Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

[kenada]

Move design from my perspective contradicts that, however. And I could wrong but I can't help but think Baker at some point stated that you could just call out Moves; I've seen enough random quotes pulled out of the aether from him (I read lots of PBTA debates, and people always have quotes of his they can pull from the most obscure places) that I can't help but think that was one of them.

The game tells you what to do as the MC (from “Moves and Dice” on p. 12 of AW 1e and p. 9 of AW 2e):

First is when a player says only that her character makes a move, without having her character actually take any such action. For instance: “I go aggro on him.” Your answer then should be “cool, what do you do?” “I seize the radio by force.” “Cool, what do you do?” “I try to fast talk him.” “Cool, what do you do?”​

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But even if he hasnt, Go Aggro, and other Moves, in assuming certain Triggers can absolutely be used in a way that equates to the player making the Triggers happen. Rather than focus on trying to improv your way into the trigger, just cede the lead up and focus on the outcome you wanted. Go Aggro has specific possible outcomes, and say you want one of them. Go Aggro, roll for it, and move on.

Unlike games that use what you’ve called the apprenticeship model, Apocalypse World provides explicit social interaction mechanics (as in “The Basics” starting on p. 11 in AW 1e and p. 9 in AW 2e). Those are quite different from improvisational theater, so I would not refer to what AW is doing as “improv”. (As noted in post #32 of one of the other threads, I dislike the appropriation of “improv” in RPG discourse. That’s especially true of games like AW where their social interaction mechanics are provided in their texts. Feel free to take this as a mild rant.)

Simple and easy, and no need to get wrapped up in a meta discussion. It still, as said, runs into issues integrating with the improv game. Because the triggers could happen in other contexts, Moves could be triggered unintentionally, and because the Outcomes are assumed, not all Moves are going to track with every desired outcome.

I don’t accept that a “meta discussion” is happening. What I see is an MC trying to clarify intent to avoid an unwanted outcome. It’s fine not to like conflict resolution, but I don’t think it’s fair to evaluate the approach a game uses free of its own context. Within the context of AW, the process seems pretty standard as far as GMing practices go. There are differences for sure, but I would not include asking for clarification as one of them.

Which, of course, is intentional as far as the outcomes go. They're supposed to ensure that certain narrative beats happen, as thats what makes the overall game evocative of whatever Genre its emulating.

I know you aren't sold on the idea of this being genre emulation, and Id say to that concern that it kind of is an implicit thing, as the emulation is rooted in the Outcomes and not just the theme of the Move, which I'd argue is due to a desire to make the game appear closer to what RPG fans were used to. Go Aggro for example feels and is themed closer to a task, but its outcomes are narrative beats.

A way to look at it is moves take the action declarations from other games and turn them into reactions.

Thats why it prescribes how the character(s) act in response to the roll, and not the specific effects of whatever the actual task is. Ie, Go Aggro doesn't resolve if you could fire a gun into someones temple accurately, or if your fists were doing enough damage, or what have you, it resolves a given scene and how the characters respond to it, in correlation to how similar scenes in the Genre are typically resolved.

Every outcome of Go Aggro has examples found in every piece of post-apocalyptic media ever made, and by design it doesn't allow you to generate a new outcome. You either follow the prescribed narrative beats or you use something else. (Or violate the rules)

I don’t agree that the Go Aggro on Someone move is specific to post-apocalyptic media. For example, we could be playing in a pre-apocalyptic fantasy setting (like the Realms). The party has taken a bandit prisoner and wants to find out more about the location of their camp (because the bandits are threatening a village we are charged with protecting). The prisoner isn’t cooperating, and I’m tired of this crap, so I kick him to the ground, put my boot on his neck, and draw my weapon with intent to kill. That’s totally going aggro.

Edit: To put it another way, the moves are obviously given thematic names and flavor in AW. That seems like an aesthetic concern rather than a mechanical one. The mechanics of the moves themselves, especially most of the basic ones, aren’t particularly tied to the post-apocalyptic milieu used by Apocalypse World. I do think you can design ones that are (e.g., Monsterhearts, arguably), but I don’t think that’s an intrinsic property of moves.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I know. I'm a physicist.

But how hard it is isn't the point. The point is that there's a wide gulf between telling you about a concept, and giving you the information to make it practically actionable. I can describe the basic operation of an internal combustion engine, but that won't allow you to adjust the timing chain to make it actually work - and that's not "REALLY HARD".

OK, so lets go with that point, it has merit. Is the fact that there are now 100s, maybe 1000s of PbtA games out there not a point against you here? Is the fact that entirely new sorts of game system such as FitD (BitD-based games) and Paragon (Agon's engine) also springing up like mushrooms a point against you? It is plainly quite actionable. Read Vince's blog, please, all of the key articles (there was a link above IIRC to a post of his that lists all the key ones). It is QUITE clear and it seems to me that most people who could follow Gary's directions to make a dungeon map could make a simple, basic, PbtA-like kind of game. Certainly Vince may have some real talent at this which others of us lack, but the process is mapped out in excruciating detail! With pictures, each one with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining how it is to be used as evidence against us!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No. So little, in fact, that I don't know what about the post seems similar, to you.

She's got some pretty interesting points, and was putting forward her thesis about disconnecting the mechanics in much the same way that you just presented, that's all. Her approach seemed more like "OK, we stop RPing at this point and resolve the conflict with some entirely unrelated mechanism that isn't referencing any of the game's fiction, etc." like playing a game of chess to decide the outcome of a combat or something like that. Her point was, if I am qualified to explain it, being that fictionally constrained mechanics often produce bad game, and get in the way of characterization, which is I think her main objective in play. I may be a bit off, her thinking is pretty extensive and she's built a number of games based on exploring different aspects of it (I have not studied them in any depth, nor played any of them myself).

 

[Aldarc]

I don't think there is much point in continuing. If you don't see why in a roleplaying game it is important to make decisions from character's perspective and actually react organically to what characters and NPCs are saying and doing, then we are not in this to do the same thing to begin with.

I agree that there is little point continuing discussion. It's pretty clear that you are looking for an easy out of the discussion. It seems like not responding would be easier than making these sort of bad faith generalizations with people who disagree with you, especially about roleplaying game preferences.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What's obvious to me is that these particular rules aren't working as they are meant to, at least not for a significant number of people. So in the context of this thread I think it's fair to judge it by the words below - for these people the game isn't working the way it's meant to, thus the right details aren't being emphasized and elided, thus for them it's a bad match in design.

What’s obvious to me is that the rules appear to work fine for the folks who actually use them. It’s hard to say a game isn’t working as intended for people who don’t, and most likely will never, play it.

What’s also obvious is that there are a number of players who don’t want to have to commit to a course of action until the last possible second, as if that’s the way a charged situation works. That someone with a gun to someone’s head is thinking as clearly and easily as a person taking a turn in an RPG.

Go Aggro asks if you’re willing to escalate to violence or not. Here’s the situation… will you resort to violence? If yes, Go Aggro. If not, then it’s something else.

I hope the folks I play with aren’t afraid to commit. Do the thing, let’s see what happens as a result. Let’s not endlessly wait to see what happens before having to finally make a decision. That’s timid play.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I agree that there is little point continuing discussion. It's pretty clear that you are looking for an easy out of the discussion. It seems like not responding would be easier than making these sort of bad faith generalizations with people who disagree with you.

You still are not an moderator. If @pemerton feels that I was misunderstanding or mischaracterising their positions, they certainly can clarify. But to me it seemed that their approach skipped both an in-character decision point, and reacting to another character's response, deeming those otiose.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That would make sense, but it is not what the rules say. For some reson threatening is both part of go aggro and seduce/manipulate.

GO AGGRO

Going aggro on someone means threatening or attacking them when
it’s not, or not yet, a fight. Use it whenever the character’s definitely the
aggressor: when the target isn’t expecting the attack, isn’t prepared to
fight back, doesn’t want to fight back, or can’t fight back effectively.
If the target forces the character’s hand and sucks it up, that means that
the character inflicts harm upon the target as established, determined by
her weapon and the target’s armor. At this point, the player can’t decide
not to inflict harm, it’s gone too far for that.

So taking this at face value would seem to lead the sort of dilemma that was described.

But again, the distinction here is that the PC is unleashing actual violence. The NPC has an option to 'cave', in which case harm is avoided, but it is distinct from manipulate/seduce, which covers a whole RANGE of approaches which all share the concept that the PC has some sort of leverage on the target and a threat/promise/action is exchanged for desired behavior by the NPC. Go Aggro is pure violence, You raise your fist with the full intention of bringing it smashing down on the guy's face, that's Go Aggro. 10+ the guy buckles and you achieve your intent. Now, if the intent is simply to KILL HIM, then there's a DIFFERENT MOVE, called 'In Battle' which is just simply a fight to the death where each side attempts to kill the other. Now, you could kinda kludge together Go Aggro perhaps by going into battle, and then stopping short of slaughter after a round or two, but why? Effectively Apocalypse World is about violence and chaos, so going in aggressive is a big part of play. Giving it a move is a game design choice that reliably allows the action to focus on that sort of situation in a quite natural and pretty realistic way. I mean, most people are not interested in fights to the death! It would be hard and risky to reliably produce that kind of interaction out of very discrete task-focused moves. This is part of Baker's point, put the tools in the game that make the game do what it is supposed to do, to be about what it is actually about. Don't pussy-foot around making up naturalistic action rules, focus on character and situation and allow things to play out in the terms of the game's agenda.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I hope the folks I play with aren’t afraid to commit. Do the thing, let’s see what happens as a result. Let’s not endlessly wait to see what happens before having to finally make a decision. That’s timid play.

It is not about timidness, it is about wanting to actually roleplay the situation and taking what happens into account in your character's actions. Wanting to know how the person you threaten reacts before you decide to blow their brains out doesn't seem like particularly weird or unreasonable desire to me.

 

[Emberashh]

Those are quite different from improvisational theater, so I would not refer to what AW is doing as “improv”.

I use improv game as shorthand for the underlying mechanics that are shared between roleplaying and improv theater. Ie, as a game pattern.

And given AW et al's focus on RPGs being a Conversation, well, that's what Improv Theater is, so while the word "improv" comes with a lot of baggage that evokes feelings of wannabe comedians trying too hard to be wacky and zany, it isn't being used in the same sense of describing a specific and complex activity, and is instead being used to describe a simpler, less specific and more universal activity.

I don’t accept that a “meta discussion” is happening. What I see is an MC trying to clarify intent to avoid an unwanted outcome

Its the same thing. It may well just be that you're getting hung up on the baggage of a certain word, meta in this instance.

We can after all clarify what we intend to mean and agree to stick to those definitions. If I for example want to utilize the word anarchy to make for an expedient and less formal talk on anarchism, we shouldn't be worrying about the implication of the word anarchy as being walking into a deli and urinating on the cheese. We just have to be sure we're establishing that and I'm actually trying to be better about recognizing when what words I'm inclined might not convey the same definition.

Meta in this sense refers to speaking about a game concern outside of the reality of the gameworld. Clarifying player intent is a meta concern, and one Id prefer if the game didn't produce an excessive amount of.

Meta in this sense does not, nor have to, refer to meta as in the derogatory "metagaming", where out of game knowledge is leveraged for an unfair advantage within the in-game.

Ie, you introduce your Player knowledge that Trolls are weak to fire to win a battle, despite your character Frildo never having left the Bubblegum Forest until a week ago and never seeing a troll before until this moment.

In the specific example of clarifying player intent, this isn't the same thing as metagaming as its within the bounds of fairness in the game, but both are still meta in the sense that they're rooted outside the gameworld itself.

A way to look at it is moves take the action declarations from other games and turn them into reactions.

That produces an itchy aesthetic concern, though. Reactions aren't intuitively something you, the person who made an Action, rolls for. Someone else does, because intuitively unless you're the one reacting you shouldn't be doing anything.

I think thats pretty relatable to another interpretation of these games where the GM/MV is the only one interacting with dice or Moves. If playing that way feels better its probably because they have a strong adverse reaction to controlling more than just their character, which results from control of other characters being wrapped up in the Actions they take.

don’t agree that the Go Aggro on Someone move is specific to post-apocalyptic media.

It isn't, but Go Aggro is just one move in a greater spread of Playbooks and general moves. All of them collectively evoke a genre, and individual examples can prove that by being specifically and notably present in other examples of the Genre.

In post-apocalyptic stories, people being on edge constantly and at each others throats is a consistent theme (in the writing sense) that plays into the overall messages of these stories of succumbing to our lesser instincts in the absence of the social contracts that normally bind us.

Go Aggro as an individual trope exists in a lot of different genres, but its inclusion and specific design in AW is explicitly meant to convey how post-apocalypic fiction handles it.

I hope the folks I play with aren’t afraid to commit. Do the thing, let’s see what happens as a result. Let’s not endlessly wait to see what happens before having to finally make a decision. That’s timid play.

Just to poke some fun, but you could say this quote in a discussion about Improv Theater and it wouldn't be out of place.

The issue though with roleplay, thats different from improv theater, is that ideally, at least for some of us, we want to accurately portray realistic consequences to our actions.

Its not easy to do that when resolving certain actions comes with a lot of riders that aren't realistically there. Real people don't work like a Move. Narratives do.

And interestingly, Narrative improv is a thing (and funnily enough, is about genre emulation) and there's quite a few methodologies for it, most of which all remind me pretty heavily of what AW does.

Only strict difference is Narrative improv in a theater context doesn't have any means of forcing specific outcomes from interaction to interaction, other than foreknowledge of where the overall narrative is meant to end up in.

Which, I suppose, is what AW does. Fascinating stuff.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But again, the distinction here is that the PC is unleashing actual violence. The NPC has an option to 'cave', in which case harm is avoided, but it is distinct from manipulate/seduce, which covers a whole RANGE of approaches which all share the concept that the PC has some sort of leverage on the target and a threat/promise/action is exchanged for desired behavior by the NPC. Go Aggro is pure violence, You raise your fist with the full intention of bringing it smashing down on the guy's face, that's Go Aggro. 10+ the guy buckles and you achieve your intent. Now, if the intent is simply to KILL HIM, then there's a DIFFERENT MOVE, called 'In Battle' which is just simply a fight to the death where each side attempts to kill the other. Now, you could kinda kludge together Go Aggro perhaps by going into battle, and then stopping short of slaughter after a round or two, but why? Effectively Apocalypse World is about violence and chaos, so going in aggressive is a big part of play. Giving it a move is a game design choice that reliably allows the action to focus on that sort of situation in a quite natural and pretty realistic way. I mean, most people are not interested in fights to the death! It would be hard and risky to reliably produce that kind of interaction out of very discrete task-focused moves. This is part of Baker's point, put the tools in the game that make the game do what it is supposed to do, to be about what it is actually about. Don't pussy-foot around making up naturalistic action rules, focus on character and situation and allow things to play out in the terms of the game's agenda.

Go Aggro seems like confused and superfluous move to me. You can handle the threatening part with Manipulate/Seduce, and if you decide to escalate to violence you can use battle moves. Then the whole issue we are dealing with there is avoided.