Here are the triggers for the basic player-side moves in Apocalypse World: doing something under fire, or digging in to endure fire; going aggro on someone; trying to seize something by force; trying to seduce or manipulate someone, using leverage (a threat, promise, etc); reading a charged situation; reading a person in a charged interaction; opening your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom.
It's fairly obvious that there is a range of things - in practical terms, an infinite range - that a person in Apocalypse World might do that does not fall under any of those descriptions. And not just stuff like pulling on their socks and tying their shoe laces in the morning. They might open a door to see what's behind it; they might look at the fuel gauge of their car; they might ask the hardholder if she will lend them a gun and ammunition; they might try and open a tin of peaches to share with a friend.
As per my quote not too far upthread (from p 109 of the rulebook),
Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC [=GM] is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.
So when the player says "I pull out my knife and open the tin of peaches", it is the GM's job to say what happens. How does the GM do that? The GM makes a move, in accordance with the principles and the agenda. To quote from pp 108-9,
AGENDA
• Make Apocalypse World seem real.
• Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.
• Play to find out what happens.
Everything you say, you should do it to accomplish these three, and no other. . . .
ALWAYS SAY
• What the principles demand (as follow).
• What the rules demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What honesty demands.
Here are the principles - I'm quoting from p 110, but am grouping them together by the agenda item they tend to support:
• Address yourself to the characters, not the players.
• Name everyone, make everyone human.
• Make your move, but misdirect.
• Make your move, but never speak its name.
• Think offscreen too.
"Misdirection" here is clearly explained (pp 110-1):
the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead.
This ensures (i) that a move always follows from the fiction, and (ii) together with the other principles, it makes Apocalypse World seem real.
More principles:
• Barf forth apocalyptica.
• Look through crosshairs.
• Respond with [trouble] and intermittent rewards.
• Be a fan of the players’ characters.
These principles, when followed, ensure that the character's lives are not boring.
Finally, there are these two principles:
• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.
These are important means of playing to find out what happens.
Note that the prep that is referred to is
not map-and-key. It begins
during and continues
after the first session, as per pp 130, 132 and 136:
Fill up your 1st session worksheet. List the players’ characters in the center circle. Think of the space around them as a map,
but with scarcity and lack instead of cardinal directions. As you name NPCs, place them on the map around the PCs, according to the fundamental scarcity that makes them a threat to the PCs. . . .
Listing each threat’s available resources will give you insight into who they are, what they need, and what they can do to get it. It’s especially useful to give some threats resources that the PCs need but don’t have. Now go back over it all. Pull it into its pieces. Solidify them into threats, following the rules [for fronts] . . .
Take these solid threats and build them up into fronts. . . .
A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say. As MC 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.
So when the player says (as their PC) "I pull out my knife and open the tin of peaches", the GM doesn't decide what happens by consulting a random-tin-contents chart (as might be the case in, say Gamma World or even Twilight 2000). Nor does the GM consult any notes about what are in the tin. Nor does the GM call for a dice roll from the player (as might happen in, say, Cyberspace) with a chance of blunting the knife or spilling the contents.
The GM chooses a move that will best conform to the principles and agenda I've set out above. Suppose that the PC in a place that the GM, building out threats and fronts from the play of the first session, has established as the home of a gang of NPCs led by a "warlord" (see p 138). Perhaps, then, the GM decides to have the warlord "Make a show of force" (p 138) and so (misdirecting, and never speaking the name of their move) tells the player "You open the tin. As you start to eat, you hear a gun shot and a bullet ricochets off the rock next to you. What do you do?" This makes the character's life not boring. It honours prep, and involves thinking offscreen (what does the gang think about interlopers with nice peaches!?). It certainly is responding with "trouble" (Vincent Baker uses a different noun starting with "f" and ending with "ery"). And it puts the PC in a spot (a non-threat-specific GM move: pp 116, 119).
Suppose, rather, that the PC is at home. And suppose that the GM regards this as something of an opportunity - it's already established that things are afoot in the neighbourhood! - and so decides to make a slightly harder move. Then maybe the GM responds "As you're opening the tin, there's a sudden pounding on your door. You look up, and in the process nearly nick yourself with your knife. Do you keep hold of the can - in which case take 1 harm (ap) as the knife cuts your hand. Or do you spill the contents as you drop what you're holding?" The GM, here, is making the character's life not boring. And looking through crosshairs (at the peaches, and at the character). And - while misdirecting and not speaking the name of their move - is announcing off-screen badness (ie the pounding on the door) and telling the possible consequences (of keeping hold of the tin) and asking.
In either case the player says something about what their PC does. In the first case, it seems there's a good chance it will involve acting under fire. But maybe the player has their character read the situation first? In the second case that would also be an option. But maybe the player just says "F*** it! I open the door" - and that doesn't trigger a player-side move, and so now the GM makes another move, applying the same methodology to work out what that move should be.
The methodology is completely different from map-and-key, or from anything found in any D&D module or rulebook that I know of. (Including 4e D&D.)
Here's another way to look at it:
When is a conflict resolved? When the situation in which it arises is changed irrevocably. What do we call an irrevocable change in the situation, in AW? That's a hard move. So what the play procedure of AW is designed to do is to produce rising action - more GM soft moves, introducing more tension and more complication - until the situation changes irrevocably: either the player succeeds on a player-side move and makes an irrevocable change (someone agrees to do what the PC wants, or is removed by threat or force from the PC's way, or the PC gets out of the difficult situation); or the GM is authorised to make a hard move, and declares an irrevocable change in the situation.
The GM has authority over the pacing of this, by choosing what soft moves to make, and the ways in which they step up the pressure in the situation. The player has authority over it, too, by choosing what to say when the GM asks 'What do you do?", which includes choosing whether to declare an action that will enliven a player-side move and thus create the possibility of resolution one way or another.
If the player - as in my warehouse example, and my peaches example - chooses not to make a player-side move, that is not "improper" or degenerate in any fashion. It is, among other things, a choice to prolong the rising action. When the GM responds with (say) "A guard comes up to you to ask you your business" that's not "illegitimate" either (contra
@Lanefan). That is the GM doing their job, of stepping up the pressure in the situation.
The mark of a good PbtA game - and AW is a good PbtA game - is that the elements of the playbooks, the way the first session works, the outlines for fronts and threats, and the design of the player-side moves, all combine to mean that sooner or later a player
will make a player-side move and hence
will initiate the process of resolving the conflict. This is why, when Vincent Baker says "there are no status quos in Apocalypse World" (pp 112, 114, 125, 228) he is not giving an instruction to the GM (or the players) - rather, he is observing what will happen if the game is played as the rulebook actually sets it out.
