How do you MC your game?
Hi everyone, looking for a bit of help. I am quite new to PbtA, currently running my eighth or ninth session of Apocalypse World for a group of relaxed friends who have never played before either.
I like the system so far but I find that the moves are so specific, each player needs to have a moves list in front of them so that they can read the rules for whatever they are attempting to do. i had to print off extra moves sheets to hand around so that everyone had a copy. is this necessary? is there any way to play PbtA other than spending half the night reading each move to decide how to progress?
for example, the players set a trap for an enemy. i remembered reading rules for setting traps and ‘if you’re the bait’ somewhere, so I ended up flicking through the rulebook to find out how to portray this situation, when all i wanted to do was have a player roll immediately. am i missing something? I find it difficult to maintain the moves snowball mentioned in the rulebook because I don’t know every individual move in my head and I can’t stop to read a list of them every time I need to respond to a player’s action. and then once a move is being made, that still needs reading to work out what the result of a dice roll will be. some games, all the players need is their character sheet… my experience so far is that Apocalypse World is not one of those games.
And sub question, what’s your style in general? do you tend to drop players into the middle of a situation and expand the story outwards or do you follow a more linear sequence of connected events? How do you create and maintain a moves snowball throughout active scenes?
I fall back on the agenda and principles, they’re the most important thing in the game.
I found that when players had a list of moves they just stared at them. So I took them away. Instead I have a basic moves on a MC screen in front of me. That way the PCs only really need to know the playbook moves they currently have.
When I want to snowball moves I don’t look at the list. I just think about the fiction and what cool thing could happen next. I’ve never looked back after and found that something I did didn’t fall under an mc move.
It’s important to keep the flow moving, but if you have your screen the answer is right in front of you.
Oh, and for reading a sitch I don’t worry to much about the list of questions. As long as they ask either 1 or 3 questions about the immediate situation I let them ask.
Very loose style. But I’m all about the agenda and principles.
Over time I’ve gotten better at remembering the move outcome options, and so have my PCs.
I print out Moves for everyone, always. Me especially. Everyone gets moves in front of them. I don’t let them look at moves to decide how to progress, because that’s not how it works — I insist they just tell me what they do, that they don’t stare at the moves to do something. It’s a habit, and it takes time to ingrain in players, but it happens over time.
I also spend downtime between sessions reading over the moves and internalizing the triggers, because it’s my job as the MC to know the rules; however, I don’t worry about memorizing the results of moves. This is a bit of a cheat: I memorize the triggers so I know when to tell the players to read a move aloud. They’re reading aloud, and in the process they’re now learning the moves, memorizing them… and I’m being read to, so now I’m memorizing them too. Eventually, you know what you’re doing.
Beyond that, I would say use the rules you’re comfortable with. If you straight up have no idea what triggers the trap move or how it works, and you’ve not read it, now is probably not the time to be flipping through the book. Ask yourself if they’re acting despite a danger, and lean on Act Under Fire, and do your homework after the game, and come back next time knowing more than you did. Just like any other RPG, honest!
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock deffo agree on 2nd and 3rd paragraph!
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock Richard Smithson thank you both. i will remember more and more of the moves the more games I run, it just at the moment seems like a very intensive system, considering moves aren’t even the same between PbtA games… not exactly pick up and play?
my problem is less that players are picking what move to make from a sheet, but more that once they have decided what they want to do, we then have to manifest that chosen action as a mechanical function, and thats when we spend time choosing the dice roll move that correlates the closest. my players might want to open fire on a troop transport, with given circumstances happening around them, and i still have to take a second to figure out if i should make them roll for Act Under Fire or Seize By Force, etc etc. i push narrative as much as i can, but we still find ourselves going through printouts looking for moves… players memorising moves over time is great, but how would you, for example, run a one-off game for new players? ….or am I just approaching PbtA games from the wrong angle? thanks again
For a one-off game, I would honestly spend more of my time becoming the authority on the game so that I don’t spend time agonizing over the moves. I would try to hone my own, personal sense of when to call on a move and guide players with a heavy hand at the table. “You want to open fire on the transport? Okay, well, shit is crazy all around, you need to Act under Fire first, and then worry about Seizing by Force — that’s just how it is, y’all.”
You could experiment with different organization methods for the moves if the hangup is the time searching and poring over the sheets to find the right move. I don’t have any particular advice here, sadly, and I’m not sure what it would look like, but hand-out prep is totally a relevant thing to consider and adjust for a one-shot.
I will say that, for a one-off, I would be very tempted to cut a ton of the battle move materials, just because I totally see how all of these extra pages of moves for what is 4 hours of gameplay are just dragging me down. AW2 has a boatload of moves, and having to navigate all of them for a single game is, I agree, not easy. The best bet, always, is just GM prep… AW is totally pick up and play, I really think, but if you’re only playing it once, you’re going to feel the growing pains worse than if you give it the 5+ sessions the book itself suggests to let it stretch its legs and get going.
Something I noticed about what you said Henry. Players decide what to do, then you spend time trying to choose a mechanical function to do that thing.
For me, this is like other skill based rpgs, where every single action has a skill associated with it, and you can always roll a skill to do something. PbtA does not work this way, at least for me.
Players will often do something that does not directly trigger a move. So no Player move should be triggered. What is really happening is the player is turning to you, the MC, and waiting for what comes next. So make a move. As the great advice above suggests, look to your principles and agendas. But I will typically be very open and honest, trusting my prep, trusting the world and trusting the NPCs. Most often the moves I make are:
1.Tell them the consequences and ask.
2. Disclaim decision making, usually to NPCs, world, or prep.
3. Offer an opportunity for X to shine.
But you can really do any move you want.
As for the move sheets. All players (including myself) get a basic move sheet. I usually have one (maybe two) copies of extended moves, but I tend not to into them often. To me, the basic moves are the core of the game. More so than the playbooks. Don’t get me wrong I love the playbooks, but if I only had one sheet to give the player, I’d give them the basic moves.
I agree that battle moves is a lot of extras. And can probably be set aside. I also agree that Agendas and Principles are most important.
Something that helped me is to not maneuver towards the moves, as a GM. Most of the GM moves you probably make by instinct anyway. The thing about having them in the book is that it gives you explicit permission to do them, and a reminder pick list if you don’t have anything in mind when a 6 falls your way. But if you do… well it probably fits in the GM moves already. Like I realized I’d been ‘putting them in a spot’ and ‘telling consequences and asking’ and ‘taking away stuff’ for years. So once I realized I didn’t have to actually look at the GM moves, because most everything I would have done is pretty much covered there. Along with a few less usual options. The nice thing about having the list is it encourages me to use options that I might not consider completely on the fly.
Player moves… remember they aren’t skills, they’re just stuff that happens when that character does a thing. (I know that may not seem like much of a difference, but it is.) They’re fallout. They’re consequences. So to me, the most important thing is to know the basic fictional triggers. You’ll feel it when the fiction seems to need a dice roll. You might consider writing out the triggers or doing a flow chart for yourself starting with fictional triggers.
Are you doing Violence? yes.
Why? I wants a thing.
Other side ready to fight? yes.
Seize by Force.
Are you doing Violence? yes.
Why? Make someone else do something I want them to do.
Are they ready and willing to fight? No
Go aggro
The broad triggers are:
Violence. (physical or mental)
Making a deal (with threats, goods, or self).
Assessing (person or situation)
Weird?Maelstrom stuff
Any other thing that requires care and/or concentration being put
under pressure. (from environment, time, tools)
Most player moves modify one of those, but there are some specialty areas.
My favorite description of this is thinking of it mostly as free play, but with the rules sitting just over your shoulder so when someone does/says a fictional trigger, it goes “Hold it, I need to step in for that.”
I started with AW from the first edition, so we didn’t have the battle moves at that point. I agree with setting the extra ones aside in a one-off unless necessary.
As far as pick up and play. I write down the moves my players take and make a note of the behaviors that trigger them and keep that list handy. Usually the players get good at tracking those once they understand how they work.
I hope that helps.
I’d actually say that picking the move and then finding the justification after is doing it the wrong way round. The players say what they’re doing, and the GM tells them when a move is triggered. The moves always follow from the fictions (what the players do).
When you’re stuck for a rule for a situation, just pick an appropriate stat and have the players roll. On a 10+ they get what they wanted, on a 7-9 there’s a cost or complication, on a 6- they don’t get it and you make a move in response.
Michael Llaneza so picking a stat and having the players make a ‘generic’ roll for it is my go-to method of getting out of a jam, and I will just react to whatever their dice roll shows. But with all these moves listed, I felt like that wasn’t really playing the system the way it is supposed to be played? I will keep in mind that the fiction comes first, I prioritise it but occasionally one of the players will spot a move on the sheet that they want to do..
Trevis Martin thank you, that is a big help. I like the idea of keeping track of the player’s behaviours and their relations to moves triggers.
Yoshi Creelman agreed, i find that the basic moves get much more use from the players than anything on the playbooks.
ideally, i want to take all the printouts away from my players, and have them just act in free-play, and i would take care of the mechanical side of things, instructing them to roll when appropriate. but a lot of the moves are very specific when it comes to picking results on a 7-9 roll and they would need to examine their options to be happy moving forward.
thanks guys this is all useful information, i’m sorry I can’t reply to every point but i am learning some valuable lessons reading everyones’ comments. i think keeping the agenda and principles in mind is the most important thing, and not letting the moves get in the way of the fiction.
Michael’s advice is explicitly not how AW works, just to be clear. Your sense that this isn’t how the game is meant to be played is spot on.
When a move is triggered, you use the move. If a move isn’t triggered, you continue to focus on the narrative, talking back and forth, and you the MC make your own MC moves when appropriate to keep things moving. Generic stat rolls aren’t a thing.
Honestly, I don’t think you should worry about this too much. From the sound of it, you’re playing the game exactly as it should be played. The players say what their characters do and some of the time that triggers a move, you look up the move and roll it and then abide by the results.
The moves are supposed to get in the way of the fiction. Remember at the beginning of the book, where Vincent and Meg say “roleplaying is a conversation”? Well, it’s a conversation with the designers too, so when you play Apocalypse World, you’re agreeing to have a conversation with Vincent and Meg. So when you look up a move and read it out, that’s them getting a chance to shout “hey, we’ve got something to say right now!” Let them have their say.
As you play more, more of the moves triggers will become internalized and you’ll spend less time sorting through sheets of paper trying to find the right one. But the moves will always interrupt the flow of play. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to do – they’re the pivot point between what’s just happened and what might happen next.
Henry Taylor Lots of people talking lots of sense (and not being dicks, this is the weirdest comments section on the internet).
My advice for one shots: don’t sweat the details of the basic moves. Ask them what they do and if its something risky get them to roll plus the most applicable stat.
Follow the fiction, keep it real and high pressure. For one shots: on a 7-9 they get what they want but… On a 6- stab them in the gums with your rusty screwdriver.
Going to try and keep this “not being a dick” thing going, but hear me out here: I don’t see how it’s a one-shot of AW if you throw out all of the moves and just roll 2d6+whatever. I really don’t think you’re playing Apocalypse World at that level of abstraction.
Just a clarification, because this keeps creeping up time and time again:
It’s irrelevant if a player describes something in the fiction and the GM says that that triggers move A or if the player says he/she wants to do move A and then proceeds to describe how. The only thing that matters is that the fictional action is encompassed by the move. Vincent has stated this time and time again, but people continue to think that it’s a sin for player to say “I go aggro” and then describe how. However, it’s much easier for new players to just describe what they want to do, because looking at a list to figure out what to do is quite impractical and not really in the spirit of the game. Just keep it flowing.
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock is right that generic rolls aren’t a thing, but notice that Act Under Fire is essentially that generic “fits-all” move, because “fire” can be anything, metaphorically speaking, as a couple of examples spread around the book show. So basically, almost any conflict can be covered by Act Under Fire, which really isn’t any different, for practical purposes, from using a generic roll with no name, like Michael suggested.
Here’s my take: the MC needs to know the Moves really well so that, when the player wants to do X you can say “that sounds like Going Aggro” and the appropriate roll can be made.
The vehicular combat, setting a trap, etc Moves are all Periphrral Moves and the game will work fine without them. In a pinch, Act Under Fire covers a multitude of tense situations.
I had this same problem when I first ran Apocalypse World (1st edition, in my case). The first time I run any new game, I try really hard to run it by the book. I felt like I needed to be quick and decisive in choosing which +hard move to use in combat, to make players consult the list of “read a sitch” questions every time they made that move, and to check the MC moves list every single time someone rolled less than a 10 or looked to me to find out what happened next. It was overwhelming. A few things helped, though, both with Apocalypse World and many hacks of it I ran over the years:
(1) As others suggested above, I encourage the players to just say what they want to do, and let me worry about the moves. I still hand out the basic moves (minus peripheral moves and optional battle moves), as some folks find those useful in jump-starting their creativity when trying to figure out what would be interesting to do next. Those who are used to other RPGs, though, can often feel constrained by big move lists, and I want to make sure it’s clear that is not actually the case. The moves are only engaged when you need them, and I am here to help remind us when we are supposed to engage them. I studied the moves hard between sessions so I would recognize the triggers.
(2) All of that said, sometimes I have goofed up and missed a move trigger and handled things some other way, usually with act under fire or an MC move, typically either just saying “yeah, you can do that, but…” and then going with announce future badness or tell the consequences and ask. More than once, we realized right after a session that we did something wrong. It’s usually not the kind of thing that breaks a game entirely. (I mean, who hasn’t ever realized that they’ve been running a rule “wrong”?) I think it’s generally better to just keep the game moving smoothly, feeling like a comfortable conversation, than to stop and look stuff up. You get the hang of specific moves more as you go. I never used the generic “roll against the most relevant stat” approach, but that’s arguably a popular custom move thanks to Dungeon World’s defy danger move. I just avoided this approach specifically because it seemed a conspicuous (and so I assumed intentional) omission in Apocalypse World, and I wanted to see how it changed the game experience to not be able to fall back on your best stat all the time.
(3) I keep the move sheet handy myself to check what questions players can ask for info-gathering moves. I try to let them ask whatever they want, and just phrase the answers as answers to the most relevant permitted question. If there’s no relevant permitted question – like if they ask “Who killed this person?” at a murder scene – the answer is usually, “How could you figure that out from simple observation?”, followed by prompting them with a question I can answer.
(4) I ran at least one early session without MC moves at all so I could focus on getting more used to the player-facing moves. I stalled out on creative responses a couple times, but mostly it worked out fine. Looking at the MC moves later, I realized that most of the moves on there are things I already did anyway intuitively from years of GMing, but the times I stalled out were times when I didn’t come up with anything matching the format of that list. I decided that, for GMs like me at least, the MC moves list is there to prompt you when you don’t know what to do next, and want to make sure whatever you say is something that moves the story forward. Nowadays I only refer to it as needed, when I feel stuck.
(5) And perhaps most useful, I went online and looked at conversations people had about how to use all these moves, including on the barf forth apocalyptica forums and Story Games forums. There were some useful exchanges there. Coming here counts, too! I hope this is useful, and I encourage you to let us know if we’re just leaving you with more questions.
I agree with Pedro Pereira that it’s totally cool if a player wants to maneuver to a move by saying what they want and then say how it happens. I do that some of the time. And what’s more the playbook moves are what help flavor the fiction for that playbook, so maneuvering toward them in fiction is part of it. What I’m usually trying to do is to help the players understand that they’re not limited to those playbook moves and/or the basic moves. And that they don’t have to hunt down a move for optimal benefit like it’s a stunt or something. They can do anything they want (logically in fiction) and if a move is triggered, then it is.
Yep. The problem is usually with newer players because, understandably, they’ll just start looking at the moves list trying to choose one. It’s much better to just ask what they want to do fictionally. When they get acquainted with the moves, it becomes irrelevant (and downright nonsensical) to expect them to never choose them or think about them.
There’s nothing wrong with players reading over the list of moves and picking one to help them decide what to do. However, it can be frustrating to train them that “to do it, you do it.”
One of the fellow players in my Masks game (we were all new to PbtA games, including the GM) looked down at his Basic Moves and declared, “I want to Pierce the Mask.”
The GM looked confused for a moment, so the player was asked, “Cool, but what do you actually do?”
He misinterpreted that, got frustrated, and whined, “So, what, I can’t do it, then?”
“That’s not what we’re saying. What are you doing to do it? What does doing it look like? Describe for us what you are doing.”
That moment of clarifying for him helped everyone at the table understand better how to play the game.
Thomas Berton good points, thanks. viewing the moves as pivot points within the fiction is going to be a very helpful perspective.
Daniel Krashin agreed, that is the position i would like to work towards, so that i can react appropriately to whatever the players want to do. Grey Kitten Pedro Pereira yes, keeping that abstraction in mind is key especially as we are a new group. i do have to remind the players, and myself, that the moves need to be specified depending on the actual physical action taking place, instead of just the vague concept of Acting Under Fire or whatever it may be. so it’s about keeping the specific fiction flowing and applying the mechanical moves at the correct times to dictate direction…
can’t thank everyone enough for the great feedback and polite discourse, very glad to have received these responses from experienced gamers. our group is doing a double-feature tonight and tomorrow night, so i’ve got two games in close proximity where i hope to deploy some of the advice you have given me here…! thank you everyone!