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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9145849" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here are the rules, from pp 116-7 of the Apocalypse World rulebook:Whenever someone turns and looks to you to say something, always say what the principles demand. . . . Whenever there’s a pause in the conversation and everyone looks to you to say something, choose one of these things [a GM move] and say it. . . . Always choose a move that can follow logically from what’s going on in the game’s fiction. It doesn’t have to be the only one, or the most likely, but it does have to make at least some kind of sense. Generally, limit yourself to a move that’ll (a) set you up for a future harder move, and (b) give the players’ characters some opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its conclusion. However, when a player’s character hands you the perfect opportunity on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you like. It’s not the meaner the better, although mean is often good. Best is: make it irrevocable. When a player’s character makes a move and the player misses the roll, that’s the cleanest and clearest example there is of an opportunity on a plate. When you’ve been setting something up and it comes together without interference, that counts as an opportunity on a plate too. But again, unless a player’s character has handed you the opportunity, limit yourself to a move that sets up future moves, your own and the players’ characters’.So I think it's just not accurate to say that "in the absence of mechanics, all that's left is storytelling". In the absence of mechanics, the GM makes a move, from the list, in accordance with the principles and following the rules about whether the move should be "soft" (setting things up) or "hard" (as hard and direct as the GM likes, and irrevocable).The GM doesn't need to worry about "story". The game design - the list of GM principles, the list of GM moves, the list and the details of player-side moves - will take care of that.Someone who can't think of something that might follow from what's already going on will struggle to GM Apocalypse World. Personally I would have thought they might find any GMing a challenge.I think you may be exaggerating the role of improvisation, though. The GM is - after the first session - expected to have prepared one or more fronts. As per p 136 of the rulebook,The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say. As MC [= GM] you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.A lot of people talk about GMing by "getting inside the head of their NPCs". A front is like that. Just remember that when you have a threat do something, or when you introduce a threat into play, set things up rather than make them irrevocable unless you're entitled to make as hard and direct a move as you like.</blockquote>

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