No Status Quos – What does it actually mean?
The rules tell us on multiple occasions “There are no status quos in Apocalypse World.” I know when I first read that I thought “How does that work? If there’s no normalcy, then what is there to be threatened? What about the Hardholder and the Maestro D’? Surely they shouldn’t lose the stuff that makes them cool just to keep things changing.” But I think from rereading the text I’m starting to get a feel for what it means.
Firstly, it means “Nothing is sacred,” and it’s primarily aimed at the MC’s NPCs, power structures, and establishments. It’s a reassurance that the game is not going to break if the PCs topple a major warlord, something that in another game might “end the campaign”.
Secondly, it means “Life is never just easy.” You’re not living peacefully in Hardholdia when suddenly some bandits attack. You’re scraping a living in Hardholdia, but Dremmer’s gang is always poised for a raid, a growing faction is always looking to undermine your influence, and everyone’s always wondering if this week the supply caravan is going to show up. This is from the First Session rules: You don’t establish some solid, perfect situation and then force the MC to go away and think about how to disrupt it; all that stuff is already there from the beginning. It’s impossible to get rid of it. Conflicting needs, shaky agreements, PC-NPC-PC triangles. Solving a problem is just pissing someone else off, like tipping a see-saw, and then they tip back.
As for the Hardhold or the Establishment, they can be threatened without taking them away entirely – maybe the Establishment gets slandered and stops making enough money to get by, or maybe it becomes the meeting place for some terrifying gang. After all, if you take them away and make it impossible to get back, you’ve lost something everyone is interested in. It’s still possible, of course: nothing is sacred, but I think it was unimaginative of me for my mind to head there first.
What do you think? Am I on the mark? Missed the point entirely? Stating the obvious? Reading too much into it? (Wouldn’t be the first time). Let me know!
Jason D’Angelo might have some good stuff to add.
That’s exactly my read of it.
Yeah, you’re on the right track. Sit Norm, in the Ayy Dub, is All Fucked Up.
That’s an excellent understanding.
Yeah, no status quo is all about the MC. It is lined up with looking at your NPCs through crosshairs and treating everything you control as disposable. A status quo is about stability, and play in AW is fueled by instability.
The quote I love is this one: “it’s your job to create a fractured, tilting landscape of inequalities, incompatible interests, PC-NPC-PC triangles, untenable arrangements” (pg 97 in 2e). That is precisely what the lack of a status quo looks like.
The important thing, to my understanding, about having no status quo is that it allows you, the MC, to make every action the PCs make have consequences. No matter what the dice come up as, nothing can stay the same. That applies equally to a 12 as to a 3. If you as the MC are trying to protect some person, relationship, organization, structure or anything else, you are forcing a status quo and trying to guide the ripples of cause-and-effect to move around those things you are protecting. But no, you have to follow the brutal logic of the world and let everything be subject to the ramifications of the PCs’ actions.
You are absolutely right that the game is designed to let the MC push as hard as she wants and the game will never break.
No statu quo is also No matter what you roll, something will change. No “You fail, you can’t open the door / find the track, whatever. You don’t fail at doing something and fall back to your current situation – things change.
Maybe nothing is reliable, there are no backups in place, or everything is tenuous?
Pierre M “No matter what you roll, something will change. No “You fail, you can’t open the door / find the track, whatever”. You don’t fail at doing something and fall back to your current situation – things change.” YES! This is, I think, what makes PbtA games so much fun. It’s good practice in any dice based RPG, but it is baked into the cake in PbtA. A roll always means something happens.
Bingo
… Saving to read again later. Thanks for sharing.
One way I’m gradually learning to think about is: No, you don’t manage to open the door, but you do manage to jam it in place so it can’t be used. Or you do manage to get the door open, but only by taking the door off its hinges, and now Kudo the Thug came along and wants to steal everything inside as well as beat the crap out of you.