Need Some Help Comprehending Apocalypse World:
What are the implications of highlighting the various stats in Apocalypse World?
What I see: Highlighting low stats can challenge a player and Highlighting high stats lets the player show off.
I’m pretty sure I’m missing something.
While watching the How We Role with Vincent Baker , the players look like their making their choices based on what is amusing or how their character relates with the other. Baker seems more deliberate about what he picks but I’m not sure what that means for the game.
> What are the implications of highlighting the various stats in Apocalypse World?
The book is pretty direct about this. It is how the MC and other players say “this is what I want to see your character do this session”.
It means people want you to do certain things. When you do those things you get rewarded.
So we want to see a lot of weirdness in a session? Highlight everybodys weird. Your character is too violent? We’ll highlight your Cool.
Last night we played AW. I decided I wanted to see the Hocus make his “Speak truth to a mob” move, so I asked him which stat he rolled that on (Weird) and highlighted it.
I was not disappointed.
I’ve also noticed people use it as a brake on characters who have a lot of XP. My hardholder is doing pretty amazingly, and ever since people noticed I’ve been getting a lot more highlights of my weaker stats. I’m fairly sure it isn’t coincidence.
I’m extremely interested in answers to this and many questions like it.
I want to unpack “this is what I want to see your character do this session” because it’s a dense statement – there are lots of implications there.
It empowers a multi-author narrative. Highlighting different stats shows what kind of story you want to see at the table at that moment. Highlighting the Gunlugger’s Hot says something very different than highlighting the Gunlugger’s Hard – or the Savvyhead’s Hard, for that matter. Highlighting a Gunlugger’s Hard is you saying explicitly to the table, “I am interested in violence as a means to an end.” Because that’s what the Gunlugger is going to do with it. A Savvyhead, on the other hand, is much more likely to get mixed success or failure with Hard – highlighting it there says, “I’m interested in the struggle, though not necessarily violence as the answer.” Highlighting Hot for a Gunlugger communicates that you’re looking for sticky social situations. For the Skinner it’s about encouraging them as the social powerhouse. In this way it allows players at the table set the tone of the session at the outset.
If everyone highlights Hard for everyone else… it’s going to be a bloody session.
The other thing it does is gives the other players ways to encourage you to play your character in specific ways. Apocalypse World distributes creative control and direction in explicit, non-traditional ways. The outcomes of moves do this often with 10+ giving narration to the actor, mixed success and failure giving more to the MC. Highlighting distributes motivation.
If I were to create a list, it seems like from what everyone is saying that the moving parts for deciding what to highlight are:
Who has more experience (and if that’s inhibiting play)
What is neat but hasn’t been seen (such as cool cars or special moves)
Showing off weaknesses
Encouraging/discouraging conflict
Moving the story in thematic directions desired by the player/mc
Tactics (if you’re going to try to kill the gunlugger you might highlight his weird instead of hard or cool)
I’d say “Encouraging/discouraging violent conflict.”
I don’t think there’s much impact on tactics; Gunlugger’s gonna gunlug when the chips are down even if she’s not getting XP for it. Or are you talking about keeping the XP brakes on the Gunlugger over several sessions to get more powerful combat moves than her? I think if you’re planning to kill a PC for more than two sessions there’s some sort of disfunction going on.
Russell Borogove I think Patrick Scaffido meant other players and their highlights, but that’s a bit more meta than I think the drive for play should be generating from. The guiding factor should originate from what I want to see this character do, and that might mean seeing what they do when operating from a weakness rather than a strength.
However highlighting a stat specifically so my character might encounter them in a mood to not roll to their strength so I’d have a better chance of icing them in game is imposing real world intentions in place of the rules “Play Your Character Like They’re Real People” and ” Play to Find Out What Happens”.
Am I missing a point or explaining my feelings on this poorly? Let me know and I’ll listen!
Darrin Michelson I understand and agree with you 100%
Darrin Michelson I’m actually interested in both the MC decision and the PC decision. In watching the how we roll video, Vincent Baker ‘s reasons for choosing different stats was harder to read than the players.
So here’s an updated list based on the discussion:
Who has more experience (and if that’s inhibiting play)
What is neat but hasn’t been seen (such as cool cars or special moves)
Showing off weaknesses
Encouraging/discouraging violent conflict
Moving the story in thematic directions desired by the player/mc
Tactics (if you’re going to try to kill the gunlugger you might highlight his weird instead of hard or cool)(this use is fairly ineffective and discouraged by many player)
How’s that looking?
Seems pretty good. That last one though isnt just discouraged, say in the way that “splitting the party” is discouraged in a dungeon crawler, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the game’s intent by the person doing it, player or MC.
To start it would be like a player hoping to land on the “Go To Jail” space in Monopoly. That’s not a desirable thing. Or maybe it would be like a player in a baseball game stealing second base to tell the baseman on the other team what his team’s hand signals mean.
A player doing it isn’t playing their character. They’re trying to game the system. Their character can want to kill the other character, but that has to come from within the fiction of the game itself, not outside of it.
And if you have an MC doing it, they’ve forgotten one of the very important principals: Be a Fan of the Players’ characters.
I’m hammering on this because it’s not like the thief picking the pockets of the other players (still a dick move), it’s like bringing a D20 to a game of Yahtzee. It’s suggesting something that isn’t the game that everyone sat down to play and it shouldn’t be on the list at all.
It’s also not going to work. You come after my character, I’m not going to sit and take it just because I don’t get any xp out of it. Keeping my character alive is plenty of incentive to act, I really don’t need an xp reward.
As MC the only time I really felt strongly about highlighting was when the Gunlugger in my game kept getting himself taken out in dumb frontal attacks. I started highlighting his Sharp hoping he’d Read A Fuckin’ Sitch once in a while. Didn’t work.