No Sex Please…
As part of the RPG Book Club at the Games On Trial community, I was getting some feedback on a modern-day PbtA game about contemporary ghost stories. The main feedback I was getting was that the sex moves in the hack seemed like a punishment: I checked and they were right, most of the playbooks I’d created had sex moves that penalised characters for having sex.
We then got onto the topic of sex moves in general as part of the PbtA package… cutting to the chase, I’m dropping sex moves from this hack, but I’d still like something there to take their place. In other hacks, my sex move equivalents have been double-crossing another character (for a crime hack); falling out and making up (for a kids adventure hack); and entrusting someone with your secret identity (for a superheroes hack.) I’m stumped for an idea for what to use this time though, so I just thought I’d ask: what have you used as an alternative to sex moves in your hack? Or, if it doesn’t use any sort of equivalent to sex moves, why do you feel your hack can do without that sort of thing?
A rung or two down the “sex” ladder is a common enough minor modification to Apocalypse World – “when you spend an intimate moment…” rather than “when you have sex…”.
This might work better for the game if you want to preserve the closeness that the move wants people to talk about, but where sex isn’t a suitable topic for whatever reason.
I guarantee it’ll still seem out of place in a roleplaying game to, for example, a group whose only experience is with D&D or Pathfinder, but it guides people towards recognising the fictional importance of intimacy without necessarily pushing them towards sex as an expression of that.
Yeah, I like the “intimate moment” thing. This shouldn’t be too alien to hack and slash players since they will have seen it in movies and TV and in books. It might be outside their comfort zone, but probably not as much as sex between PCs.
Any time someone drags you in to a meaningful conversation during which you reveal something about your character that you don’t normally bring up works for this. The tough fighter tells how when he was a child his parents brutalised him to toughen him up and that’s why he can never be reliant on others / disdains those too weak to protect themselves / feels the need to protect people from bullies. The mercenary specialist reveals that the way they only care about money is a cover and they love finding out new things / testing themselves against extreme challenges / want to help people without appearing to be a sap. In fact any time someone asks “how do you feel about this” and the answer is more than a pithy one liner probably counts.
I think these moves are more likely to come up naturally in play as well. At least for me. It seems that having a character to character discussion about why a character is a certain way, or what they plan to do now, or are they worried about their likely imminent death is both more interesting and easier to bring up without it seeming like a total non-sequitur. Of course sex can be a subset of this so you can have your cake and eat it too if you so desire.
I guess this sort of thing does somewhat eclipse the end of session move to change HX though. The people I shared an intimate moment with are almost certainly going to be the ones I feel I know better.
For Ghost stories, I can also imagine: “When you tell a secret from your past…”, “When you admit insecurity…” …
Yes, I rather like the confessing/sharing a secret idea, especially as there is an inter-generational conflict theme to the game. In fact, that could be a really good mechanic for a) introducing new twists to the plot and b) taking ownership of established facts (“I know who she is the ghost of because I’m the one who murdered her!”)
James Mullen Finding a move that helps your game do what you want it to do is the best solution! “Intimate moment” can be kind of generic, so specialising it in a way that evokes the narrative you want your game to invoke is definitely a good way forward!
Intimacy moves are way more common in my experience.
Putting something in your PBtA hack just because it’s part of Apocalypse world is a bad reason to do it. Put things in your game that make your players do the things your RPG is supposed to do. If your game is supposed to be about helping each other despite fear then make moves that support that. Find a thing you want to happen in your game and support it with the mechanics. Too many PBtA games these days just do what they’re supposed to do. Do you WANT your characters to be intimate with each other? Share moments of personal fear and relive their past? DO THOSE THINGS. If you don’t know what your game is trying to get the players to do, you’re not writing a PBtA hack… your pasting a theme on a system. That’s not game design.
For a My Little Pony inspired game of mine, you earn Bonds by inspiring certain virtuous behaviors in other people. Bonds allow you to do frankly ridiculous things on behalf of other people.
I’ve gone for confession moves and gotten very excited about them: when I think of all the things a character confession can do in the fiction…! It also opens up some new types of playbook move that responds to confessions.
Do you want to make confessions a core element of the game, or merely place them to the side like AW does with sex?
Off the top of my head, I don’t think AW has a lot (or any!) of the playbooks’ core moves changing the mechanics for handling sex.
So, I’d say that Apocalypse World isn’t a game about characters having sex, as a core part of what characters will get up to. It’s just a thing that the game supports as well.
If you make confessions part of core playbook moveset, they become more of a focus than a side thing the game gives narrative potence to.
I do agree that confession is a pretty awesome relationship move though! Seems like it could get very interesting very quickly, which I like a lot.
Yes, they are a core thing, in two ways: first, turning out-of-character info into in-character knowldege; second, by answering questions that the story has already asked, e.g. you take responsibility for something that has happened in the fiction but nothing has been established about who is behind it.