In elsethread, Matt Johnson looked at my words about story games and said he doesn't get them.
And that's ok!
Here, I'm going to try to explain them words.I'll do so the most fun ways, with an example story.
In this example, there are three players: Charles, playing Millie the Hardhholder. Lauren, playing Octo the battlebabe. and George, playing Blane the Savvyhead.
The Hardhholder is the landlord, govenor, and military dictator of a small town.
The Battlebabe is, well. There are dangerous people in Apocalypse World, and then's there's the heat you know to walk away from. They cause trouble.
The Savvyhead takes care of machinery, keeps shit from breaking, and has a weird psychic connection with it all.
During character creation, we learn how these characters know each other, how they live, etc.
Millie's hold has 150 souls or so, and a gang of 30 people. These have good weapons, but shit for armor and are a pack of fucking heyenas -- no discipline at all. With some Q&A between everyone at the table, we figure out Millie's hold used to be a surburban mall that had a gun store, which explains all the weapons and how there's no armor at all. The community does some basic trading, and Chuck wants them to owe fealty and be owed it. Cool, so there's gotta be this network of people going from hold to hold. Nice.
Lauren interjects that her battlebabe visits the hold from time to time, but she's free and nobody, like, owns Octo or nothing. I ask if she gets around on foot, steals what she can find or, like, has a motorbike. She;s all, "nah, that's not the style. Like a pickup, rusted out and with treads in place of the tires. " And I'm like "that's awesome, yes"
George is like, "Blane is in the hold. I keep some air gears moving that brings in delicious air, tinged with whatever I want. " I look at Chuck, whose all "oh, absolutely. And Millie has no idea."
So, great. We've got a hardhholder with a gang and fealty, a battlebabe with a sweet-ass weird pickup and whatever guns she wants, and a Savvyhead who is ready to turn everyone into soup.
Pretty great. This is (mostly) all from the players, and is an unstable triangle.
Then I ask: Great. Start of session move; what sort of lifestyle?
Charles points out that Millie doesn't have to pay barter, because the hold takes of her. But she has a different start of session move: Leadership.
I love this move. It's a fucking trap for players that think having guns means you are in charge. I have him roll it first, figuring I can use anything from this in determining how we start.
He rolls a 7 on the dice, plus his 2 hard makes nine. The hold is in want; Chuck chooses for it to be that he's gotta go pay some fealty. I decide they want him, like, in person to show up. He's like "Yeah, so I'll take the gang and we head out with our ::looks at sheet:: YEah, like fucking tractors from the old Sears. With plated on armor that looks cool butr don't do anything, and guns violent."
"awesome. While the gang's away, Blane, what's your lifestyle like?"
George smiles and then is like "omg. The gang's gone? Hell yes. I do experiments and learn about people. I guess I'm living among others, so that's one barter to spend but really? This is perfect because I get to learn---"
"And I'm coming in and robbing the place. Cat's away, and I'm the fucking rat." Lauren says, as Octo.
"Sweet.."
And that's how the game starts. The problems emerged from the character sheets, the world from the character's guided imagination, and the interaction from Hx.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Note: At this point, I'd probably circle back to Charles and be like "... You sure you brought everyone?"
ReplyDeleteAnd he'd probably change his mind, and I'd make sure his mind change wasn't too far.
Also: Being the hardholder makes you make bad decisions, which I am pretty sure is part of the Baker's mind control. And a gang of 30 guys going down the desert does look pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie. That's some mad max shit.
ReplyDeleteWow. Thanks for this. It is at once enlightening to me, having only played old RPGs, and also completely bewildering. I have no idea what any of this is.
ReplyDeleteI feel like someone who was a fan of the D&D cartoon, who then witnesses an actual game of D&D being played. Like...what the heck is even going on? Why isn't the DM popping in on the characters? So who were the characters when they were on Earth? The ranger has to carry a "quiver" full of arrows? What the heck?
Isaac Kuo :-)
ReplyDeleteThese characters are more or less taken from ones I've seen, but then basically remembered by me. This is AW core or "vanilla" or whatever; I used it as the example just because I've played it a bunch.
Have questions?
I don't understand the words being communicated (lack the original context), but this is a neat little story.
ReplyDeleteI think you're very right about the intent of the Bakers with the hardholder. It's the first playbook I played (played during pre-publication playtest!) and I thought, "I've been a boss. I have a Masters in Public Administration. I should be able to pull this off."
Then I was immediately reminded of every shitty thing about being a boss, only add wasteland depravation to it. It was pretty hard on me emotionally (for that and other reasons) and I wound up having to retire Vega to safety.
"Have questions?"
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I read that in David S. Pumpkin's voice. As in:
"Any questions?"
"Yes, several."
(I'll do an earnest reply after I digest things.)
I saw Jason D'Angelo plus one this, and he's done a lot of work reading AW as a Text; does this little story seem coherent to the rules as you understand them, making some allowances for memory and such?
ReplyDeleteI very nearly tagged Matt Johnson in the other thread to link him to this review of Blades in the Dark written by delightful board-gamey people (https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/rpg-review-blades-in-the-dark/), but I couldn't figure what, if any, additional context to write. I also considered linking John Harper's actual play, or the It's Never Sunny in Doskvol actual play, but a short example is a lot more useful!
ReplyDeleteshutupandsitdown.com - RPG Review: Blades in the Dark » Shut Up & Sit Down
does that blowing out air sigh thing, literally
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to work out how to come at this. I may sound more judgmental than I mean to be.
So, honestly, my very first question on reading that is "Why is this group of players not working together?" Like, I read that, and it just feels like everyone is setting up for a fight with the other players and god that sounds annoying to me.
And then it sounds like the hardholder is going off on his own adventure and not interacting with the other players. Like with decking in shadowrun, it's great... except that it means the rest of the party is watching the GM and decker just play with themselves for extended periods of time... which is fine on occasion, but if that is a regular thing it's not very fun for other people.
In my experience, AW suffers from a lack of equal screen time problem. I've spent many sessions waiting a very long time to do anything. May just be my bad luck, though.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Austin I will go read.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson The hardhholder is a jerk.
ReplyDeleteHere's what he could have said:
MC: You're gonna need to show up to show fealty. Like, in person and with an enterage.
HH: ok. Hm. I want to bring the folk who'll, like, impress and keep me alive. That's a battlebabe and a savvyhead. So, I'll go talking to the other PCs, see if they want to go with me.
BB: Sure, for some moola. Ain't nobody, like, owns me or nothing.
Gearhead: Sure, but it counts as paying barter for my start of session and you're responsible for all my shit.
HH: ok.
Robert Bohl Yes! As much as I appreciate how AW and especially Monsterhearts have improved my improvisational skills, one has to be very, very cognizant of allotting equal time and opportunities as MC, because no structures in the game help you with this.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson The characters in Blades in the Dark are explicitly a team; this isn't necessarily so in Apocalypse World. Though William's example skips over a mechanic/character creation step called History, where you're encouraged to tie the characters together with leading and sometimes uncomfortable questions that vary from playbook (essentially character class) to playbook. You can see the various history questions in under the heading HX on the bottom-right corner of the second page of almost every playbook in the document here to see what I mean: http://apocalypse-world.com/AW2ndEdPlaybooksPreview.pdf First questions are on page 7 for the Angel playbook.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I mean, maybe the HH is a jerk but that wasn't what I was trying to say... that's kind of what i mean when I say i don't mean to be judgmental. It's like... it's like an alien showed up and started talking alien at me and I'm just going "WTF?!?" I don't think it's bad (at least until the alien starts eating my head or something), I just don't get it...
ReplyDeleteI have a very strong theme of "Games are supposed to be fun. My life is hard enough without coming to a game where I have to fight with actual people, so inherent player vs. player conflict is not fun for me." that guides my view of games.
I'd note that nothing in Apocalypse World says that it's a PVP game. It feels like the community thinks it's a PVP game, and I've certainly seen it played that way, but I don't think that's in the book.
ReplyDeleteThe closest it comes, from what I can tell, is the NPC-PC-NPC / PC-NPC-PC triangles. That implies creating tension between the characters, but it doesn't require antagonism.
Also, there's a relevant difference in player versus player and character versus character, right.
ReplyDeleteSo, like, Chess is character versus character, but the players aren't mad at each other for killing each other's knights and shit.
But, if you did that in Pandemic? You'd be a dick.
And, as Rob points out: AW isn't even character versus character. The rulebook is pretty firm that while the characters don't need to be friends, they need to, like, know each other and have some common ends sometimes. In the above example,. they should probably be more in the same direction.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols That's a semantics difference that unfortunately my stress reaction doesn't differentiate. Like, I can logically understand where you are coming from. PvP means the players are antagonistic, character vs character means the characters are but the players are friendly. Yeah. Sure. Except that, emotionally I will start to react as if we the players are in conflict. I have a super hard time actually /feeling/ a difference between PvP and CvC.
ReplyDeleteI understand this is a "me problem" thing.
Matt Johnson - I have a similar issue. It doesn't happen 100% of the time, but I often find CvC curdles into PvP, or I worry that it has.
ReplyDeleteThe glue that's missing from this setup is Hx. Each character has an established history with each other, which while permitting tension does the work of lining up a past and general sympathies between characters. It's the binding that generally points everyone in a similar direction.
ReplyDeleteThe design builds characters that are in tension with each other but not directly opposed to each other. It's explicit that they begin as "allies" at the bare minimum. If I were MCing this hypothetical game, I'd be digging into the battlebabe's relationship with the hardhold more deeply to make sure they are allies first. Sure, she can rob the hardhold because she has a pressing need, but it should be an action with some hard emotions behind it. I'd want to push to find out what those emotions are.
As play progresses (and probably already by this point) NPCs are created whose desires are being wedged in between the characters. Those NPCs both divide and unite the PCs in glorious ways. How things will fall out, what will become important and what will just be tangential, only play itself will reveal.
It's genuine fun. It's fun that relies on you caring about all the characters, not just your own. It's fun that relies on you enjoying hard choices and interpersonal strife, rather than cleverness and problem solving skills. It's fun that relies on you squirming with joy at a sticky and potentially hazardous social situation. If those things aren't fun to you, the game won't be fun for you. That's cool. There are a lot of other games out there designed to scratch the itch you've got.
Jason D'Angelo " It's fun that relies on you enjoying hard choices and interpersonal strife, rather than cleverness and problem solving skills."
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's a hard sell for me. But, would you say that is a feature of PbtA as a whole, or is that more a thing because this is AW? I've only ever played a single session of PbtA and it was a Dungeon World game. I didn't get much in the way of player strife, but that may also be because it was a demo game so some of that wasn't as evident.
That is a feature of AW specifically. Nothing about the moves' structures or the other things that get defined as pbta dictates that that is what a pbta game focuses on. DW has no mechanics to create strife between characters, and because it was designed to play D&D with the narrative flow of a pbta game, it sticks with standard D&D-influenced impulses like wanting to keep the party together and have them act in the interest of party survival above other concerns. You can (and people do) run classic D&D modules with DW and have an awesome game.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson This is not just a you problem! This is why carefully communicating what a game is about, or about a particular play-style themes that may come up within a particular game, and otherwise generating buy-in before the game, AND using safety mechanics for when we cross lines or mess those pre-game things up are so important!
ReplyDeleteA little further down another rabbit hole, though, a lot of people have done a lot of thinking about the permeability of the player-character membrane, and even design games to breach it. See: nordiclarp.org - Bleed - Nordic Larp Wiki
and the links on Emily's entry about Bleed here: http://www.blackgreengames.com/terms/
And, to be clear: pbta is (one of) my brand of fun. This doesn't mean it has to be yours!
ReplyDeleteGeorge Austin Just for the record, what I mean by "me problem" is that it's a problem for me, not a problem with the game. It's me (poorly perhaps) trying to say I don't think the thing is bad, just that I don't interact with it well.
ReplyDeleteI very much appreciate this discussion.
Matt Johnson I think I read you loud and clear!
ReplyDeleteYou were just clarifying, right? I didn't overstep by trying to broaden out your particular discomfort into a general point about informed consent in imaginative play, did I?
Nope, it's all good.
ReplyDelete