Apocalypse World (and games 'powered by' including 'forged in the dark'): Utter
TRASH.
- Why do people make fun of Uncle Gary's "High-Gygaxian" but no one points out Baker's uber-pretentious tone in AW? 'Play to see what happens!" Really? No sh*t. Like everytime anyone anywhere has ever played a game we were ALWAYS playing to see what happened. Baker even out-peacocked White Wolf's narcissistic narrative style
To preface, I've really enjoyed the system--I'm running MotW and am in a Masks game, although I've never actually played AW. I will point out that the second/revised edition, Burned Over, is
far different and a
lot of that pretentious tone was removed entirely. They completely dropped the F word, as far as I can tell.
For the "play to see what happens" phrase, well, what it means, at least partially, is that PtbA games are "supposed" to be sandbox games, not adventures with a specific goal in mind. Here are situations, but it's up to the players to do whatever the heck they want. Would it be nice if the games were written with phrases like "sandbox" in mind? Yes, but let's face it, many RPGs are written as if it's the first game you've ever played and have no knowledge of typical gamer jargon. It's why nearly every game I've seen has rules on how to read the dice, or even what polyhedral dice
are.
- The "Let's become BFFLs in a post-apocalyptic hellscape" makes zero sense
To be fair, that's pretty common in a lot of post-apocalypse settings--and in a lot of settings in general. Sure, you can have a game where all the PCs are from the same settlement, but it often seems like they meet each other on the road and join up, even if they have no reason to, because it's not a solo game. The characters are supposed to work together, and most of the time, this means they become friends, or at least learn to understand each other really weell.
- Moves. Tabletop rpgs are really fun because we can play any kind of character in any kind of setting and do just about anything we want as that character. They're simultaneously insane and therapeutic. 'Moves' change how we RP by saying "OK in this situation you can do X or Y or maybe Z but that's it. No you can't do things the other characters can do because your
class playbook limits you to X, Y and maybe Z. The spotlight is now on your character! Everyone is watching! Aaaaaand ACTION!" This is "The Theater Kids RPG". You just read the pre-written lines explained in your Moves and you now get to pretend you're roleplaying. The whole scheme of how the game is designed makes me nauseous.
The biggest problem in PtbW games (IME) is that it doesn't do a good job explaining this, because this reading is pretty incorrect
but the games generally don't do a good job of explaining
why it's incorrect, and a lot of the players don't seem to be able to properly verbalize why it's incorrect either. It becomes fairly obvious what it means as you play, though, so I'll see if I can explain it. I'm using Monster of the Week for my examples here, since that's what I'm running.
See, you're not supposed to read the pre-written lines. What happens is, in the course of normal play, things will happen, and a lot of the time, these things are predictable. In D&D, for instance, the characters meet are on the trail of the monster and want to know if they know anything about it (especially weaknesses), and either they or the DM will call for Arcana or Nature or Religion checks, depending on what sort of monster it is. 3.x often had had possible results of those checks written into some of the monster's statblock; Level Up has them for nearly every monster.
Now, with moves, they're (for the most part) are
not supposed to be things you just call for. You don't just say "OK, roll Arcana" and see what the PC just happens to know (this happens quite a bit in the D&D games I've played in or run). Instead, the players are supposed to
Investigate A Mystery by going to the library, interviewing witnesses, examining the murder scenes, consulting their journal of monster notes, etc., and are supposed to RP that in some manner. They
then can roll that move--in this case, by rolling +Sharp. Moves activate when they're
triggered--when something comes up in play that allows them to be used. Like Reactions in D&D.
Depending on how they roll, they can ask one or two of the questions on the list. This is where you're tripping up, and I can definitely see why because it seems very limiting. My very first instinct upon reading the move was to let people ask anything. But in reality, you only roll this move during a time crunch. The monster is coming, the countdown is ticking, people are dying, you don't have
time to spend hours or days in research to learn everything there is to know about the monster, plus the monster is only leaving behind a limited amount of evidence (MotW is modern day supernatural where most people don't believe monsters exist, not fantasy where everyone
knows they do). If you're having a month of downtime between adventures and one of the players says "I want to learn everything about kelpies," then they don't have to roll--they just need access to the appropriate sources of knowledge. But in the adventure, they have a limited amount of time and evidence, so the PCs can only find out a few things. (Plus, they can roll more than once during the mystery, when they come across new information or interview new witnesses.)
Now, say one of the players is an Expert with the Dark Past move, which means they likely have some personal experience with the monster at hand. To trigger that move, the player has to
trawl through your memories for something relevant to the case at hand. At which point they gain a little more information than they might get with a mere Investigate a Mystery roll--but at the same time, it also means that they were somehow connected to, or responsible for, for the events that are currently going on. Hence the term "Dark Past." This is common for this genre, after all. This puts the spotlight on the character and allows them to tell their story more, and brings their background into the foreground, and means that the Keeper then has to incorporate that Dark Past into the setting in a way.
Does this help at all?
