My AW session last night ended with the Brainer going aggro on the Faceless, the Quarantine shooting the Brainer, the Brainer pulling in-brain puppet strings on the Quarantine to make him attack the Faceless, the Faceless blowing the Quarantine away with an RPG, and the Battlebabe ending the Faceless as retribution.

That was not what I was hoping for? They certainly were all invested in the outcome, so I suppose I succeeded at capturing everyone's attention, but there were some sour feelings in the middle of this action so in general the scene is something I hope to avoid in the future. This is a stable group that has been gaming together for six years or so, though this was only our third session of AW.

I fear I precipitated these events as MC. The Faceless failed a Norman roll, so I told him his mask wanted him to hold the hardhold's water purifier hostage. He was perhaps a bit overconfident from having completely mowed over whatever obstacles I had thrown at him before by violence, so he did not attempt to seek healing for his wounds before laying claim to the hardhold's water purifier, which was an action designed to spark a response from pretty much every character, MC or player, that we had introduced.

Was giving the Faceless a motivation to take something designed to elicit so many hard moves staying true to my principles of being a fan of the characters? I feel like the Norman MC move was a valid hard move to make, but I'm not certain. I think, in retrospect, I probably would have still made that same hard move but I should have told more characters the consequences and asked in the build up to the climactic showdown, as I did not gently remind my players they had some alternatives to aggressive moves.

As an aside, I will note that I think my players used violence a lot more than I had expected, though by the third session they were hip to the fact that the number of souls in their little hardhold was rapidly dwindling.

Any MC advice, from the book or otherwise?