Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: ctrail on September 23, 2011, 03:23:46 AM
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I've noticed there are some interesting ways in which the rules nudge me towards playing NPCs as hostile. Writing any NPC with agency up as a threat with a problematic impulse, and only having any allies late game after 12+ Hot rolls are unlocked, disposes me to create certain kinds of NPCs.
Likewise, I find it interesting that using leverage to get what you want is a move, but appealing to reason or humanity isn't. That doesn't mean the latter doesn't ever work, just that it's up to the MC to decide whether it's successful, whereas the former you have a lot more control over.
Thing is, my first instinct is to play NPCs as very reasonable people. If the PCs offer them what seems to me like a good deal, I'm inclined for them to accept it. If they are likely to die in a fight, they try to find a way to avoid fighting.
And sometimes it seems to me like an NPC should act like an ally to the PCs- I just imagine them as a friendly person who would act altruistically.
Is it a good idea to lean towards making NPCs selfish or unreasonable? I wonder whether I should try to align my descriptions with the trends I see in the system, or whether I should play whatever comes naturally. Make enough problems to keep their lives interesting, but does that mean there is no one who is kind or helpful?
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Just because an important NPC has a threat clock doesn't mean they're necessarily an enemy or even not a friend. It just means that they they have their own motives and sometimes do shit the players don't like, and that the players can try to mitigate this by maintaining the relationship, keeping the NPC's needs and concerns in mind, and acting to lower their threat clock. In other words, they can keep a relationship going well by actually acting to maintain it. Kind of like in reality. Being able to make someone into a dedicated ally by rolling 12+ on a seduce or manipulate roll is just convenient, in that it gives you more leeway in getting around those things and means the NPC won't at some point end up acting on a problematic impulse.
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Is it a good idea to lean towards making NPCs selfish or unreasonable? I wonder whether I should try to align my descriptions with the trends I see in the system, or whether I should play whatever comes naturally. Make enough problems to keep their lives interesting, but does that mean there is no one who is kind or helpful?
Well, to quote the book:
Remember how to make NPCs human? Give them straightforward, understandable self-interests. Choose a body part — their stomach, their gut, their dick or clit, their nose, their time-ticking womb, their fearful cowardly heart (or their generous caring heart, or their bold big heart) — and have them just follow it around wherever it goes. - (Emphasis mine)
I don't think it is a good idea just to make everyone selfish, unreasonable assholes... that's not making Apocalypse World real... it's just making it uniform... certainly *some* Apocalypse Worlds may be like this, but not all of them.
One of the biggest thorns in the side of the Chopper (Titus) in my first game was his loyal, smart, and opinionated right-hand man Limer. This guy was motivated by loyalty to his leader and the club (Hello Sons of Anarchy fans!)... and wouldn't keep it to himself when he thought Titus was being stupid or going to get the gang into a mess... and this caused all kinds of other problems... "Is Limer trying to take over? Do I kill my best guy to keep the rest of the gang in line? Why does he see these things I don't? And, WHY THE FUCK is he so often right?!?!"
So, Limer wasn't an ally, but he was a friend... a real pain-in-the-ass friend that generated all kinds of cool issues... and when he got his lower jaw blown off by a shotgun and the Angel accidentally killed him with Healing Touch, there was a moment of silence at the table... and the Chopper had a real sense of loss.
If Limer had been a selfish, unreasonable asshole, we would've missed out on all kinds of cool stories as we played to find out...
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Reason and humanity are leverage too. When you say, "You're being stupid if you don't do X," you're saying, 'The leverage I have on you is that this course of action isn't very smart, and it's important to you to do smart things, and how much do you care right now about being true to yourself?'
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I do think that leverage can be in anything, from "This is your child, dammit" to "this is your last chance to kill this bastard" — only it's VERY important to check first, that this actually DOES matter to him. Most important if the opponent is PC as RP can easily be misunderstood sometimes. As well as sometimes PC will outright lie. I think, the house rule "when you reset Hx with somebody from +3 to +1, he should tell you his secret" is a perfect source. BTW, question to this matter: how you guys rule about giving somebody -Hx? I mean, that if everyone can give his friends good Hx and/or his enemies bad Hx, wouldn't it be kinda metagamey?
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BTW, question to this matter: how you guys rule about giving somebody -Hx? I mean, that if everyone can give his friends good Hx and/or his enemies bad Hx, wouldn't it be kinda metagamey?
-Hx almost never comes up in our game; only in the specific sex moves that call for it. We try to play honestly; the end of session move asks which PC knows you better, not which one you like more. Also, if you damage people they get +Hx with you, so if you have an enemy PC they will probably have a pretty good Hx score with you after a few altercations.
If you're referring to help/interfere, then sure, PCs can help or interfere with each other all day long--as long as they actually do something in character that makes sense.
Also: what do you mean by metagamey?
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MC section tells us that it's "acceptable" to select someone who knows her worse then he did, and tell him to lower Hx by 1. In that case it resets from -4 to -1.
I don't get 3 things:
1) is it "additionally to telling someone to increase Hx" or is it "instead"?
2) while I get the idea of rewarding xp for knowing your fellow PCs better(it makes this inherent goal of the play, and it is logical in the post-apoc setting), I don't get, how you get xp for knowing someone way worse then you supposed?
3) saying that it can be 'metagamey' I mean that if I know that someone will try to screw with me doing X I'll better make it hard for him to interfere with my workings. Of course, he will get +Hx if I will try shooting at him, but if he's a gunlugger or battlebabe or so, and I'm angel or savvy, it's not a good idea anyway. Since he will kinda shoot back.
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I don't get 3 things:
1) is it "additionally to telling someone to increase Hx" or is it "instead"?
It's "instead".
By default, every player chooses someone who knows her
character better, like it says. However, it’s also acceptable for
a player to choose someone who knows her character worse, or
who showed that they didn’t know her character as well as they
thought, and give them -1Hx. In that case, Hx-4 resets to Hx-1.
2) while I get the idea of rewarding xp for knowing your fellow PCs better(it makes this inherent goal of the play, and it is logical in the post-apoc setting), I don't get, how you get xp for knowing someone way worse then you supposed?
Cuz you now know yourself better!
"I always thought Dremmer was a stand up guy... boy was I wrong! I have no idea what makes him tick."
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Thanks for the replies!
Chroma, that's a good point about how making everyone a jerk wouldn't make Apocalypse World seem real. That passage you point to seems really relevant, too.
Sheryas, I don't agree with you that reason or humanity can be leverage. Maybe we have a different sense of what is meant by leverage, though. To me that word means something you control, so you can control another person by offering to use your leverage one way instead of another, like operating a lever. You want something, I can give it to you or not, so you do what I want so I'll give you what you want. In your example, I might tell someone what they are doing isn't smart, and that may be enough to convince you not to do it, but I don't have any leverage because what I do has no influence over whether or not your course of action is smart or not. I can point it out, but I don't have control over anything that might influence your actions.
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In our game, the Gunlugger was carrying the Savvyhead's child, and was all going aggro, like "You are going to stay out of my kid's life, or I'm gonna shoot you".
The Savvyhead responded with a seduce/manipulate, like "Yeah, you know what? You could totally kill me if you wanted to. But I thought you were trying to be a better person than that." The player said that what he was offering was, "If you don't do this, you're going to feel like a horrible person."
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Oh yeah, I can totally see using someone's humanity to make them feel like crap as leverage. But although they need to have some humanity for the threat to work, what the manipulator controls is not whether the action is right or wrong, but whether they can make them feel awful. I don't think manipulation would have worked in that example of the Savvyhead wasn't willing to make the Gunlugger feel like crap. Could you see a manipulation roll in that situation if they had just told the Gunlugger that shooting them would be wrong?
In the reason example, I don't think pointing out a course of action is stupid would be manipulation, but making it clear you are going to make them feel stupid if they do something could be. In your example, the Savvyhead changes the situation emotionally through what they say, I think you need to have a point of control like that to make it manipulation.
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Yeah, I think I'm with you there, about the "point of control". I mean, you do have to have control over something they want. That's how manipulation works, right?
I guess your original question was, hey, why isn't there a non-manipulative, non-threatening way to get someone to do something you want. I guess my answer is, if you want to do that, feel free to roleplay it out. But there's not really negative consequences beyond failure inherent in that sort of dialogue; if you're behaving like a rational human, then maybe you're not putting enough of yourself on the line to call for a roll?
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I guess your original question was, hey, why isn't there a non-manipulative, non-threatening way to get someone to do something you want. I guess my answer is, if you want to do that, feel free to roleplay it out. But there's not really negative consequences beyond failure inherent in that sort of dialogue; if you're behaving like a rational human, then maybe you're not putting enough of yourself on the line to call for a roll?
I guess my original question was "does the fact that there isn't a non-manipulative, non-threatening way to get someone to do something I want, mean that all NPCs are asshats and manipulation and threats are the only way to get them to do something?" Chroma's answer was "nope, that wouldn't make apocalypse world seem real." I think you are right, we don't need a roll for that case.
I don't think that quite settles the issue for me completely, but I need to think a little about what it is exactly that I'm worried about.
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I don't think that quite settles the issue for me completely, but I need to think a little about what it is exactly that I'm worried about.
The resolution to this is, I believe, the MC move: offer an opportunity, with or without cost... if the NPC would realistically/plausibly accept an offer without manipulation or haggling, the MC is *required* to go that way.
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I don't know if that is of any help but I imagine an altruistic and reasonable person could be a severe threat as an ally.
Off the top of my head: An NPC who thinks that everyone's equal and the few things you can take hold of should be shared. Imagine this NPC giving food supplies out to everyone who is in need / has it worth that him / her while the PCs are off gathering whatever supplies they can fight off the apocalyptic landscape.
As far as I see such a situation, every PC is either soft-hearted chivalrous knight or they will feel threated at some point. It would even be more interesting because what's threatening them is not some egoistic, twisted asshole but a caring human being.
But maybe I mistake altruistic and reasonable for innocent and self-sacrificing.
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That actually is helpful narretei, because part of what I'm struggling with is how to keep things interesting when my natural inclination is to play most NPCs in a fairly reasonable fashion. I think it may stem from the fact that the PCs are so powerful that nasty and stupid NPCs get killed pretty fast, and making the world seem real to me means that others see that and learn to behave around them. But that can run up against keeping things interesting, if NPCs never push hard against the PCs then things can get boring. One thing I'm thinking is that failed rolls can be a prompt for me for an NPC to cross a line, but thoughts on how basically "good" people can cause problems is useful as well. I guess the last thing would be to work more on PC-NPC-PC triangles, because not everyone interacts with everyone the same way, and an NPC who seems helpful to one PC but problematic to another is a more interesting situation than one who everyone agrees is a nuisance.
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I'm pretty much of a noob when it comes it resolving things in AW but I think prodding and poking on PC-NPC-PC triangles will probably be my preferring method. From what my players gave me in the 1st session to work with, no one cares about NPCs or the things going on the same way. That's where I would bring up hard choices for two PCs concerning one NPC and I hope things will get interesting.
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That actually is helpful narretei, because part of what I'm struggling with is how to keep things interesting when my natural inclination is to play most NPCs in a fairly reasonable fashion.
I think this is going to depend on your fronts and what particular scarcities you are trying to emphasize for your apocalypse. NPCs can be reasonable but that doesn't mean you suddenly have enough food or water, or that everyone knows how to work together amicably and becomes immune to disease. Also, when you have real power (and some of your NPCs must have real power) sometimes it is reasonable to leverage that in ways that fuck over other people.
I have a similar tendency, and certainly my players in the past have noted that my apocalypses tend to be relatively mellow -- there's not a lot of direct conflict and violence, but there's still a lot of serious problems that are not that easy to solve.
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For example, the last game I ran was an urban environment, cold, lots of snow and sudden cold snaps/storms -- and drinkable water was a scarcity, because for various reasons drinking melted snow was a really bad idea. There was however a barely-working water treatment plant that supplied most of the locality's water. The guy who ran that plant had real power. Having that power and understanding that he had it made the guy act like he had diplomatic immunity; he wanted to use the power he had to get more power, and when one of the PCs interfered with his attempts to do so, he reacted poorly and pissed off the PC.
But when the PC in question (a Maestro D) decided to take revenge, and convinced another local bigwig to attack the NPC who controlled the water filtration plant -- rather than stick around for a losing battle he blew up the plant and went into hiding. Suddenly nobody had any water, except the water they could get from melting snow.
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Which is all to say, as has been said in other threads: NPCs that are useful are NPCs you can't just kill. If all your NPCs are thugs, who exist only to do violence, then your PCs can stomp all over them, because their only leverage is the threat of harm and PCs are far better at dealing with (and dealing) harm than NPCs.
But if your NPCs make shoes, or fix machines, or know how to read, or control food production, then not only is it a bad idea to kill them but they themselves understand that fact and, if push comes to shove, will use that fact as leverage against the PCs to get what they want. Sometimes vindictively (as above), sometimes not.
Reasonable people with power use that power to consolidate their position and make themselves safer -- and they do so at the expense of others if necessary.
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Anybody who's having trouble because they're making their NPCs too reasonable oughta play a town or three of Dogs in the Vineyard. I designed that game to teach myself how to play unreasonable, unaccommodating NPCs, and I recommend it enthusiastically if you feel like you need to learn the same.