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roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: Genuinely curious: Why do you like Apocalypse World?
« on: February 19, 2016, 02:09:24 PM »
Apocalypse World is my favorite roleplaying game by a wide margin. I love plenty of games, but I really love Apocalypse World.
I feel like the mechanics provide a framing mechanism for failure and hardship that make them fun. In some systems, the fun comes from avoiding failure and overcoming hardship—and failure typically sucks, as in "you took 8 points of damage from that zombie, now you're dead"—but Apocalypse World provides a way to seek out failure and enjoy hardship, and to do so while portraying a cool and awesome character. My characters get to be bad-ass when they succeed, and they get to be bad-ass when they fail. Every roll tells my story through the filter of my character.
A good example of this: we once had an Apocalypse World game where the players succeeded on every roll. It was fun, but it was not the most fun of our sessions. It might have been the least fun of our sessions. The most fun sessions were when everything went to hell, where hard choices got made and consequences got delivered, and where the characters came through changed, intact—and very, very cool.
I also adore that the mechanics do a good job of creating the illusion of character fragility while providing players with a robust toolkit for asserting narrative control, and putting their characters in dangerous situations, in ways that don't automatically end with "you lose, game over." As an MC and a player, I know characters in Apocalypse World are startlingly robust. But it still feels like the world is dangerous.
I adore how much of the drama revolves around NPCs, and around driving them like disposable cars. I love that Apocalypse World gives us a system for making the relationships between and among characters matter. The directives for NPC management are a major part of what makes the game excellent. (The worst Apocalypse World game I've run may have been one where the focus was on the environment rather than the people in it. Oops. But it was still decent!)
I completely love that Apocalypse World codifies, and gives me the tools to enact, my default MC position: which is to be a fan of the player characters. I love being on their side in terms of telling great stories about what they get to do.
I love that the moves system give players and the MC a fruitful interface to the narrative. There is almost never a case of "we beat our heads against that problem for an hour and it was frustrating" or "we didn't do what the MC expected and it was hard for him to adapt." I love that Apocalypse World requires basically no prep, but that it also blossoms when subjected to flexible prep, like roll-pick-two love letters. Man, I love love letters. I love love letters!
Furthermore—and this may be particular to my gaming troupe—Apocalypse World redirects the goofiness and gonzoness sometimes inherent in gaming, and adapts them to the narrative (whatever that might be) in a way that works well for generating great stories. It is difficult for any player to have the potential to derail the game or mood, not with the toolkit the rules provide the MC; the worst thing a player may do is nothing, and even that is something the rules can accommodate, and accommodate well. But a character shoots first, ask questions later? A player tries to take on another player character? A player wants to make a character who wears a pink sombrero and is named Bob the Rock Star? Okay. We can do that. Why not?
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Man, I really wanna play some Apocalypse World right now.
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We're doing a cool thing where we're playing a Game of Thrones game using Apocalypse World rules as written, and it's amazing. It works because it taps into what Apocalypse World does well: giving rules for an unstable world in which the fragility of any status quo is navigated by totally cool characters.
I feel like the mechanics provide a framing mechanism for failure and hardship that make them fun. In some systems, the fun comes from avoiding failure and overcoming hardship—and failure typically sucks, as in "you took 8 points of damage from that zombie, now you're dead"—but Apocalypse World provides a way to seek out failure and enjoy hardship, and to do so while portraying a cool and awesome character. My characters get to be bad-ass when they succeed, and they get to be bad-ass when they fail. Every roll tells my story through the filter of my character.
A good example of this: we once had an Apocalypse World game where the players succeeded on every roll. It was fun, but it was not the most fun of our sessions. It might have been the least fun of our sessions. The most fun sessions were when everything went to hell, where hard choices got made and consequences got delivered, and where the characters came through changed, intact—and very, very cool.
I also adore that the mechanics do a good job of creating the illusion of character fragility while providing players with a robust toolkit for asserting narrative control, and putting their characters in dangerous situations, in ways that don't automatically end with "you lose, game over." As an MC and a player, I know characters in Apocalypse World are startlingly robust. But it still feels like the world is dangerous.
I adore how much of the drama revolves around NPCs, and around driving them like disposable cars. I love that Apocalypse World gives us a system for making the relationships between and among characters matter. The directives for NPC management are a major part of what makes the game excellent. (The worst Apocalypse World game I've run may have been one where the focus was on the environment rather than the people in it. Oops. But it was still decent!)
I completely love that Apocalypse World codifies, and gives me the tools to enact, my default MC position: which is to be a fan of the player characters. I love being on their side in terms of telling great stories about what they get to do.
I love that the moves system give players and the MC a fruitful interface to the narrative. There is almost never a case of "we beat our heads against that problem for an hour and it was frustrating" or "we didn't do what the MC expected and it was hard for him to adapt." I love that Apocalypse World requires basically no prep, but that it also blossoms when subjected to flexible prep, like roll-pick-two love letters. Man, I love love letters. I love love letters!
Furthermore—and this may be particular to my gaming troupe—Apocalypse World redirects the goofiness and gonzoness sometimes inherent in gaming, and adapts them to the narrative (whatever that might be) in a way that works well for generating great stories. It is difficult for any player to have the potential to derail the game or mood, not with the toolkit the rules provide the MC; the worst thing a player may do is nothing, and even that is something the rules can accommodate, and accommodate well. But a character shoots first, ask questions later? A player tries to take on another player character? A player wants to make a character who wears a pink sombrero and is named Bob the Rock Star? Okay. We can do that. Why not?
- - -
Man, I really wanna play some Apocalypse World right now.
- - -
We're doing a cool thing where we're playing a Game of Thrones game using Apocalypse World rules as written, and it's amazing. It works because it taps into what Apocalypse World does well: giving rules for an unstable world in which the fragility of any status quo is navigated by totally cool characters.