Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[pemerton]

Something like a competing gang doing the same score is the sort of dynamic situation I talk about. it happened once in our game, and we really were not expecting that so it was a nice surprise.

if the "dynamic situation" means something else ongoing, as in, a rival faction showing up to compete with PCs for the score/actively sabotage them, that is also something that the game expects, I think?

Faction relationship rules are kind of that? Factions that have -3 with you will go out of their way to screw you, and showing up for your score is one of the most obvious way they can do that.

The same goes for PC's personal enemies.

I really don't understand why my framing of "If the PCs did nothing, what would happen?" is misplaced. That is a question about the fictional situation, and I feel we can answer that regardless of the specific game we are playing.

I think what you say about GM soft moves and important NPCs taking initiative closely related to this. I feel this is not something that happens a lot in the game I've been playing in. Most developments in situation are due complications or success of PC actions. But good to know the mechanical avenue by which the sort of dynamism which I speak of could be inserted.

We're not just talking past each other, we're talking about different things entirely. My sense is that the lens through which you're looking at Blades in the Dark play is not the correct one.

I've followed this conversation, and the quotes above are the ones that strike me as especially salient.

My knowledge of BitD/FitD/S&V etc is indirect and partial. But @Manbearcat, I think you are posting about processes of play with a particular focus on GMing techniques. Whereas I think @Crimson Longinus is asking about colour.

Here is my version of the situation/score that @Crimson Longinus has mentioned:

A noblewoman has an absurdly valuable necklace kept in a vault in her manor. Security at the manor is provided by (inter alia) guard dogs and Bluecoats. From the Bluecoats' perspective, the necklace is a form of savings/insurance/surety - as long as they know where it is, and that it is safe, they can always call upon it (or its owner) if they need extra finance. This is why they are protecting it.

In addition, and unbeknownst to either the noblewoman or the Bluecoats, the necklace in its vault serves as a supernatural anchor or focus for some ritual (or the like) that is being performed by some other more esoteric faction. Most of the noblewoman's servants/workers/underlings are members of this faction: thus, from her point of view she thinks of them as her "people"; but from their point of view she is their dupe and they are using her to pursue their esoteric goal. This is why these seemingly ordinary, low status, uninteresting people (i) are actually more dangerous than they appear, and (ii) will stop at nothing to protect the necklace.

Now I am not sure how much BitD permits/encourages the GM to prep "fronts" or something of that nature - but with fingers crossed that I'm not going completely astray in relation to the game procedures, I'm going to posit that, when play of the score just described starts, the players know the first paragraph - this is the info they've collected in the set-up phase - but they don't know the second paragraph, as this is an idea the GM has come up with as a basis for narrating twists and so on in the event that things happen that demand the situation be complicated. The GM is ready to "actively reveal" this prep in play, but is looking to do so in the context of making the PCs' lives more complicated than they expected and hoped for.

So the PCs turn up to steal this necklace, and active play of the score begins. The situation I've described has (I think) plenty of dynamism or "charged-ness" in @Manbearcat's sense: there are factions and powerful people with a big stake in what happens if the PCs steal the necklace (the noblewoman; the Bluecoats; the cultists). Even if the PCs fail to actually acquire the necklace, they can piss people off by poisoning guard dogs, destabilising the relationship between the noblewoman and the Bluecoats (she no longer thinks that their protection is reliable; they want to move their insurance policy to somewhere else), and interfering with esoteric cultish matters.

But as I understand it, this is not what @Crimson Longinus is talking about, in terms of "dynamic situations" in the score. I take it that Crimson Longinus is drawing a contrast between (say):

(i) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs in the courtyard below - they're big and obviously vicious ("static"), vs

(ii) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs with their handler - and a Bluecoat too! The handler is saying something to the Bluecoat, and though you can't hear what, it's not making the Bluecoat happy ("dynamic"), or even vs

(iii) When you get to the top of the wall, you see the bodies of what were obviously, until quite recently, guard dogs - .but now they're dead, and laid out to mark a pentagon with the sixth, and biggest, dog, lying in the centre with its viscera extracted and artfully arranged ("dynamic", and a GM move that doesn't give the players the immediate obstacle of the dogs, but announces future badness that some other weird thing is going on here).​

Or

(i) When you inspect the vault using your supernal vision, you notice to your surprise that is is warded by invisible sigils of the ten dark stars ("static"), vs

(ii) As you approach the room with the vault, you can see a serving cart with pastries on it sitting in the corridor, and hear chanting coming from the room itself ("dynamic" - the cultists, worried about the threat to the necklace, have brought forward their ritual plans).​

Assuming that I've understood @Crimson Longinus correctly, then I think the answer would be YES, BitD can include "dynamic" as well as "static" elements in the way moments within a score are framed. But this will be done using the techniques the game provides for. Eg I don't think I'm fully across Devil's Bargains, but to me it seems like the ritually slaughtered and laid-out dogs could be the result of something like a Devils' Bargain on a check to cross the courtyard without being seen/mauled - the dogs are established as the obstacle and being mauled by them is the stakes; the player makes their check and doesn't do as well as they hoped, so goes for the Devil's Bargain; and the upshot of that bargain is that the dogs don't get them (because the dogs are dead) but some other powerful group is clearly pursuing its own agenda, ruthlessly and effectively, in this same place at this same time (announce future badness).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Thank you @pemerton great post, and that's exactly what I meant!

 

[niklinna]

I've followed this conversation, and the quotes above are the ones that strike me as especially salient.

My knowledge of BitD/FitD/S&V etc is indirect and partial. But @Manbearcat, I think you are posting about processes of play with a particular focus on GMing techniques. Whereas I think @Crimson Longinus is asking about colour.

Here is my version of the situation/score that @Crimson Longinus has mentioned:

A noblewoman has an absurdly valuable necklace kept in a vault in her manor. Security at the manor is provided by (inter alia) guard dogs and Bluecoats. From the Bluecoats' perspective, the necklace is a form of savings/insurance/surety - as long as they know where it is, and that it is safe, they can always call upon it (or its owner) if they need extra finance. This is why they are protecting it.

In addition, and unbeknownst to either the noblewoman or the Bluecoats, the necklace in its vault serves as a supernatural anchor or focus for some ritual (or the like) that is being performed by some other more esoteric faction. Most of the noblewoman's servants/workers/underlings are members of this faction: thus, from her point of view she thinks of them as her "people"; but from their point of view she is their dupe and they are using her to pursue their esoteric goal. This is why these seemingly ordinary, low status, uninteresting people (i) are actually more dangerous than they appear, and (ii) will stop at nothing to protect the necklace.

Now I am not sure how much BitD permits/encourages the GM to prep "fronts" or something of that nature - but with fingers crossed that I'm not going completely astray in relation to the game procedures, I'm going to posit that, when play of the score just described starts, the players know the first paragraph - this is the info they've collected in the set-up phase - but they don't know the second paragraph, as this is an idea the GM has come up with as a basis for narrating twists and so on in the event that things happen that demand the situation be complicated. The GM is ready to "actively reveal" this prep in play, but is looking to do so in the context of making the PCs' lives more complicated than they expected and hoped for.

So the PCs turn up to steal this necklace, and active play of the score begins. The situation I've described has (I think) plenty of dynamism or "charged-ness" in @Manbearcat's sense: there are factions and powerful people with a big stake in what happens if the PCs steal the necklace (the noblewoman; the Bluecoats; the cultists). Even if the PCs fail to actually acquire the necklace, they can piss people off by poisoning guard dogs, destabilising the relationship between the noblewoman and the Bluecoats (she no longer thinks that their protection is reliable; they want to move their insurance policy to somewhere else), and interfering with esoteric cultish matters.

But as I understand it, this is not what @Crimson Longinus is talking about, in terms of "dynamic situations" in the score. I take it that Crimson Longinus is drawing a contrast between (say):

(i) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs in the courtyard below - they're big and obviously vicious ("static"), vs​

​

(ii) When you get to the top of the wall, you can see a group of dogs with their handler - and a Bluecoat too! The handler is saying something to the Bluecoat, and though you can't hear what, it's not making the Bluecoat happy ("dynamic"), or even vs​

​

(iii) When you get to the top of the wall, you see the bodies of what were obviously, until quite recently, guard dogs - .but now they're dead, and laid out to mark a pentagon with the sixth, and biggest, dog, lying in the centre with its viscera extracted and artfully arranged ("dynamic", and a GM move that doesn't give the players the immediate obstacle of the dogs, but announces future badness that some other weird thing is going on here).​

Or

(i) When you inspect the vault using your supernal vision, you notice to your surprise that is is warded by invisible sigils of the ten dark stars ("static"), vs​

​

(ii) As you approach the room with the vault, you can see a serving cart with pastries on it sitting in the corridor, and hear chanting coming from the room itself ("dynamic" - the cultists, worried about the threat to the necklace, have brought forward their ritual plans).​

Assuming that I've understood @Crimson Longinus correctly, then I think the answer would be YES, BitD can include "dynamic" as well as "static" elements in the way moments within a score are framed. But this will be done using the techniques the game provides for. Eg I don't think I'm fully across Devil's Bargains, but to me it seems like the ritually slaughtered and laid-out dogs could be the result of something like a Devils' Bargain on a check to cross the courtyard without being seen/mauled - the dogs are established as the obstacle and being mauled by them is the stakes; the player makes their check and doesn't do as well as they hoped, so goes for the Devil's Bargain; and the upshot of that bargain is that the dogs don't get them (because the dogs are dead) but some other powerful group is clearly pursuing its own agenda, ruthlessly and effectively, in this same place at this same time (announce future badness).

That all tracks with my experience of Blades in the Dark, except that the GM needn't prepare any of that "dynamic" stuff in advance. They could! I know @Manbearcat has a big back catalogue of ready-to-use ideas, most of which he probably came up with on the fly the first time he used them. But for this style of games, "dynamic" means it comes up in play.

Also, importantly, even if the GM has something like that in mind, if it hasn't been revealed to the players, it is totally subject to revision at any time until then. Most of @Manbearcat's dynamic stuff came up in response to player character actions or as outcomes of dice rolls, but he did drop competent and master threats on us as well, and it was on us to engage or find a way around them.

I will also say that @Manbearcat had no problem revealing stuff to us players that our characters didn't know about yet. But, it being agreed to by all, meant it was assumed to be canon unless we discussed changing it—which we also did on occasion.

Edit: Typo.

 

[pemerton]

Thank you @pemerton great post, and that's exactly what I meant!

OK, that's good!

I'll let the BitD experts speak to how close what I've described is to how it might actually be done using the system's processes and techniques.

But I will offer a conjecture as to why your GM might be doing more static stuff than you would like: I am guessing your GM is new-ish to BitD, given (if I remember rightly from your posts) you've not been playing the game all that long. And I think, for a new GM, managing dynamic colour is just harder.

In Apocalypse World, the GM-side principles and techniques are intended to provide support for this: one of the principles is Think offscreen too. From pp 114-15:

When it’s time for you to make a move, imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that now becomes evident? Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quiet notice? This is part of making Apocalypse World seem real - and if you pay attention to your fronts, it’s part of making the
characters’ lives not boring too.​

This is supported by the move Announce offscreen badness, and - as the bit of rules text I've just quoted shows - by the GM's prep of fronts. (And it's not a coincidence that my examples of "dynamics" have the structure of announcing future/off-screen badness by revealing elements of my fronts - especially, my cult front - in motion.)

To go a bit more abstract: even if my example is a bit rough or wonky from the BitD perspective, it shows how prep matters in AW, even though it is not playing the role it does in map-and-key play. To say that prep helps structure and coordinate the fiction isn't just words - it's part of what makes the presentation of these "dynamic" situations possible.

 

[pemerton]

That all tracks with my experience of Blades in the Dark, except that the GM needn't prepare any of that "dynamic" stuff in advance. They could! I know @Manbearcat has a big back catalogue of ready-to-use ideas, most of which he probably came with on the fly the first time he used them. But for this style of games, "dynamic" means it comes up in play.

Also, importantly, even if the GM has something like that in mind, if it hasn't been revealed to the players, it is totally subject to revision at any time until then. Most of @Manbearcat's dynamic stuff came up in response to player character actions or as outcomes of dice rolls, but he did drop competent and master threats on us as well, and it was on us to engage or find a way around them.

I will also say that @Manbearcat had no problem revealing stuff to us players that our characters didn't know about yet. But, it being agreed to by all, meant it was assumed to be canon unless we discussed changing it—which we also did on occasion.

So, in AW the rulebook emphasises that prep of fronts and their threats is binding. From p 136.

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

There is also an example of this given in explaining how to adjudicate a player having their PC *open their brain to the world's psychic maelstrom, on p 121:

When a player’s character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, for instance, the rules might tell you to reveal something interesting. Something interesting? Look to your fronts: Joe’s Girl has joined the water cult, I’ll bet they didn’t know that. So say that, and of course say it according to the principles. Maybe “deep under the brain-howling, you come to hear … is it chanting? A list of people’s names, chanted over and over by a hundred subliminal voices. ‘Tum Tum … Gnarly … Fleece … Lala … Forner … Joe’s Girl … Shan …’” (Player: “wait, Joe’s Girl? <Hell's bells>.”)​

I don't know what the corresponding principle might be (or might not be) in BitD, but in my example, I'm imagining that the GM, having made decisions about the existence and motivations of the servant/worker cult, is bound by those decisions even though they haven't yet been revealed in play.

The idea that one might reveal that prep through (say) ritual slaughter of guard dogs followed by arranging their bodies just so, or through dogs in the courtyard, or through pastry carts in the corridor, on the other hand, is for me more like prepping for Torchbearer, where part of that prep includes making notes on possible twists. It's basically putting some (hopefully) cool ideas in your pocket so you can bring 'em out later (or bring out some variant of, or riff, on them) if/when you need them.

 

[niklinna]

So, in AW the rulebook emphasises that prep of fronts and their threats is binding. From p 136.

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

There is also an example of this given in explaining how to adjudicate a player having their PC *open their brain to the world's psychic maelstrom, on p 121:

When a player’s character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, for instance, the rules might tell you to reveal something interesting. Something interesting? Look to your fronts: Joe’s Girl has joined the water cult, I’ll bet they didn’t know that. So say that, and​

of course say it according to the principles. Maybe “deep under the brain-howling, you come to hear … is it chanting? A list of people’s names, chanted over and over by a hundred subliminal voices. ‘Tum Tum … Gnarly … Fleece … Lala … Forner … Joe’s Girl … Shan …’” (Player: “wait, Joe’s Girl? <Hell's bells>.”)​

I was a player in those games, but it sure felt to me like things not known already to all at the table were not fixed. Perhaps because we did revise some things that had been discussed as possiblities but not actually realized in play. I'll have to see if I can recall a concrete instance; I don't have the notes any more.

I don't know what the corresponding principle might be (or might not be) in BitD, but in my example, I'm imagining that the GM, having made decisions about the existence and motivations of the servant/worker cult, is bound by those decisions even though they haven't yet been revealed in play.

The idea that one might reveal that prep through (say) ritual slaughter of guard dogs followed by arranging their bodies just so, or through dogs in the courtyard, or through pastry carts in the corridor, on the other hand, is for me more like prepping for Torchbearer, where part of that prep includes making notes on possible twists. It's basically putting some (hopefully) cool ideas in your pocket so you can bring 'em out later (or bring out some variant of, or riff, on them) if/when you need them.

The latter sounds more like what I saw: @Manbearcat had possible things in his pocket that he brought out, and then they were effectively binding.

We never had clocks ticking that the players didn't know about, though, as far as I could tell.

 

[pemerton]

The AW rulebook doesn't say why the prep of fronts and threats is binding on the GM. To me, the core logic of it seems to be to be to hold the GM's feet to the fire also: they can't squib, or wobble their way out of something, just because when the time comes to follow through they wish it were different.

 

[thefutilist]

The AW rulebook doesn't say why the prep of fronts and threats is binding on the GM. To me, the core logic of it seems to be to be to hold the GM's feet to the fire also: they can't squib, or wobble their way out of something, just because when the time comes to follow through they wish it were different.

When you give them motive and backstory you’re completing the dramatic situation. In a way a story is just a clash of world views and so you need binding world views to actually be able to clash. Which is in my opinion the most important part of allowing emergent story to actually happen. It’s also the most important part of the fictional positioning (whether on screen or off screen)

Then depending on the granularity of the fictional positioning you’re also giving them resources, stats, that kind of thing. Which as a side effect means your feet are being held to the fire, but really, only in the same way that the PC’s are.

 

[niklinna]

I was a player in those games, but it sure felt to me like things not known already to all at the table were not fixed. Perhaps because we did revise some things that had been discussed as possiblities but not actually realized in play. I'll have to see if I can recall a concrete instance; I don't have the notes any more.

Oh I recall now that one character had an assassin sent after them. It was put out there, had a clock and all, but at some point, since we hadn't engaged with it at all, some little detail got revised. @AbdulAlhazred or @Campbell might remember better (unless it that early bit with our Hound who had to drop out of play).

 

[pemerton]

When you give them motive and backstory you’re completing the dramatic situation.

But this can - in principle at least, and subject to the actual imaginative capabilities of the GM - be done on the spur of the moment.

For instance, in a recent Torchbearer session I rolled for a camp event, and the result was that, as the PCs went to make camp, a Dire Wolf turned up - and so the PCs had to resolve this encounter before they could leave the adventure phase.

I had to establish a motive and backstory for the Dire Wolf, and I did so - what I came up with was not terribly profound (the Dire Wolf was a scout from the nearby Moathouse), but it did the job.

One benefit of prep is that it allows more time for greater subtlety, ingenuity etc: "You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think" (AW p 136).

On it's own, though, I don't think this tells us why it is binding.

In a way a story is just a clash of world views and so you need binding world views to actually be able to clash.

But this doesn't require the prep to be binding, does it? It just requires the GM to commit at the moment of conflict.

Then depending on the granularity of the fictional positioning you’re also giving them resources, stats, that kind of thing. Which as a side effect means your feet are being held to the fire, but really, only in the same way that the PC’s are.

I had in mind something a bit different from the players: if the GM decides, as part of prep, that Joe's Girl has joined the Water Cult, then the GM is bound to that, and can't change their mind in response to something subsequently happening in play that makes them want to "save" Joe's Girl.