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

[Ovinomancer]

What I mean was: my copy of AW 2E says that I am supposed to think up awesome stuff and use that "prep" to inform play. Maybe you just take issue with the term "hook" which -- fair enough, words are what they are. But there is no doubt that the AW 2E books tells me to have stuff the PCs can engage with in mind. It tells me very clearly that when there is a lull in the action to use my prep to make a move. So I don't understand where you are coming from with the idea that I am not supposed to know or do anything unless the players come up with it at the table.

A hook is an invitation to a GM prepared topic of play. It's the guy in the corner with a job, or a rumor of bad guys massing, or somesuch. It's not a generic term for "thing I've prepped." If you're deploying hooks as the GM in AW (not necessarily in MotW) then you are not engaged with the play as intended.

The core thing with AW (and many PbtA games) is that until it's in play it's not, and cannot, be binding on play. So, with that context, prep is just you thinking about stuff that could, maybe happen or details about the world that are evocative and can be pulled on when play asks for them. Prep is not like in D&D, where your prep is, at least to a large degree, the truth about the setting that then constrains how you narrate results of action declarations.

Here's an example. You, though play, introduce an NPC type. We need to play to find out how this NPC works in play. If you've "prepped" the idea that this NPC will start a fight with the first person that questions them, then you are not playing to find out -- you've established an outcome that will constrain the outcome of action declarations in a way that is not supported by the principles of play. This is not the "prep" discussed. Instead, if you have this NPC "prepped" as "has a wickedly scarred face, where it looks like a hyena used him as a chewtoy, making him look hard, and he is hard and will press PCs." Then you haven't determined outcomes so much as established for yourself a set of guidelines for how this NPC might react depending on the outcomes of a check. If a PC 'Goes Aggro' on this guy and succeeds, you know that this NPC might very well just press the issue and take the consequence to keep going. After all, he's already been chewed on by a hyena, so what's he got to lose? This is a nuanced distinction, but extremely important. "Prep" cannot ever be a limiter on play. Only what's established in play is a limiter on play. "Prep" in AW is really just some prompts and ideas that might be useful.

 

[Reynard]

For AW2, prep is the work you've done on your threat map. That's the "stuff" players engage with.

Here's another link that might prove useful to you: 54. Rules and Your Prep

Thank you. That's a good link. I think this portion is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand:

In light of this, we can see that the Open Your Brain move puts the MC in just such a spot, but the rules of threat maps supply you with the necessary material to answer the questions. It’s easy to think of the threats section as advice, a good way to organize your NPCs and storylines, but as we can see here, the game as written expects that prep work to be done in order to you to hold up your end of the conversation.

I don't want to get too hung up on it. There is more I need to understand, but I also needed to feel comfortable that i understood the nature and use of "prep" before I could move on. Thank you.

 

[Fenris-77]

Prep for AW is something like a web with the GM as the spider. Nothing happens until the players touch it, then you pounce!

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm 100% confident that my statement there is 100% in alignment with how AW is supposed to run. Monster of the Week, eh, it's very much a hybrid PbtA game and I'd not have much to say about that statement there.

And, of course, you can drift your game however you like. AW will cause you heartburn if you're trying to inject Trad sensibilities into play, though, because you'll be constantly hitting moments where your prep/plan/hook is getting contradicted by check outcomes -- you'll either be softballing consequences or having to Force successes to stay in the lines. And that will lead to inconsistent resolutions.

If you scroll back up to @Manbearcat's excellent reiteration of the agenda and principles, this should be clear.

What I mean was: my copy of AW 2E says that I am supposed to think up awesome stuff and use that "prep" to inform play. Maybe you just take issue with the term "hook" which -- fair enough, words are what they are. But there is no doubt that the AW 2E books tells me to have stuff the PCs can engage with in mind. It tells me very clearly that when there is a lull in the action to use my prep to make a move. So I don't understand where you are coming from with the idea that I am not supposed to know or do anything unless the players come up with it at the table.

Here is what I would say about that.

What is fundamentally important to understand in AW prep is that stuff in (1) and (3) of my initial post.

Your prep is anchored by and in service to that stuff.

So you've made characters and here is a "for instance:"

Violetta the Battlebabe has Visions of Death: when you go into battle, roll+weird. On a 10+, name one person who’ll die and one who’ll live. On a 7–9, name one person who’ll die OR one person who’ll live. Don’t name a player’s character; name NPCs only. e MC will make your
vision come true, if it’s even remotely possible. On a miss, you foresee your own death, and accordingly take -1 throughout the battle.

Someone highlighted Weird as a stat for Violetta and that person has a good Hx rating with Violetta so they know here well.

So what is happening here? Is Violetta a blind prophet like Denzel's Eli? Does she see visions? Auditory hallucinations (or maybe something from the other side of the psychic maelstrom). Its clearly not just cosplay...its The Real McCoy. She oozes it even if she doesn't want to. Violetta is a creepy badass...we're all drawn to her...seduced by her crazy. We don't know where the maelstrom came from and what is on the other side. Maybe she does and won't let us in on it (maybe for our own good).

So think up some provocative scene openers that will trigger exploring this further. Bring Violetta's player in on it by asking questions and using the answers. Is she out scavenging by herself and she hears voices drawing her to something seemingly inanimate and non-sentient (like a wrecked car or a scrapyard or an ossuary)? Is the opening scene a charged situation that is supposed to be a truce on the razor's edge of a donnybrook? Is someone with her? Is it one of the PCs she can trust or one that she cannot? Are they side by side or are they keeping their distance?

You can open play for PCs (if you've got 4 PCs it might be 2 solo scenes and another scene with 2 PCs; like above) with charged situations that investigate provocative questions asked and answered and simply the elemental stuff from PC gen.

You open the scenes with little idea how they'll go. Sort out some antagonistm/opposition right quick. See where it goes and let the chips fall.

Now, with just 3 quick scenes and a little imagining + PC gen procedures and provocative questions asked and answered (all "prep") you've got a powderkeg of a game igniting on multiple fronts (possibly toward full-fledged conflagration right off the bat). What comes next spirals from that (and again...some of that will yield a lot of "meat on the bone" which you'll turn into Threats between sessions).

That is effectively players & system hooking GM.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is from the 2e AW Book. I've bolded the couple of bits that I think are important, and are a big part of what makes AW different from more traditional games.

BEFORE THE 1ST SESSION
Print and assemble a set of the character playbooks. Read them if you haven’t! They’re the core of the game.
Print a set of refsheets, including extra copies of the basic moves refsheet.
Print a threat map and a couple of threat sheets for yourself.
Read this whole book. You can skim the chapters on the characters’ moves and crap, they’re for reference during character creation and later, but do skim them at least. Read the rest as carefully as you can.
Familiarize yourself with the rules for creating threats, but don’t create any yet.
Daydream some apocalyptic imagery, but DO NOT commit yourself to any storyline or particular characters.

The book tells you exactly how to prep before your first session. The bold bits are about not committing beforehand to any ideas or concepts. Sure, you may have an idea about what's out there in the world, or what dangers may be present inside the holding....but you shouldn't commit to them before play. This game doesn't want to have a classic "adventure" as we often think of them.

During the first session, you're supposed to collectively make the player characters. Doing so is going to prompt a lot of questions, and you're meant to use the answers. Then once the PCs are created, the book suggests that you should simply follow the PCs around for a day. See what they get up to. See who they interact with. They'll have questions... you can answer them or turn them back on the player. Let them tell you about the holding's water supply. Put the characters into situations and see what happens. Maybe an NPC is pissed at one of the PCs... why? What do they do? What happens as a result? And so on.

You do that for your first session, and you'll have details to work with. THEN you start filling in the threat map and threat sheets. Only once you and the players have collectively done character creation and the first session "day in the life" stuff. That's when you're ready to prep, and I think this is a good part of what @Ovinomancer was talking about with the players hooking the GM.

 

[pemerton]

I am still kind of at a loss at exactly what the MC does for "prep". I think it is mostly jotting down ideas and formalizing threat between sessions, but I am not entirely sure. So the first thing I could use help on clarifying is what the role of the MC is in PbtA games is specifically in regards to how much or how little to "prep."

NOTE: I understand that you don't prepare adventures, with plots and things. That's not my question. My question is more about how much world building and hook slinging do you do, as compared to, say, a sandbox D&D game. Sometimes the text seems to suggest that the amount is "none" but other times it tells you to use your "prep" to ask and answer questions.

A hook is an invitation to a GM prepared topic of play. It's the guy in the corner with a job, or a rumor of bad guys massing, or somesuch. It's not a generic term for "thing I've prepped." If you're deploying hooks as the GM in AW (not necessarily in MotW) then you are not engaged with the play as intended.

<snip>

"Prep" in AW is really just some prompts and ideas that might be useful.

Agreeing with Ovinomancer, and elaborating a bit: AW doesn't use "hooks" because there is no need to "reel in" the players. There is no "the adventure" that (i) the GM has prepped, and (ii) the PCs somehow need to connect with, in order for the game to get going.

The GM makes moves, which is to say the GM says stuff about what happens, in the fiction, to or around the PCs. Normally these are "soft" - setting up, flagging, framing - but sometimes are "hard" - consequences here-and-now.

There are two basic times when the GM makes a move: when the resolution of a player-side move tells them to; and when everyone looks to them to find out what happens next.

Fronts/threats provide content for moves, because they are incipient, emerging events that will happen to or around the PCs. But they don't change the rules about when and how to make moves. (Unless they bring custom moves. But those don't change the core rules either, generally - and the rulebook has top-notch advice on how to make and use custom moves and how to thing about working within the lines, or breaking outside of them.)

Keeping in mind what @hawkeyefan posted, about the First Session and how that then feeds into preparing fronts/threats, these won't be independent of the PCs. They will be closely connected to the PCs and their situation(s). And the rules for making GM-side moves will reinforce those connections.

So picking up on @Ovinomancer's example of "the guy in the corner with a job" - suppose the GM wants to make a soft move, providing an opportunity or perhaps announcing future badness, then it's not out of the question that a hard-boiled guy in the corner, or a sneaky-looking guy with an interesting collection of knick-knacks on the inside of his jacket, sends some sort of signal to a PC.

But before play would get to that point, relevant questions would be - which front does this belong to?, how does this connect to the dynamics and trajectories established in the first session?, what questions is the MC going to ask (so as to build on the answers)?, how does this relate to the basic principle that there are status quos in Apocalypse World?, etc.

So even if the trope resembles some standard D&D-ish or Traveller-ish trope, the play of it is likely to differ quite a bit from a more traditional approach.

 

[Reynard]

Let's move on from "prep" for a bit to.. moves!

There sure seem like there are a lot of them in AW2E. I think i understand how they workbut I will lay out my understanding so you all can tell me if I am missing something, or just plain wrong:

A player says what they want to do and if the thing they want to do triggers a move the GM calls for the appropriate dice to be rolled. The results of that roll may prescribe a move results or it may be that the results allow the GM to make a move of their own. Is that the gist.

I am slightly less clear on whether not-triggered Gm moves are a thing. There are threat moves, and threats are supposed to be used to do stuff especially during a lull, but I am not sure if threat moves can occur without being in response to something the players do. is "nothing" something the players do? Now I guess we are sort of veering back toward the purpose of prep and threats, but anyway.

 

[Manbearcat]

A player says what they want to do and if the thing they want to do triggers a move the GM calls for the appropriate dice to be rolled. The results of that roll may prescribe a move results or it may be that the results allow the GM to make a move of their own. Is that the gist.

Yup, that is pretty much it. Here is the Core Loop for Stonetop. It’s pretty much the exact same thing as AW:

The Core Loop

1) Establish the situation

• Frame the action
• Describe the environment
• Give details & specifics
• Ask questions, ask for input
• Portray NPCs and monsters Answer questions, clarify

2) Make a soft GM move: provoke action and/or increase tension.

3) Ask, “What do you do?”

4) Resolve their actions

• If they trigger a player move, do what the move says.
• If they roll a 6-, make a hard GM move (establish badness).
• If they ignore trouble, make a hard GM move (establish badness). Otherwise, say what happens.

5) Repeat

• Is the situation clear and grabby? Can the PC(s) act? Back to step 3.
• Is the situation clear, but escalating before the PCs act? Back to step 2.
• Is the situation clear, but needs a nudge? Back to step 2.
• Is the situation unlcear? Does it need clarification, recapping, or updating? Back to step 1.
• Is the current scene or situation over? Wrap up, look for the next one. Back to step 1.

I am slightly less clear on whether not-triggered Gm moves are a thing. There are threat moves, and threats are supposed to be used to do stuff especially during a lull, but I am not sure if threat moves can occur without being in response to something the players do. is "nothing" something the players do? Now I guess we are sort of veering back toward the purpose of prep and threats, but anyway.

So there aren’t triggered "GM moves" but there are triggered World and Threat Moves. Again, the custom move structure of AW couldn't be more straight-forward. These moves should be in service to your Agenda/Always Say/Principles (1 of my initial post) and/or the dramatic needs/premise of the game (3 of my initial post; xp triggers and advancement). Pulling directly from AW, look at what Vincent has to say and look at one of his beautiful examples:

For some threats, you’ll want to punch them up with their own custom moves. You create these. Custom moves are new moves for the PCs
to make, not for you to:

When a player’s character does [specify], they roll+[specify]. On a 10+, [specify]. On a 7–9, [specify]. On a miss, [specify]. Generally, on a 10+ they’re fine, on a miss they’re effed, and on a 7–9 something in between.

Example:

When one of Siso’s Children touches you, roll+weird. On a 10+, your brain protects you and it’s just a touch. On a 7–9, I tell you what to do: if you do it, mark experience; if you don’t, you’re acting under fire from brain-weirdness. On a miss, you come to, some time later, having done whatever Siso’s child wants you to have done.

So that is the Custom Move structure. Its straight-forward. Don't get carried away though because custom moves are a very small part of play (focus on the core stuff for now). I'd heavily advise you to look at page 270 and onward (281 elaborates on move archetecture). It tells you what makes the move structure work and when they might be legal but might suck. Acquaint yourself well with that.

But look again at the core loop above. Overwhelmingly, GM moves are found on page 88 (general moves) and pages 108-113 for specific threat Impulses and moves). These are stuff that happens in the imagined space that provoke players to action or render consequences of player inaction or 6- move results. Look again above at The Core Loop. These are your primary responsibility to play:

• (2) - provoke the PCs after scene framing
• The 2nd and 3rd asterisks of 4; players ignore trouble (?) > move...6- (?) > move

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Finally, its not just your responsibility to watch for Move Triggers. Everybody at the table should be locked in and being aware of Move Triggers. You've got a lot to manage, and your brain is working along multiple axes at once. AW is NOT A WRITERS'S ROOM, but every participant should be interested in the other character's scenes/moves and should be paying attention to help confirm if a move is made so we can resolve it (which typically involves going to the dice but may be a procedure sans dice).

 

[andreszarta]

A player says what they want to do and if the thing they want to do triggers a move the GM calls for the appropriate dice to be rolled. The results of that roll may prescribe a move results or it may be that the results allow the GM to make a move of their own. Is that the gist.

You are essentially right. I want to complement your understanding by adding that if the action they take does not trigger a move, then the MC gets to say what happens by making a move of their own.

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I would also like to make a sidenote that it isn't so much that players tell the MC what they want to do, and then the MC asks them for a roll. Instead players do things in the fiction and if those things happen to trigger a move, then someone, anyone including themselves, calls for the appropriate roll.

This was one of the hardest and subtlest lessons for me to learn when I transitioned from more traditional games.

You see, most of us have come to expect during our time with traditional RPGs that one implicit GM function is to "police" over which things players say actually become part of the fiction, and which need to get somehow "filtered" before they become real in the fiction. This is not the kind of collaboration Apocalypse World asks of us. In Apocalypse World players have authority over their characters and the things that they do within the fictional space. What they say sticks; and as the MC you should not contradict or block what they say but instead respond to it.

This is the other side of the coin of if you do it, you do it; to do it, you have to do it. A move is not a thing that grants permission to do something in the fiction; it is what happens the moment someone does something that matches its trigger. It is already in motion.

Now, every time a player says to me "I want to do X" (asking for permission due to their trad expectations), I often respond with "Cool! Do you do it?" (Cause that's the only way we are going to find out what happens.)

---

I am slightly less clear on whether not-triggered Gm moves are a thing. There are threat moves, and threats are supposed to be used to do stuff especially during a lull, but I am not sure if threat moves can occur without being in response to something the players do. is "nothing" something the players do?

This goes all back to the fact that Apocalypse World's most fundamental structure is The Conversation. When do you get to say something? When it's your turn to add something to the conversation.

You get to make your GM moves (MC Moves, Threat Moves) when players look at you expecting you to say something. From experience, I know that players are going to look at you, most likely, at the beginning of the session and in between scenes to set up new action, and they will also look at you after they get the result from a move, good or bad. Essentially they are going to look at you when it's clear that in order to continue with the story, you, The MC, have to say something.

That's your trigger. You make your moves in response to the flow of the conversation. Once its clear that it's your turn to say something, you look down at the fiction to help you decide which move to make.

Also, this "lull" word you've been using, I believe it is vocabulary that comes from Masks and not AW. In that game, a lull in the action is a hint that its your turn to say something in the conversation. Different game though, so I think it might be useful for you to keep them separate in your head.

 

[Reynard]

@andreszarta and @Manbearcat those were both very helpful explanations.

What the hell is a soft move?