thoughts on Apocalypse World?

[Campbell]

I submit that is both true that humans are highly social animals prone to maintaining social harmony / placing the tribe above the self and highly prone to proactive acts of aggression where we believe it will benefit our cultural subgroups. I recommend looking at this paper which discusses the hypothesis that humans are less prone to reactive violence than our closest primate cousins (chimpanzees and bonobos), but highly prone to proactive or committed violence, especially among outgroups.

Two types of aggression in human evolution

Two major types of aggression, proactive and reactive, are associated with contrasting expression, eliciting factors, neural pathways, development, and function. The distinction is useful for understanding the nature and evolution of human aggression. Compared with many primates, humans have a...

www.pnas.org

 

[Malmuria]

My impression of PbtA games is that they are good for genre emulation? So that AW would be less about a simulation of what dystopia would look like and more about playing in the genre of post-apocalypse?

 

[Aldarc]

This one, it turns out...

People Are Good, Actually

In fact, a lot of the studies that people point to that say people are bad, actually, have debunked. Stanford Prison was rigged, the actors in the electric shock experiment were not actually very good, Robber's Cave was a do-over, and many of these older experiments just aren't showing the same results when replicated using modern practices, such as actually representative and diverse samples.

Turns out, Rousseau was right after all

He was horny, so he dropped him. Man is evil!

 

[pemerton]

My impression of PbtA games is that they are good for genre emulation? So that AW would be less about a simulation of what dystopia would look like and more about playing in the genre of post-apocalypse?

What's our comparison class?

If we're saying that AW is a genre-work when compared to (say) The Seventh Seal or Nomadland (to pick two pretty different films), I can buy that.

If we're saying that AW is a genre work compared to some other RPG, then I would be pretty sceptical unless someone is pointing me to a pretty atypical RPG!

Upthread, @Grendel_Khan suggested that AW isn't about simulating the fictional world, and I replied that it both is and isn't. I would say the same about genre.

Consider the AW playbooks. The driver, the chopper, the hardholder, are obvious post-apocalyptic types. The brainer and angel and hocus and gunlugger look to me more like ways of taking well-known RPG character types (enchanter/telepath, healer, cleric/cult-leader, warrior) and locating them within a post-apocalyptic context. Then we have the operator and skinner giving us two versions of the "face"; the battlebabe is a quirkier warrior type; and the savvyhead mixes the post-apocalyptic mechanic/tech-type with a hint of RPG-style alchemist.

To some extent, the AW moves reflect genre: eg no-sh*t driver. But some seem pretty portable: cool under fire or leadership might fit just as well in a military game as in a post-apocalyptic one. And read a situation or read a person would fit the spy/thriller genre pretty well, I think.

In combination, the basic moves plus the playbooks give a pretty clear picture of what sorts of people and events are going to figure in the fiction. At that level of functional abstraction, I see them as similar to the lifepaths in Burning Wheel; and even to some approaches to class in D&D (less so in those versions like late 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e where class is less determinative of a character's role in the game).

I don't see the agenda and principles as distinctively genre-focused either, taken as a whole.

To me, the following principles seem to fit broadly under the agenda item Make Apocalypse World seem real:

• Address yourself to the characters, not the players.
• Make your move, but misdirect.
• Make your move, but never speak its name.
• Name everyone, make everyone human.
• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
• Think offscreen too.
• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.​

These are portable across a very wide range of RPGs. To me, they are primarily approaches, or techniques, for (i) establishing fiction as the GM, and (ii) presenting that fiction to the players.

The following principles, which seem to fit broadly under the agenda item Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring, seem to me more narrowly focused (except for the first, which is pretty portable I think):

• Be a fan of the players’ characters.
• Barf forth apocalyptica.
• Look through crosshairs.
• Respond with f****ry and intermittent rewards (also restated as "Put your bloody fingerprints all over everything you touch").​

Those last three to introduce more of a sense of genre, but I think they could speak eg to a Cthulhu-esque game as much as a post-apocalyptic one. They would be out of place, obviously, in a LotR-esque or typical superhero game.

When you combine these more focused principles with the playbooks and moves, the distinctive post-apocalyptic genre starts to emerge. But I don't think you need to change much to get what will still be a pretty tight game dealing with some other genre (military, perhaps a la Apocalypse Now or even All Quiet on the Western Front, or weird war, seem to me the most obvious, but that probably says more about me than anything about the range of nearby possibilities).

I think this helps explain why PbtA has turned out to be so flexible and portable as a RPG design framework.

 

[pemerton]

This one, it turns out...

People Are Good, Actually

From that article:

they found that the relationship between processing speed (that is, intuition) and cooperation only existed for those who reported having primarily cooperative interactions in daily life. This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—that human “goodness” may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.​

And that's before we get into (what in my view are) very genuine questions about what can be extrapolated from the highly artificial context of experimental philosophy/behaviour economics contexts to actual social life.

I don't have any strong view on whether people are "naturally" good or evil - I'm not 100% sure what that would mean, unless posed as a question in theology - but I do live in a country which has had mandatory detention of unauthorised onshore arrivals for around 30 years now, and which has a policy of using its navy to intercept asylum seeker boats and put the intercepted persons on islands in the Pacific which are financially dependent former colonies. And this policy seems to be incredibly popular with the electorate - no major party opposes it.

So I find the idea of hardholders who violently protect their holds from the bikie gangs and others who want to enter them to share in their bounty pretty plausible. (I find the flavour text for the hardholder pretty compelling: "When hardholders ruled whole continents, when they waged war on the other side of the world instead of with the hold across the burn-flat, when their armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands and they had f*****g boats to hold their f*****g airplanes on, that was the golden age of legend.")

 

[pemerton]

I gotta be honest, the only real difference (between AW and DnD/etc) I'm seeing here is how much emphasis is placed by different systems on encouraging the players to be proactive instead of reactive. That is, how much encouragement to be proactive is actually written into the actual rule book.

@Manbearcat gave a fairly detailed response to this. I basically agree with him, but will explain in a different fashion.

Here are two basic moves from AW:

Seduce or Manipulate
When you try to seduce or manipulate someone, tell them what you want and roll+hot. For NPCs: on a hit, they ask you to promise something first, and do it if you promise. On a 10+, whether you keep your promise is up to you, later. On a 7–9, they need some concrete assurance right now.

Read a Sitch
When you read a charged situation, roll+sharp. On a hit, you can ask the MC questions. Whenever you act on one of the MC’s answers, take +1. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7–9, ask 1:
• where’s my best escape route / way in / way past?
• which enemy is most vulnerable to me?
• which enemy is the biggest threat?
• what should I be on the lookout for?
• what’s my enemy’s true position?
• who’s in control here?​

I've chosen these not because they're especially unique, but because they're very clear, in the following respect: they give a player the power to generate binding fiction.

Seduce/manipulate let's a player oblige the GM to come up with something a NPC wants, which - if given - obliges that NPC to do what the player (via the play of their PC) wants them to.

Read a sitch let's a player oblige the GM to establish elements of the situation - presumably ones the player cares about - and "lock them in", with a bonus for acting on that information.

D&D 5e, played as presented in its core play loop and its rules for adjudicating ability checks, lacks this sort of thing. The players have no power - no matter how proactive - to oblige the GM to "lock in" binding fiction. What distinguishes AW, then, is not just its advocacy of player proactivity but its allocation of authority across the game participants. That's what makes it a work of RPGing genius.

 

[Manbearcat]

D&D 5e, played as presented in its core play loop and its rules for adjudicating ability checks, lacks this sort of thing. The players have no power - no matter how proactive - to oblige the GM to "lock in" binding fiction. What distinguishes AW, then, is not just its advocacy of player proactivity but its allocation of authority across the game participants. That's what makes it a work of RPGing genius.

To add to this, I would also say:

* How it hyper-functionally structures conversation and deftly reduces GM cognitive load (including distributed authority via “ask questions and use the answers”).

* How “the system’s say” works with that to ensure a play experience that is terrifically volatile such that it’s surprising to all participants.

EDIT - fixed deranged quote

 

[doctorbadwolf]

From that article:

they found that the relationship between processing speed (that is, intuition) and cooperation only existed for those who reported having primarily cooperative interactions in daily life. This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—that human “goodness” may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.​

And that's before we get into (what in my view are) very genuine questions about what can be extrapolated from the highly artificial context of experimental philosophy/behaviour economics contexts to actual social life.

I don't have any strong view on whether people are "naturally" good or evil - I'm not 100% sure what that would mean, unless posed as a question in theology - but I do live in a country which has had mandatory detention of unauthorised onshore arrivals for around 30 years now, and which has a policy of using its navy to intercept asylum seeker boats and put the intercepted persons on islands in the Pacific which are financially dependent former colonies. And this policy seems to be incredibly popular with the electorate - no major party opposes it.

So I find the idea of hardholders who violently protect their holds from the bikie gangs and others who want to enter them to share in their bounty pretty plausible. (I find the flavour text for the hardholder pretty compelling: "When hardholders ruled whole continents, when they waged war on the other side of the world instead of with the hold across the burn-flat, when their armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands and they had f*****g boats to hold their f*****g airplanes on, that was the golden age of legend.")

I think looking at much smaller communities in less technologically advanced eras suggests strongly that this sort of behavior and indifference to actions done nominally in one’s name requires the level of distance and “buck-passing” that comes with a large bureaucratic system like a modern industrialized nation.

The assumption that these practices are popular because no major party opposes it is easily debunked, just by looking at the same population’s attitude toward universal healthcare. Rather a lot of policies and practices in my country have an enormous disconnect between major party attitude and majority opinion in the populace.

But in smaller communities, we know that trade has always been more common than raiding, and that neighboring communities have pretty much always helped eachother when they can, and banded together to track down and murder the crap out of outlaw bandit gangs, when possible.

Regardless of all of this, though, I don’t think there is any rational argument that a less brutally pessimistic take would not also be plausible, so I’m not sure why some of y’all keep trying to tell me that I’m wrong in what I actually said.

Again, the assumptions of AW, which are the normal assumptions of the genre, are grimdark assumptions made to push worldbuilding toward genre appropriate landscapes. They aren’t necessary to tell a believable story set after the fall of civilization, they’re just there to promote a focused genre experience in gameplay.

 

[Ovinomancer]

To add to this, I would also say:

* How it hyper-functionally structures conversation and deftly reduces GM cognitive load (including distributed authority via “ask questions and use the answers”).

* How “the system’s say” works with that to ensure a play experience that is terrifically volatile such that it’s surprising to all participants.

EDIT - fixed deranged quote

What did you find deranged about @pemerton's quote that needed fixing?

 

[Gradine]

Again, the assumptions of AW, which are the normal assumptions of the genre, are grimdark assumptions made to push worldbuilding toward genre appropriate landscapes. They aren’t necessary to tell a believable story set after the fall of civilization, they’re just there to promote a focused genre experience in gameplay.

This I think is the salient (and on-topic) point. They are tropes of a certain kind of genre that, believability aside, has been played out to death a hundred times before. They were old hat in 2010 when AW was published.

The point raised up-thread (sorry I can't seem to find it again...) is that AW created a toolkit that is incredibly well-suited to telling niche genre stories. The tighter the focus the better, generally speaking. Female Russian World War II fighter pilots? Check. Superheroes who are also teenagers grappling with their identities and the complicated legacies they are carrying on? You betcha. Sexually charged and confused teenage werewolves and vampires? Yuuuuuup.

The best broader genre hack is Monster of the Week, which is itself a fairly a narrow and specific genre of its own.

One last point is that I also find AW incredibly well-written. The subject matter and genre trappings bore me to death, but the prose is evocative and excellent. Adding sex as a risk-and-reward mechanic was pretty gutsy and I think help sells the tone and vibe of the stories VB was looking to enable with AW.

I just don't like it, personally. It does not particular well-suit the types of post-apocaltypic stories I'm most interested in.

I would say that I like PbtA as a toolkit way more than I like AW as a game.