I’ve been thinking about the design of Vincent Baker ‘s Apocalypse World and related PbtA games and I think my favorite part of the game is the lack of an attack/combat mechanic.
Instead damage and harm to characters comes as a side effect of another action. If you’re laying down covering fire and the other guy panics and runs he might get wounded. If you’re waving a gun in someone’s face to convince them to give you a name/item/etc they may end up wounded but each move has many uses outside of combat.
Many similar attempts I’ve seen in games end up either removing violence as an option and focusing solely on the other options or being a little boring.
It’s still brutal and violent like a Mad Max movie but it what matters is isn’t the damage roll but the achievement. The lack of a combat mechanic while still having threat, danger, and potential death/difficulty is the best innovation that Apocalypse and PbtA games bring to the RPG table. Thoughts?
This is definitely something that’s been on my mind while hacking AW.
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I love this aspect of AW too, but it’s not AW’s innovation. There are a decade of indie games (at least) which not choose to prioritise combat in this way.
Just to name a couple of games which don’t have separate systems for combat but which don’t shy away from combat as a potential part of the game: Dogs in the Vineyard and Don’t Rest Your Head. There are many others.
Hamish Cameron
That makes sense. Innovation is probably the wrong word. I found in Dogs and Afraid that we still ended up with “fight scenes”. The methodology behind the creation of moves really seems to be one of the best implementations of this concept though. The lack of an “attack” move in favor of “go aggro” or one of the other moves.
Marshall Miller
I really like many of the hacks I’ve seen even though most of them seem to bring back the attacking as the main goal move. Dungeonworld has hack and slash and even Monsterhearts has Lash Out Violently (though I might not fully understand lash out violently’s implications and usage).
Do you see those as fundamentally different to Seize With Force?
I’m not sure it’s so much the lack of dedicated attack moves as it is the fact that there’s no shift between “normal” play and “combat” or “conflict.” E.g. no initiative, no ruleset for “conflict resolution.” It’s just a continuing part of the conversation. Often at a tighter zoom and level of detail, with higher stakes, but not fundamentally different from any other part of the game.
In Dogs & Afraid, the singular mechanic of the game is basically “what happens when a conflict starts.” The entire conversation shifts into a very formalized, ritualistic thing. So of course the conflicts feel like “fight scenes.”
My current hack goes the other way; making violence more indirect, more a result of fictional positioning.
Hamish Cameron
Yes. Seize with force involves taking control of as opposed to just inflicting damage. Makes the action much more intentional than “i swing my axe at the orc and once he’s dead i’ll take control of the “
It’s about the end results of the action. In a single roll (vs dogs many rolls and that’s a system I love), you determine the success of acquiring the and the cost of that action (damage, lost actions) turning a fight scene into something more dynamic and action packed.
Jeremy Strandberg
I agree. I really like Dogs and Afraid. The thing Apocalypse does is let you have small tasks resolved quickly while also letting the response moves help dictate the way it affects you. That’s at least some of my takeaway from Apocalypse World.
Marshall Miller
I’m with you. I made the post since I’m working on a hack that I may eventually want to show to people and was trying to articulate part of what makes AW particularly special. Vince wrote once that the Basic Moves are what truly define what a game is (or something like that) and since none of the basic moves is “attack the dude” it becomes a different game. Dungeon World has at least two “attack someone” type moves and I bet games of it end up being more combat oriented since that’s a clear move whereas the combat applications of the basic moves in AW let you do all sorts of things in combat besides attack and they can be interesting.
Monster Hearts does this particularly interesting with the Mortal character who participates in confrontations by fundamentally acting in passive ways but still influencing the outcome… much like how the character in the inspirational fiction would do.
I like it, but it has also been the largest treshold for my new players; everyone asks, sooner or later in pitch/prep “but what if I just want to shoot someone so they die?”.
Jerry Sköld Fair request. I’m pretty sure that’s described as something you can use the moves Seize by Force or Go Aggro for, depending on the situation… I think?
I think Monster Hearts lash out violently at least has narrative reference.You can lash out violently at someone or just throw a tantrum in the middle of a room and it can make a lot of sense. It’s probably what some people would use if they end trying to heart someone. But it’s still more flavored than “attack”. The lashing out and the tied stat (Volatile) suggests what sort of act it is and heightens the setting and themes of the game.
Patrick Scaffido Oh yeah, it can be handled – it´s just a point of confusion, and even more so when not everyone playing the game is of the same mind of how to handle it. And this from someone who a) adores that very idea we+re talking about here, and b) loves AW.
Jerry Sköld
I agree. It took me a little while to puzzle out the lack of combat in AW and to figure out that it’s there just embedded in the move outcomes instead of in the explicit actions. That’s kind of when I really started to love the system. I’d think for my hack I’d probably make it explicit in the sense of “hey you want to hurt someone? here’s how!”
What a great discussion. I have nothing else to add, but wanted to say that I loved reading everyone’s input. I especially nodded in agreement to Jeremy Strandberg’s insight that there’s no systematic shift for conflict resolution.
AW is mostly interested in the question of why you want to do violence to someone. This is what drives the game forward.
And how you answer the ‘why’ gets towards whether it’s Go Aggro or Seize By Force.
Well, yes and no – it is also situational, like how Go Aggro is used instead of Seize By Force to do something like assassinate someone with a sniper rifle (they aren’t fighting back). (Tangentially, this is why Battlebabes are great intimidators or assassins but mediocre fighters, name nonwithstanding).
I do like the heavy focus on intention, though, and am currently in the process of hammering down the same in a new system I’m writing.