “whether you should be able to just go buy one like that.” Like all the moves in Apocalypse World, you need to be sure you’re trying to answer the right question before you go to the dice. If your question is whether the player characters should be able to find such a thing at all, then the game tells you to fall back on your agenda: “make Apocalypse World seem real and . . . make the characters’ lives interesting.” If finding the sought-after item would break with the reality of the world you’ve created, then say no. The make-their-lives-interesting agenda item is the tricky one; that’s why the authors warn us that it is not our job “to arbitrarily deny them things they want or would find useful.” If the item solves all their problems and puts the world to rights in one go, then yeah, that makes everyone’s life much less interesting. Short of that (and just about everything is short of that), don’t worry about the item being useful; the game, and this move in particular, have got you covered. The beautiful part of this move is the set of choices. First, we’ve all seen movies and TV shows that have employed each one of these narrative devices. The item will cost more than you hoped (or have); how badly do you want it? This guy knows a guy, so follow him; is it worth the risk? I just sold my last one, so you can go talk to this guy about reselling it to you; do you want it badly enough to face that uncertainty? Nope, but I’ve got this thing here; can you make it work? Each one of those options pose great questions to the characters, and their answers are naturally interesting and revealing, Second, the choices together act as a set of dials that gives the MC control over how the market visit develops the narrative. There is a reason that the game gives that choice to the MC and not the player making the roll. Take the option that it costs 1-barter more than you’d expect, for example. If you know the character has the barter to spend, this could be a way to quickly get the item in the character’s hands and move on with the narrative. Perhaps barter is a hard thing to come by in your Apocalypse World and the characters are consistently fighting against poverty. Then selecting this option becomes a way to push that theme and see what the character will do for that extra jingle – beg, borrow, or steal. The option that the item is not available but something similar is is a way to throw an interesting curve ball to see how the characters work around the interesting strengths and weaknesses of the replacement. If you are looking for something interesting and potentially explosive right now, you can select the option that someone can take them to someone selling it. That little quest could eat up a whole session and take the story in all kinds of interesting directions. Every option can be as big and consequential as you like, or as small and inconsequential as you prefer, which is ever a blessing to the MC . Like the gig moves, this barter move can give you the gas your game needs or it can trigger and resolve without much disruption if that’s what you’re looking for. Moves like this are what makes the game feel so versatile and full of endless potential in play. Here’s the example for the move: Keeler, in escaping from a raid turned bad, left III’s night vision goggles behind, and feels like she ought to replace them. She goes looking in Barbecue’s bustling market. She hits the roll with an 8. I decide that sure, one of the barge people has night vision goggles on offer, but that they’re going to cost +1barter. Night vision goggles are both valuable and hi-tech, so let’s say that they’re worth 3-barter normally. Does Keeler have 4-barter to spend on them? All we get here is the question, not the answer, so we don’t get to glimpse all the possible ramifications of this move. Keeler might say, Fuck it, I’ll deal with III’s wrath instead. She might have the money but spending it will hurt, prompting her to get a gig or plan another raid. She might not have the funds but not want to return empty handed, so she has to either get money or take it from the barge person without paying. Anything can happen from here, and the MC will be aware of the pressures she’s applying and excited to see what Keeler’s response is, which is the whole thrill of MCing Apocalypse World. Oh, and don’t forget that the trick to making a 10+ meaningful is to make it consequential. Even if the characters stroll into the market, find what they want at a great price, and march off, that action creates ripples in the fictional world. Perhaps the item they bought was stolen and the original owner is looking for it. Perhaps someone else is looking for the same thing and arrives just after the PCs and wants to buy it off them and doesn’t want to take no for an answer. Perhaps the seller is an informant and will report on the PCs activities. Send those ripples out and play to find out what happens. |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
July 2020
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