That makes sense to me.  In my game we've shifted more toward making the exciting choices.  It's pretty easy to justify too.  Maybe your character just doesn't experience fear like you do, or maybe he doesn't want to appear afraid, or maybe he just didn't feel like interrupting things to walk ten minutes over to their office.  To put it another way, an audience member wouldn't blink an eye at either decision, so make the fun one.

The next step, though, is the "how". For instance, "how" does making a harder move at certain points make AW more real (it's pretty clear it generally tends to make the PCs' lives not boring)? "How" do harder and softer moves play effectively into being a fan of the characters?

Hey Paul, that's something I've struggled with.  There is no straightforward answer, you've got to take Vincent's guidance and make a judgment call based on what feels right to you.  If it ends up feeling right to your players as well, then you've succeeded.

That said, often times the answer will be obvious.  Lets look at the two parts of your question:

1) When will a harder move make AW more real?
2) How does being a fan of the characters play into making a harder or softer  move.


Okay, part one is actually easy.  Any time your characters miss a roll and the people around the table are like "Oh Shit!", then it's time for a hard move.  Because the obvious consequences of failure are really bad.  When you pull punches too much, that makes AW seem false.  When a hard move is called for, you've got to make that hard move. 

Furthermore, sometimes a missed roll won't have an obvious consequence.  However, you're making AW seem real, so you've got to do things like look through the crosshairs and put your bloody fingerprints on everything.  That means bad stuff happens sometimes, not every time, but sometimes.  So you'll make a hard move the players weren't expecting, but it will support the feel of AW as a hard dangerous place.  (This usually flows from your prep with the threats though.)

Part 2 (being a fan) is trickier.  It means you want to see them be awesome.  Sometimes that means you give them the soft move, and sometimes it means you give them the hard one.  In Firefly you see two of your favorite characters kidnapped and brutally tortured.  It's a hard fucking move, but it sets things up for those characters (and the others around them) to be 100% more awesome than if life were easy all the time.  However that isn't called for all the time, sometimes your move is nothing but an opportunity you're offering them.  It's as soft a move as you'll make, but it can lead to some awesome moments for those characters.  Be a fan, try to integrate both of those.


Of course you're left with snap judgments on all of this.  Is this a good moment to give them everything they could ask for, or is this a moment to really screw them hard?  If you've been focusing on the principles though, the answer should flow naturally.

That's a tricky situation, no doubt about it, but you can still get to where you want to be.

For starters, Chris has good suggestions, especially about kin.  There are also some good general ideas in other threads.  Here are a few things that come to mind for me though:


1) Your recent events make it look like everything is either sympathetic or hostile.  I know that after years of D&D that's what my first instinct was to create.  What you want is for something that's a bit of both.

You've got a biker gang that arrives in town and breaks stuff.  That's hostile.  How about a migrating family of tribals instead?  They encounter Marcus first and befriend him.  Then some of their children find Camille and play nice with her.  Perhaps these interactions offer opportunities to the players.  After that establishes them, they bump into Fate and disdain his faith.  Or they tempt Sundown with their food.  Does Sundown take from them?  Then they go back to Marcus or Camille all starving and in trouble...

When you start fleshing out the individuals in that group, you could quickly have more and more triangles.  Just constantly look for a way to make NPCs sympathetic or difficult for specific PCs instead of the whole group.  You don't have to do this specific example, this is just a variation on the biker gang you did.  You could also change Gollum or another grotesque to match this idea.  Or you could do it to a follower of Fate's.  (Make a super religious character who Fate leans on, then have them trash Camille's belongings because she shouldn't have such possessions.)


2) The population of your town sounds pretty homogeneous.  I like to have at least three factions in my populations (shit, my Magic: The Gathering club in highschool had more factions than that).  Put every character into a faction as you go, and define some conflicts of interest between them.  Faithful and unfaithful, tribals and non-tribals, rich and poor, farmers and ranchers, etc.  If you don't have those divisions already, either retcon them in or bring in some immigrants.  (see above)

Then when you create TONS of named NPCs they'll naturally fall into different camps.  As the PCs create sympathetic relationships with them, they'll start being drawn toward those camps.  Make one of those camps a pain in the ass for a character, and then have them interact with another in a completely different way.  It sounds crazy, but it's easy in practice. 



3) Scarcity, scarcity, scarcity.  This is really the fuel of Apocalypse World.  In D&D you've got enough resources to do everything.  Sacrifice is rare and notable.  In AW there's never enough.  So if everyone's hungry and there isn't enough food, then have a story about getting food, but at the end say "Okay, you've got enough food for 75% of the people, who do you give it to?"  In D&D you'd get enough for everyone, but in AW you don't have to do that.  (I love to set it up so that the players can get 100% of the food, but not without giving up other, very important things.)

That's a simplistic example, but I can't stress the scarcity thing enough.  If you make the players desperate, if they feel like they can't get everything they want, then things will get interesting.  You can offer them imperfect choices.  Instead of "Do you stop Rice from demolishing Ruth's infirmary?"  You can ask "Do you stop Rice or save Joe's Girl?  You don't have time for both."  That get's interesting.  Especially if Joe's Girl matters to Shade, but the infirmary matters to Ruth.  Then Marcus can't make everyone happy.  Perhaps Ruth or Shade would let that slide once, but what about next time...

The scarcity doesn't have to be that obvious though.  In the west, why did farmers and ranchers have conflict?  There was a scarcity of land, and the two groups had very different ideas about using it.  The farmers and ranchers would have gotten along normally, but the situation pushed them to bloodshed.  What if you had a scarcity of children?  Shelter?  Warmth?  Knowledge?  Beauty?  Hell, what if you had a scarcity of car batteries?  Those who live above ground use them to power the water filter, those below ground use them for lights that keep the howlers at bay.  It's Apocalypse World, you shouldn't have any trouble coming up with scarcities that pull groups apart.




Hopefully that helps some.  :)

Chris brings up a good point, I want to add my voice to his.  Essential quote:

SAY THIS FIRST AND OFTEN

To the players: your job is to play your characters as though they were real people, in whatever circumstances they find themselves - cool, competent, dangerous people, but real.

Sure, everything's a threat, but that shouldn't really matter.  Lets see if I can get at this:

If a person has a kid, that kid is a threat.  The kid could fall down a well.  The kid could catch the fever.  The kid could start stealing things.  However, it doesn't matter.  IT'S YOUR KID.  You take care of the kid and love the kid and do everything you can for them.  If you don't what's the point of living?

Kids are an easy extreme example, but don't think for a second that it isn't true everywhere and always.  If you've got a hard-holder, their citizens are threats, but caring for their citizens is still their job.  You can't have a hard-hold without them.  The same is true for chopper gangs, hocus cults, etc.  Or if you're none of those, if you're just a human being and they're a human being.  Maybe they do a kindness for you, and then you've got a relationship.  They're a threat then, but that doesn't mean you get to cut them loose at the drop of a hat.  If you don't care for others, what kind of person are you?

So a real person cares about others.  They're not just threats.

Simple example:
My skinner rescues a helpless woman about to be raped.  Next session that woman shows up to the skinner's pad with problems.  These problems become the skinner's, because she's invested.  The would-be-victim is now a threat, because she makes problems for the skinner.

Then you take things to the next level and make triangles...

Example continues:
The hard-holder has a business associate.  He's useful and reliable and the holder likes him.  The thing is that he's the problem for this would-be-victim.  Now the skinner and the hard-holder both have a stake in the situation, but they want different outcomes.

Boom!  PC-NPC-PC triangle.  Two PCs are involved in this businessman's life, but want different things.  In my story, the businessman got murdered.  It made all kinds of trouble for the hard-holder.  Makes him think twice about the other PCs as his allies, now doesn't it?  Maybe they're the real threats.

That's not an awesome example, but it's an easy one.



Back to your original question: is Apocalypse World limited in scope and quickly exhausted?  (Perhaps like his other games.)

I've only played DitV and AW.  Based on my experience, I think that your friend brings up a fair point about DitV.  When I played DitV my reaction was strong, but I didn't find myself getting a lot of mileage out of it.  I loved DitV, but I've only played it a few times.  I didn't play it enough for it to get "tired", but I can easily imagine that happening.  It doesn't take long to feel like you'd "done Dogs".

I completely disagree about Apocalypse World though.  I don't feel like it will get tired easily.  I feel like there are vast vistas to explore here.  I think we'll finish my current campaign and then immediately start another one.  We'll set it in a very different situation, with very different characters, and it'll be awesome.  After two campaigns we'll probably take a break for some other genre, but we'll be back to AW.  No doubt about it.


Now, I do think you're right that the NPCs are fundamental to making AW engaging.  If those haven't been clicking for you, I strongly suggest you reread the MC book and put some effort into pushing the PC-NPC-PC triangles, threats as something other than enemies, and getting your players invested in more things than survival.  I've had to work really hard at these things.  It hasn't been my natural inclination, but all the tools are there at your disposal.

Of course the game isn't just the MC's creation.  You also need to talk to your players.  I know I've had to.  I was sitting around planning a few weeks back when I realized that one of the characters didn't have anything in particular they cared about.  They were like characters I've seen in most of my other games.  No family, no job, no friends other than PCs, no real desires other than survival.  I took the player aside and was like "what does your character care about?  what do they want to accomplish?  Powerful, dangerous, awesome people don't just hang around waiting for life to happen.  Lets find something for you."  It worked, they got it, we brainstormed, and now the character is much more engaged and interesting.  You can do the same.

You should get an email from Josh, via Kickstarter.  It may have gotten snagged in your spam filter or something though.  Just log into Kickstarter and check your messages there.  Or email Josh if you really haven't gotten it.


Note: you did pledge at least $10 through Kickstarter and select a reward when you pledged?  You may want to review your pledge (which you can do) to make sure that's all in order.

Normally when you retire a character you get a new one.

What if you're already playing two characters?  (By taking the improvement with that first one that's now retiring.)


Corollary: Does the number of characters a player has ever decrease?



I could make a ruling, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.

I just got it again, I can verify the standard "good" result:


Spoilers!


-Loss of box
-Connection with Duchess (probably 2 change points)
-Magnanimous (quantity?)
-Wounds (1)


Slice and tear!

You whip out a pair of scissors and plough hastily through the multiple parcel layers. The creature inside bursts free! Your eyes are full of brown paper and string, and you don't see what it is. But it gives you a nasty scratch on its way to the window. Farewell, boxed creature!