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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8696139" data-attributes="member: 6696971">1) Your prep in AW is meant to always give you interesting things to say ("make moves" and "ask provocative questions") which observes the Agenda and Principles of Apocalypse World.  Here are those again just for thread reference:AGENDA• Make Apocalypse World seem real.• Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.• Play to find out what happens.ALWAYS SAY• What the principles demand (as follow).• What the rules demand.• What your prep demands.• What honesty demands.THE PRINCIPLES• Barf forth apocalyptica.• Address yourself to the characters, not the players.• Make your move, but misdirect.• Make your move, but never speak its name.• Look through crosshairs.• Name everyone, make everyone human.• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.• Respond with “effery” and intermittent rewards.• Be a fan of the players’ characters.• Think offscreen too.• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.[HR][/HR]2)  Your prep helps you do the above (1) and do the below (3).  You've got a world of things (both sentient like NPCs and gangs and even non-sentient like terrain) that have Archetypes (Kind) and Impulses and Connections/orientation (to the PCs mostly, but also orientation to other stuff, like emerging places and active Threats, in Apocalypse World).  This stuff will tell you what they are, why they do what they do, who/what they're connected to, where they are (both the nature of the question "where" and abstract proximity/orientation).  Threat Maps, Custom Moves, and Clocks will help you keep track of that stuff.If you've read Dungeon World, Stakes questions and Clocks in AW are the Grim Portents/Impending Doom (and Stakes Questions obviously); they serve the same purpose.  "What happens with this stuff as play unfurls (PC intervention or not and the nature of the intervention)?"So you've got nature +orientation (in all ways) of challenges/opposition and you've got some thoughts on "what happens if..." and then you've got a means to mechanically track that "if..." and give it life during play.[HR][/HR]3)  The next thing prep (and improv) does (and its entwined in the above) is it helps you make moves that might provoke the two highlighted stats of each PC (one of which you find interesting and one of which another player does), that might provoke relationship changes (see End Session move and Hx), and that might provoke a playbook move.The way reward cycles/advancement works in games will tell you "what the play of this game is about/expects/incentivizes" as much as anything else.  For players, Apocalypse World is about "what you do and how you do what you do" (playbook xp and highlighted stats) and "your conflicted and conflicting relationships" (Hx changes toward zenith/nadir and hitting them).So when a D&D GM says "milestone xp" that tells you as much about the nature of that game as Apocalypse World's (3) above and DW's End of Session + Alignment +Bonds.[HR][/HR]Keep asking provocative questions and use the answers so you know what is interesting to the participants at the table and to yourself.  Give the interesting/provocative stuff life via (1) and (2).  Provoke (3) out of the players with (2).EDIT - [USER=19675]@Dannyalcatraz[/USER] , [USER=6799796]@John R Davis[/USER]  was presumably helping me out. I c/p a from AW and bright in a curse word with it. I edited but forgot to  formally “EDIT - hat tip them”. I’ll do so now. Hat-tip [USER=6799796]@John R Davis[/USER] .</blockquote>

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