20 thoughts on “I can’t bring this up with my group, but I can blog about it.”

  1. I think the point of highlighted stats aren’t to force you to do things, they’re to model the idea that people learn more by doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Hence experience gains. If you always do the same things then your character is naturally not going to develop new skills and learn as much.

    Fortunately, in pbta games it scarcely matters if your character ever levels up or levels slowly so you can just stick to your guns and stay in character.

  4. I think it’s worth considering why the Hard stat is getting highlighted too. If it’s just to annoy you then that’s a bit crap. If it’s to test the limits of your principles then that’s more interesting – after all, everything in Apocalypse World is decaying, why should principles be any different?

  6. I see highlighted starts as an hint given by they players, a little bit of renouncing to total control, a little step toward collaborative narration.

    Highlighting Hard is like saying “We have a little control on Tully, Tully isn’t entirely yours. What about making him fight? What’s big enough for making him fight? We would like to see him challenging his pacifism.”

    By the way, have you checked the playtest of Apocalypse World:Dark Age?

    It bypass what you percieve as problematic.

    There are several “areas” and at the end of the session you get two checks in the area(s) the MC and the other players believe are best suited to represent what you have done in the current session.

    Every three check on the same area you get a Move from that area.

  7. I think more than anything there needs to be an open conversation at the table about what’s going on. It sounds like there is a lot of problematic behavior with that group (particularly the whole “people calling others assholes” thing), and ideally having a respectful conversation about what’s going on will either work towards resolving the issues present or clarify the need to find a new group.

  8. Francisco Blanca I don’t need a game mechanic to play a pacifist. It’s called role-playing, not roll-playing.

    Ezio Melega “What about making him fight? What’s big enough for making him fight? We would like to see him challenging his pacifism.” There are other ways to engage that question without making the game unfun for me. And like I said, I have firmly established that TULLY DOESN’T FIGHT over multiple sessions. I can understand doing it once to try and push the character and see what he does, but after I have both emphatically stated that my character will never fight, verbally and on the character sheet itself, marking hard is just antagonistic and frustrating and boring.

    I have looked at Dark Age and will be playtesting it soon.

    Jamil Vallis-Walker Tried that twice, I am told I complain too much and the last time I verbalized this feeling I was shut down completely by the same player. I give a ride to another player and on the way home I have brought it up with him, but he has stated he doesn’t want to talk about it. So, shut down again.

  9. Marc Isaacs There aren’t really principles to test. When Glitch’es hard gets marked she’s more physically aggressive, because that’s her character. When Tully’s hard gets marked, he simply doesn’t advance because TULLY DOESN’T FIGHT (it’s written in all caps on my character sheet)

    Tully has very good reasons for why he never resorts to violence. The other players at the table have no good reason for continuously marking his hard especially when I see their cardinal stats getting regularly highlighted.

  11. Francisco Blanca I don’t think you’;re understanding the central premise of this essay: it’s no fun for me playing a character that is consistently guardrailed to behave against the way I have clearly defined him.

  12. There are other ways to engage that question without making the game unfun for me. And like I said, I have firmly established that TULLY DOESN’T FIGHT over multiple sessions. I can understand doing it once to try and push the character and see what he does, but after I have both emphatically stated that my character will never fight, verbally and on the character sheet itself, marking hard is just antagonistic and frustrating and boring.

    Of course, you are totally right on this, Patrick.

    After a while things should really be left as established and is no sense keeping pushing the same button.

  13. I think you’re absolutely right – highlighting this stat the first time is fine, but after a session of not rolling it I question any repeat highlighting.

    I had a similar situation in the last game I MCed: the Hardholder with -2 Weird wouldn’t open her brain and after the first time I offered a few times but didn’t when the player said ‘no thanks’. I did suggest one of the moves which would allow her to roll with Sharp as an advanced option, but that was it.

    I would wonder though why the continual (?) playing of pacifist characters with this group dynamic? Though I suppose I’d be tempted to keep trying til it worked too! 🙂

  14. I’m with Jamil Vallis-Walker here – I don’t think this is about Tully, AW, or pacifist characters generally. It sounds like the group, or your relationship with the group, has broken down.

  15. Donogh McCarthy It’s not really the group in particular that I keep trying to play pacifists with, it has more to do with me, but this is the only group of players I know where I can play AW rather than MC, so anything I play is going to be played here. As for why I want to play a pacifist? In the very first game of AW I played in I ended up playing a sociopathic Chopper-turned-Hardholder and she was very brutal and violent. Her answer to every problem was to shoot it in the face with her shotgun, regardless of what she had highlighted. When I first made Tully near the end of that game he was meant to challenge myself and see if I could move away from playing a “straight up fighter” type of character. Reviving him in this game is just me really wanting to play him again.

    This is anecdotal but after a couple of sessions of me playing Tully, the player I think of as the most seasoned gamer in the group remarked “Tully is the nicest character I have ever seen anybody play.”

  18. Francisco Blanca Sure, there are lots of moves I could take. disarming presence and self-possessed for instance, both Solace moves. But that is what I’m referring to when I said “I am considering taking moves just to be able to play the character the way I want to play him”

  20. If your group won’t listen to you and is impacting your fun, change things.  Either the dynamics (try not to worry about XP and just enjoy the RP), the game or the group. 

    How about finding an online AW game where you can play rather than MC?

Comments are closed.