The Storyful Parts of the Apocalypse World Engine

Originally shared by Dan Maruschak

The Storyful Parts of the Apocalypse World Engine

There has been some talk recently about the degree of story-game-y-ness of the Apocalypse World engine, and some people are saying things that struck me as a little odd, so I wanted to offer my perspective.

There are differences between the game-design and the play-culture in terms of "declare a fact" mechanics

As designed, most of the main *W games that I've read don't have extensive "narrative control" or "declare a fact" mechanics. But many people play the games as if they do. Dungeon World's Discern Realities move doesn't say "say something about the world or the situation, and then roll to see if it's true", but some people play the game as if that is what the rules say. Also, the games instruct the GM to sometimes ask players questions, but this only gives the players "authority" to directly manipulate the fictional world if that's what you choose to read into it. I don't think a hard-assed old-school D&D DM would think it's giving a player "authority over the world" to ask a player whether their character had brothers and sisters growing up. Things like the AW "first session" questions can (and I'd argue should) operate in the exact same way, i.e. stepping into the character's perspective and giving the answer that feels appropriate and consistent with the established world rather than in an "ooh, ooh, what if we all ride around on three-headed giraffes!" direct-authorship style. However, some people assume that "player narrative control" is the unifying feature of story-games, that AW is a story-game, and therefore AW has that feature. I can't conclusively argue that they're wrong to make that assumption since every game exists in a context and Vincent didn't use his game design chops or his internet presence to get people to not play that way, but I see no mandate in the rules that you should play that way and I'd argue that the most natural interpretation of the rules that leads to a coherent system is if the players generally interact with the game through the lens of their characters.

Not everything that is possible to do with "fictional positioning" is done by AW

It's very easy in RPG Theory discussions to let the games people use as examples of concepts morph into proxies for the entire concept. So people might be tempted to say things like:

1) It's possible to have "player skill" be a meaningful factor in a game that relies heavily on "fictional positioning" (true)
2) The Apocalypse World engine has a lot of "fictional positioning" stuff cooked into its core architecture (true)
3) Therefore AW has a "player skill" component (improperly formed syllogism)

Apocalypse World and "fictional positioning" aren't synonyms. That AW was attempting to more heavily emphasize fictional positioning than some of the games that were "indie hotness" while it was being designed doesn't mean that AW does every thing it's possible to do with fictional positioning. I think it is possible to make a realism-grounded "situation simulator" game that leans heavily on fictional positioning. That doesn't mean that any particular *W game or any *W game actually does that. Someone could claim that a game does, but their argument would need to connect to the particulars of the design and not just stop at the abstraction of "fictional positioning" in order to be valid.

The GM instructions in *W make the characters, not their world, the reference point

The player-facing move architecture of AW triggers off of "the fiction". But what's happening in "the fiction" is going to be heavily influenced by the ebb and flow of "the conversation". Things like how "zoomed in on the action" you are will heavily influence which moves get triggered. This is fine for a game about personal drama, but it's not what you'd expect in a game about simulating an objective reality. In one of the classic thought-experiments about RPGing we have the idea of the GM being able to get their way by calling for rolls until they get the result they want: clearly things like "quantity of rolls" or "which rolls you make" matter to a character's effectiveness and overall results. In *W games, that is going to be heavily influenced by the subjective aesthetic interests of the GM, not some dispassionate objective reference frame. The GM isn't supposed to impose a "story" on the action, but their interests and likes and dislikes are a meaningful input into what gets focused on and what gets abstracted, they have a strong hand in shaping "the conversation".

Similarly, when choosing things like hard moves on a failed roll, the GM is meant to be guided by what "feels right" in the moment. Since GMs will be operating on their instincts, and most of our instincts for RPG situations are shaped by stories rather than physical reality, we'll tend to get "storyful" results. "Dramatically appropriate" coincidences will manifest via hard moves far more often in a *W game than they would in reality. Now it's true that the games want to stress verisimilitude, so leaning on genre instincts that give the impression of realism, e.g. gritty dark fantasy or techno-thrillers, will generally make the system operate more harmoniously. That doesn't make the games into situation simulators. At their core these are dramatic character-focused games.

At least that's what I see when I look at these games.

#RPG   #RPGTheory   #PoweredByTheApocalypse