Help me with an overly-optimistic Hardholder!
Vincent Baker made an interesting post not too long ago about what kind of player chooses to be a hardholder (http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=5823“>link).
Well, sure enough, I now have one of those types. A serious and tough, but civilized and optimistic hardholder. He collects books about governance and laws, reads John Locke, and has taught himself how to play chess, but also isn’t afraid to shoot someone in the head if they try to do something he considers a problem in his society.
He looks with great interest at the “erase an option from your holding” improvement. He wants to improve the life of his people. His plan is to organize an outing to explore nearby lands and find other holds to trade with. Sure enough, he chose for his gang to be “well-disciplined”.
Enough said, right? You get it. He wants power so he can make everything better for everyone, build an efficient society under his rule.
Of course, I throw some bad news at him: he can’t have everything under control, there’s bad stuff going on. Of course, this frustrates him as a character (who wants to have everything under control). But it also frustrates him a bit as a player: looking at how the dice and the system works, he asks me, “How can this ever get better? It seems like we’ll just be spinning our wheels round and round.”
He learns in this session that there are rumours going around the holding that “he will be replaced soon by a new hardholder”. He wants to know if this is “kosher”, asking me if, as MC, I’m allowed to put something like that into play even though he didn’t roll a miss on his Wealth roll. “Is my rule contested now? It sounds like it’s going to be. Can you do that without me missing this roll?”
I can tell he wants to settle things “at home” so he can set out to conquer new lands, explore new territory, and trade with other holdings.
[A partially-related question: how do you use the Wealth move when the hardholder is traveling outside the holding? Roll it each session, anyway? Never roll it? Roll it in secret, and tell the hardholder the outcome when he comes home? Roll it each time the hardholder comes back home?]
Now, just to make it clear:
This is not an “asking for help in desperation” kind of post. I’m having fun, the hardholder is having fun. If we stop having fun, that’s something to deal with at the social level.
But I’d love to hear if you have any clever thoughts on how I might handle this hardholder (and this player) as the MC of the game. I don’t particularly feel that I can stick to the principles (especially “make apocalypse world seem real”, and the fronts I have written up, never mind the Wealth move) and, at the same time, ignore or sweep the problems in the hardhold under the rug. But I also want to be a fan of the player character, and give him a chance to spread his wings and do some exploring, if that’s what he was hoping for with this game.
Suggest tips, tricks, moves, and/or fronts! I look forward to your thoughts.
How would you handle this, for maximum fun? How would you take advantage of this dynamic?
Threats should be persistent but not overwhelming. I’ve never MCed a Hardholder though, and I’m about to start playing one the next time my group gets together. I imagine you just have to pace the Wealth rolls so they’re appropriate. Or, you could allow his people to self-govern while he’s away and just make the Wealth roll, but tell him his character can’t possibly know what’s happening back at his hold unless he has a reliable way of communicating back to them (requires a good role-player because the player will know how badly he rolled but the character will be oblivious).
Alternately: You could try suggesting to the player that he take the “get a 2nd character” improvement and then he could have a loyal and dedicated scout who works for the hardholder, and then the hardholder doesn’t have to leave the hold to search out new land because he’s got his scout doing it for him.
If he wants to be a hardholder who runs his hardhold for a time and then goes exploring, maybe he could consider changing playbook to Driver after some time?
Generally when the hardholder is away I don’t make the wealth move until they return. Depending on what’s happened, fronts, and the principals I may (with warning as to not be a dick) point out that added negatives are on the table or that the move is somewhat different. If they left in surplus and reinvested the surplus, I tend to simply let it be normal. If they left in want and took resources with them, I tend to be less forgiving. On the other hand the reality is that this sort of hardholder isn’t going anywhere if he isn’t secure in his hold.
In terms of exploring without leaving, the gang is great for that. Taking the field with them is not necessary and it is legit to make moves through them using hard. It certainly limits what the hardholder contributes, but that’s what other PCs or even NPCs are for (controlling your proxy explorers / etc. using Hot). It just changes whether you’re immediately there or rolling and reporting back, though interludes where you focus in on NPCs aren’t necessarily off. You could run a whole session with proxies and cut backs to the PCs doing less intense stuff, waiting to hear back or whatnot.
On more general advice of challenges without just sweeping aside his desires, I’d say that I’ve had good luck with introducing others who want a better life for the people around them–the hold’s people–but who cannot easily be come to terms with. In terms of PCs that fill this role, the Hocus, the Touchstone, the Angel, and the Solace are all obvious. For NPCs anyone who proposes a different, perhaps better / more equitable, arrangement is a threat as much as a help. If the NPC is the town’s medic or something similarly essential it gets dicey. These are people who want what’s best but don’t see eye to eye with the leader of the hold. They are valuable voices and the tendency I’ve noticed is for the holder to listen to them and dismiss them.
Don’t let that happen, but don’t directly challenge rule unless it comes up. The medic is religious and thinks the hold should be officially religious, but isn’t demanding immediate overthrow or forced conversion. They simply have a threat move where injured NPCs come back healed and converted, and PCs who get healed by him can mark experience by publicly declaring the faith. A countdown clock tracks progress until a critical mass of believers are accumulated and the hold is loyal to the hard holder but also intensely faithful. They aren’t sacrificing people, they aren’t insane, but they are now a different type of threat–they are evangelical and they want laws to reflect their beliefs.
At any step along the way the hardholder has lots of options for dealing with it, even after it all comes to pass. It can be especially interesting if the progress of the religion squashes more overt threats–you’re offering a difficult choice there, allow the continued conversion of your populace or suffer the unruly elements to continue.
Re the Wealth roll: I make the Hardholder roll every session, whether they are in the hold or not. It’s not about them, it’s about the state of the holding.
And, yes, Paul Tarussov, you can do that in a Love Letter. That’s exactly the sort of rumors a Hardholder of this type should be dealing with. His rule isn’t contested yet, but he has to face those rumors, and figure out how he wants to quell them, before it is. As Patrick Henry Downs said, it’s a persistent threat, not an overwhelming one. Tim Groth is right on about using gangs to explore. Your Hardholder can even leave a PC or NPC “in charge” until he gets back – that leads to all sorts of fun! By which I mean not-boring!
I’ve played that Hardholder, and the drive to secure the holding and get things settled is huge. Work with it by giving the Hardholder scraps of security in trade for danger elsewhere. Sometimes make life interesting by making things secure for the moment – Hey, you’ve got refugees headed your way because you’ve got a growing rep as a place where things are a bit less crazy. Hey, you’ve got a surplus – how do you allocate it or sell it or what, and who wants it bad? Hey, you’ve got some folks starting up a gambling club because there’s sufficient down-time and folks have a little excess jingle – are you cool with that?
I’ve run for that Hardholder. Twice. One wound up a controlling terror who would just kill people who disagreed with him in the slightest and eventually he was ousted because he became a tyrant, the other eventually traded playbooks and became a Touchstone because he saw something beyond what he had seen before. Give them enough lead to tie themselves up, bring them problems to solve, and let the results of their solutions show how nothing’s ever tidy and nothing’s ever really solved.
Great stuff!
if they’re not in the hold, don’t they just automatically fail the wealth roll?
i thought that was in the rules somewhere; maybe it’s just how we’d been playing it.
What pops into my head is “look for what they don’t control”: water, food, ammo? The trouble with being an island of sanity in a crazy world is that you are not the only car on the road. The people upstream have a cordite plant up and running and their outflow goes where?
+Tim Noyce , I agree. In fact, the players have straight-up told me that there is a nuclear plant in poor condition not too far away, and that it’s poisoning their environment (the holding is based on a reef). So there’s lots of stuff to play with here. I’m going to surround them with a few other holdings which represent different levels of “civilized life” and see how they respond.