Help Me Get "Apocalypse World" and PbtA games in general.

[Ovinomancer]

Why is finding the gyrocopter conflict-neutral? What if one or more PCs have been hunting for the rumoured gyrocopter so that they use it to launch an aerial assault on Dremmer's fortress? Depending on the nature of the rumours, the GM describing the discovery of the gyrocopter could be offering an opportunity, or announcing future badness!

You framed it as conflict neutral because you were providing the example of how GM's have authorities in conflict neutral positions, or so I thought. If it's just a malleable example of play that can be whatever it needs to be, then I'm not sure it's of use and we can discard it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

As I've already mentioned, my view is not based on experience like @chaochou's. It's based on reading the text, thinking hard about it, and putting some of the ideas to work in Classic Traveller play.

As I already posted, it happens at the start of Baker's own example of play, when Marie goes looking for Isle. And because players in AW don't have the authority to directly frame or push towards particular scenes as they do in some other systems (you won't be surprised that I'm thinking Wises and Circles in Burning Wheel as key examples), I can imagine it happening a reasonable amount: I go looking for Isle, I jump in my car and drive out onto the burnflats, looking for anyone from Dremmer's gang to shoot, I've promised so-and-so the Savvyhead I'll bring them a trinket; what new stuff has turned up in the market?, etc. The example that gets discussed on the forum that @andreszarta linked to is "I go to my garage, get in my car, and drive out to Holden's place".

I don't think it's a coincidence that that example, the Isle example, and the examples I've come up with, involve going places (or trying to go places, as with starting the gyrocopter) and looking for people - because there is no basic move that has when you go somewhere or when you look for someone as its trigger. It seems to me like deliberate design to have left these things open, as opportunities for the GM to do there bit in the conversation by making Apocalypse World seem real and barfing forth apocalyptica and responding with trouble and rewards and offering opportunities.

Another way to offer an opportunity is via the play of NPCs, and Baker gives this as another example of non-player-side-move-triggering action (pp 187-8 of 1st ed):

Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. To seduce or manipulate, the character needs leverage —-sex, or a threat, or a promise, something that the manipulator can really do that the victim really wants or really doesn’t want.​

​

Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.​

So this will require saying what prep and honesty demand, probably responding with trouble or rewards, perhaps announcing future badness or offering an opportunity or even - building on @chaochou's example upthread where the PC asks Dremmer for diesel - the infliction of harm as Dremmer shoots them in the leg and tells them to "F*** off!" (And we already had a prior GM soft move in that example, where the GM has announced that "Dremmer is standing in front of the cabin used as the diesel store, looking mean with one hand on the little snub-nose .38 everyone knows he used to kill Mouse.")

For the reasons that @chaochou set out upthread, these features of the system mean that players have an incentive to make threats or offers (ie to go aggro, or to seduce/manipulate) in order to have the chance to assert control over the fiction. But they don't have to, and it doesn't seem to me to be a failure state that a player decides to have their PC just interact with a NPC. After all, the players too know that the GM has to say what honesty and prep demand, and maybe not every NPC is going to be like Dremmer!

You don't seem to have answered the question I asked.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why is finding the gyrocopter conflict-neutral? What if one or more PCs have been hunting for the rumoured gyrocopter so that they use it to launch an aerial assault on Dremmer's fortress? Depending on the nature of the rumours, the GM describing the discovery of the gyrocopter could be offering an opportunity, or announcing future badness!

And what is objectionable about a PC deciding to start the gyrocopter? Playbooks in AW include Choppers, Drivers and Savvyheads. Vehicles and tinkering with stuff are part of the game. Maybe the Savvyhead should be the one to examine the gyrocopter, triggering things speak, but it doesn't always work out like that.

Is trying to start the gyrocopter handing an opportunity on a plate? That might depend a bit on what's come before in the fiction, on more details of how the GM has described the situation ("barfing forth apocalyptica"), and on the mood and feel at the table. You press the starter button, and it blows up! Everyone takes 4 harm seems a bit brutal stated here in the abstract, but I can imagine a situation where that's the move that follows.

I also don't see why the gyrocopter not starting, or even blowing up, is a move that doesn't create conflict. Suppose that there are two PCs in the scene - the Driver, who was hoping to find out that a gyrocopter counts as a car!, but is now disappointed that it won't start, and the Savvyhead. The Savvyhead has already done something Weird and has a bad feeling about this - but the Driver still really wants a flying car. And so the Driver tries to manipulate the Savvyhead into fixing the gyrocopter - but first they'll have to somehow haul it back to the workspace (or maybe bring the workspace here in the Driver's truck?).

To me, this all seems to be within the scope of play that AW contemplates.

Sure, the GM could use this as a move to create conflict. I think they just NEED TO MAKE SURE that is what they're doing, as opposed to playing something akin to old school sandbox D&D where there's just stuff 'around' and the activity of the game is watching the players build sand castles.

 

[pemerton]

Right, but with regards specifically to the 'locked door example' there's no move that this represents... How does it fit into the conversation?

<snip>

'Describe Scenery' is not a move

But offer an opportunity is, or putting someone in a spot. And so is barring or opening the way for a landscape threat.

One thing that I think has come out of the discussion between me, @andreszarta and @Grendel_Khan is that, in the abstract, we can't say whether the locked door is a soft or a hard move; whether it's the offering of an opportunity or putting someone in a spot or the announcing of future badness. But clearly it's something that the GM might permissibly introduce into the fiction as part of their participation in the conversation.

I think we can also say, confidently, that the notion one sometimes sees in discussions of D&D or CoC adventures that the PCs have to get through the locked door in order for the adventure not to fall over has absolutely no work to do in AW or similar play.

 

[pemerton]

You framed it as conflict neutral because you were providing the example of how GM's have authorities in conflict neutral positions, or so I thought.

I didn't use the phrase "conflict neutral". I replied to your assertion that "If an action is declared that interacts with an established thing in the scene, the GM is NOT free to just alter that thing to block the action UNLESS said thing was previously established OR there has been a move made whose result authorizes the GM to do so."

And I thought of the gyrocopter as an example in which (i) an action is declared by a player, in which their PC interacts with an established thing in the scene (ie the PC tries to start the gyrocopter), and (ii) the GM is free to alter that thing to block the action (ie the GM describes the starter button breaking or jamming), and (iii) there is no player-side move made whose result directs the GM to make the move described in (ii), and (iv) the alteration to the thing was not previously established, except in the loosest sense that we're talking about a rusty gyrocopter in AW and so things might always go wrong.

I did say that "there's no particular pressure at that moment of play" and hence it's not Acting Under Fire. That doesn't mean that it's conflict neutral. A lot of stuff in AW can be highly charged but not acting under fire. As per pp 190-91,

You can read “under fire” to mean any kind of serious pressure at all. Call for this move whenever someone does something requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance or care.​

Examples given include literal fire, sneaking, escaping, trying to get something done in time, doing something despite being influenced to the contrary, etc. Starting the gyrocopter doesn't have to be like that in order for it to matter in play.

 

[pemerton]

Even more centrally, the available player moves define where they have control. Take the example of the PC deciding to pull a shotgun on Dremmer and demand fuel. There is no corresponding "ask for something" move. So, as a player, I have a choice, cede the initiative to the GM by stating that I ask for something, which is not a move, OR 'Go Aggro' (there may be other options). This defines the milieu! Its a violent and chaotic world where people seize what they want or need, they don't ask.

Yes. We're all posting in different time zones and at different reading paces, but this point has been explored a bit by me and @chaochou in some posts somewhere along the way of this thread!

 

[pemerton]

Agreed, and @pemerton, I thought when I read it that this was a flaw in your example.

What can I say, I don't see any flaw. Offering opportunities, making players buy, putting people into a spot - these are all MC moves in AW.

There is no rule or principle that says everything has to involve acting under fire.

See also my posts 180 and 185.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, the GM could use this as a move to create conflict. I think they just NEED TO MAKE SURE that is what they're doing, as opposed to playing something akin to old school sandbox D&D where there's just stuff 'around' and the activity of the game is watching the players build sand castles.

Why assume I'm envisaging play that doesn't conform to the agenda and principles?

I was contributing to a particular discussion, about when the GM can make moves and what those moves might include. And whether and when "The door is locked" might be a possible expression, in the fiction, of a GM-move. And more generally, whether and when a GM can introduce fiction that thwarts a player's hope or expectation for what their PC is going to achieve.

AW is not Burning Wheel. There is no principle of "Say 'yes' or roll the dice". To put it another way, not every action declaration by the players for their PCs puts a limit on what the GM can say next. Some do: the ones that trigger player-side moves. But some don't: the ones that just continue the conversation, and invite the GM to play their part in that. Is it unskilled play for the players to declare actions that don't trigger player-side moves? Eg, and to go back to @chaochou's example, is it unskilled play for the player to have their PC ask Dremmer for petrol rather than Go Aggro? My view is: in the abstract we can't tell. Why is the player having their PC ask Dremmer rather than threaten them? Because the player is a newbie who doesn't get the game and genre? Then maybe the GM should clarify things, and/or give the chance of a take-back (as we see in some of the play examples in the rulebook). Is the player having their PC follow through on a promise they made to Birdie? Maybe risking getting shot in the leg by Dremmer is worth it!

The GM's goal is to make Apocalypse World seem real, not to make the game feel like an exercise in mechanical optimisation.

Is it flawed GMing to describe a rusty gyrocopter sitting in the yard of the abandoned stronghold, without any further announcement of future badness (black smoke or dustclouds on the horizon, the sound of the engines of Dremmer's gang approaching, or whatever else)? Or is it enough that this is a Landscape, Displaying something for all to see (or perhaps Disgorging something)? I don't see how there can be an answer, in the abstract.

The GM's goal is to make the PCs' lives not boring. I don't think that finding a rusty gyrocopter is inherently boring!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I didn't use the phrase "conflict neutral". I replied to your assertion that "If an action is declared that interacts with an established thing in the scene, the GM is NOT free to just alter that thing to block the action UNLESS said thing was previously established OR there has been a move made whose result authorizes the GM to do so."

And I thought of the gyrocopter as an example in which (i) an action is declared by a player, in which their PC interacts with an established thing in the scene (ie the PC tries to start the gyrocopter), and (ii) the GM is free to alter that thing to block the action (ie the GM describes the starter button breaking or jamming), and (iii) there is no player-side move made whose result directs the GM to make the move described in (ii), and (iv) the alteration to the thing was not previously established, except in the loosest sense that we're talking about a rusty gyrocopter in AW and so things might always go wrong.

I did say that "there's no particular pressure at that moment of play" and hence it's not Acting Under Fire. That doesn't mean that it's conflict neutral. A lot of stuff in AW can be highly charged but not acting under fire. As per pp 190-91,

You can read “under fire” to mean any kind of serious pressure at all. Call for this move whenever someone does something requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance or care.​

Examples given include literal fire, sneaking, escaping, trying to get something done in time, doing something despite being influenced to the contrary, etc. Starting the gyrocopter doesn't have to be like that in order for it to matter in play.

"No particular pressure" is not synonymous with "highly charged." You presented "no... pressure" when discussing my point, which is not well aimed as my point relies on the understanding that play in AW should not be in "no.... pressure" situations. In that sense, the GM needs to do something to fix the issue they've allowed to develop, so moves here are the same thing I'm using as framing in a new conflict. When I've made that point, you've shifted to suggesting that there might be a different example with a gyrocopter where things are under pressure, but that's not the example we're discussing. We can discuss that example, I think it would illustrative because I don't think the same example holds if we do that, or at least the same point you are trying to make.

If we do look at is as being under pressure, and the move to start the gyrocopter either is engaging that pressure, and should drive a move, or it's ignoring the pressure, and you've got a golden opportunity.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why assume I'm envisaging play that doesn't conform to the agenda and principles?

I was contributing to a particular discussion, about when the GM can make moves and what those moves might include. And whether and when "The door is locked" might be a possible expression, in the fiction, of a GM-move. And more generally, whether and when a GM can introduce fiction that thwarts a player's hope or expectation for what their PC is going to achieve.

AW is not Burning Wheel. There is no principle of "Say 'yes' or roll the dice". To put it another way, not every action declaration by the players for their PCs puts a limit on what the GM can say next. Some do: the ones that trigger player-side moves. But some don't: the ones that just continue the conversation, and invite the GM to play their part in that. Is it unskilled play for the players to declare actions that don't trigger player-side moves? Eg, and to go back to @chaochou's example, is it unskilled play for the player to have their PC ask Dremmer for petrol rather than Go Aggro? My view is: in the abstract we can't tell. Why is the player having their PC ask Dremmer rather than threaten them? Because the player is a newbie who doesn't get the game and genre? Then maybe the GM should clarify things, and/or give the chance of a take-back (as we see in some of the play examples in the rulebook). Is the player having their PC follow through on a promise they made to Birdie? Maybe risking getting shot in the leg by Dremmer is worth it!

The GM's goal is to make Apocalypse World seem real, not to make the game feel like an exercise in mechanical optimisation.

Is it flawed GMing to describe a rusty gyrocopter sitting in the yard of the abandoned stronghold, without any further announcement of future badness (black smoke or dustclouds on the horizon, the sound of the engines of Dremmer's gang approaching, or whatever else)? Or is it enough that this is a Landscape, Displaying something for all to see (or perhaps Disgorging something)? I don't see how there can be an answer, in the abstract.

The GM's goal is to make the PCs' lives not boring. I don't think that finding a rusty gyrocopter is inherently boring!

Yeah, I get the gist of what you are saying. I think there IS a sort of slippery slope that I've seen a LOT of Dungeon World games slide down, which is the 'setting tourism slope'. First there's some stuff that is sort of maybe potentially going to perhaps lead to some conflict, but is mostly color. Now, a lot of things could be seen as close to that, like "you see some stairs leading down into the ground."

So, then, as @andreszarta said, there's a certain aspect of theme there. The steps leading down into the ground certainly take on a more obviously significant weight in Dungeon World, and I get the argument that the rusty gyrocopter has a similar kind of thematic weight in AW. Obviously SOMETHING has to be described at some point which is merely descriptive color, there's a sky, clouds, trees, whatever, and they aren't necessarily immediately serving any need.

What I have seen a lot of though is the style advocated by certain posters in past threads in which the GM describes a lot of stuff that they have made up beforehand and we're basically playing D&D with 2d6. It really IS a matter of degrees to an extent though. I think what you see when @Ovinomancer posts for example is the kind of hard version of the other extreme. I've never played in one of his games, so I am not sure how that all plays out.