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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9201289" data-attributes="member: 70468">The game tells you what to do as the MC (from “Moves and Dice” on p. 12 of AW 1e and p. 9 of AW 2e):First is when a player says only that her character makes a move, without having her character actually take any such action. For instance: “I go aggro on him.” Your answer then should be “cool, what do you do?” “I seize the radio by force.” “Cool, what do you do?” “I try to fast talk him.” “Cool, what do you do?” Unlike games that use what you’ve called the apprenticeship model, Apocalypse World provides explicit social interaction mechanics (as in “The Basics” starting on p. 11 in AW 1e and p. 9 in AW 2e). Those are quite different from improvisational theater, so I would not refer to what AW is doing as “improv”. (As noted in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpging-and-imagination-a-fundamental-point.701162/post-9198217" target="_blank">post #32</a> of one of the other threads, I dislike the appropriation of “improv” in RPG discourse. That’s especially true of games like AW where their social interaction mechanics are provided in their texts. Feel free to take this as a mild rant.)I don’t accept that a “meta discussion” is happening. What I see is an MC trying to clarify intent to avoid an unwanted outcome. It’s fine not to like conflict resolution, but I don’t think it’s fair to evaluate the approach a game uses free of its own context. Within the context of AW, the process seems pretty standard as far as GMing practices go. There are differences for sure, but I would not include asking for clarification as one of them.A way to look at it is moves take the action declarations from other games and turn them into reactions.I don’t agree that the Go Aggro on Someone move is specific to post-apocalyptic media. For example, we could be playing in a pre-apocalyptic fantasy setting (like the Realms). The party has taken a bandit prisoner and wants to find out more about the location of their camp (because the bandits are threatening a village we are charged with protecting). The prisoner isn’t cooperating, and I’m tired of this crap, so I kick him to the ground, put my boot on his neck, and draw my weapon with intent to kill. That’s totally going aggro.Edit: To put it another way, the moves are obviously given thematic names and flavor in AW. That seems like an aesthetic concern rather than a mechanical one. The mechanics of the moves themselves, especially most of the basic ones, aren’t particularly tied to the post-apocalyptic milieu used by Apocalypse World. I do think you can design ones that are (e.g., Monsterhearts, arguably), but I don’t think that’s an intrinsic property of moves.</blockquote>

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