Be the fuckery you want to see in the world.

That would be my advice to players of AW.

That's what came to me walking back to my lodgings after Harper's game.

Be the fuckery.

Now it's been pointed out to me, 'Respond with fuckery' seems to a be a general rule of storytelling. Poor Digger can't get a break. Scotty and the rest in Eurotrip cop fuckery in spades.

It's sound advice.

Yeah, it's right there in the MC playbook! And I totally agree fuckery = not usually boring.

As for the PCs though, I think that in other games you might advocate for them, or characterize them more, set goals, protect them, &c. Those are all great and my intention is not to exclude them. However, in AW the PCs should be the fuckery they want to see in the world. At least, when I've see it happen it looks really fucking hot.

Because, in D&D say, you shouldn't be the fuckery. That ruins everyone else's game. You should role-play and engage in tactical combat. If you're fuckery you frustrate the DM and piss off the other PCs.

For example, in the game I ran this afternoon the Hocus and the Brainer both were lying to, bossing around and mind reading the other players. They brought the fuckery. Not only did they look like they were having the best time compared to the other players, but that kind of fun was contagious. Moreover, it let me build on things they were doing rather than trying to introduce news stuff and make contrived moves. Many of my moves were just natural follow-through's to stuff they were doing, complicating it, hard choices, &c.

So, again, I'll say to PCs of AW: Be the Fuckery.

Ah, I'm sorry - I read players and thought 'GMs', when you meant 'non-GMs'!

I hadn't thought of players bringing the fuckery as well. Do you find that the world is so unrelenting that the players' first instinct is to avoid fucking the other players over as much as possible?

I find it interesting that people seem to emphasize the first half of this principle ("Respond with fuckery..."), but not the second ("and intermittent rewards").  If all the players get is fuckery, it gets tired pretty quickly. 

It seems to me that they are equally important and that intermittent rewards is a sort of fuckery.  They fit together under a command to vary up your pitch--throw curve balls, breaking balls, etc--but keep the players off balance.

It's not so much about balance or variation (important, sure) but the rewards part is really the 'Give the Player's what they work for but not what they want.'

Anyways, my post has NOTHING to do with the MC advice. Nothing. It's advice to players.

That advice is to be the fuckery you want to see in the world. The MCs is going to be dishing out all sort of apocalyptica, details, fuckery, NPCs, Moves to 2-4 players. There might be Chocolate and Vanilla fuckery but man, the Strawberry fuckery is absent. Instead of whining to the MC about not enough Strawberry, be the Strawberry fuckery.

You don't think the Hocus is running the Cult very well? Take it or start your own! Gunlugger pussying out? Pick up the assault rifle! Brainer not really exploring the Psychic Maelstrom? Open up that brain! Sure, maybe you don't see you Angel as a fighter but no world is more sink or swim than AW. Just because you a PC doesn't mean you can't make hard Moves.

I was talking with Joe today about this, and he put it to me like this: if you take small risks in AW, you're fucked. So, you might as well go big and take the big ones. Moreover, I would add that if you want to see something in the fiction happen that isn't happening, step on up and make it happen.

In other words: BE AGGRESSIVE! BEE! EEE! AGGRESSIVE!

I really liked the way you played Snow, Nathan. If this was your guiding principle on Friday, then cool.

See, I hate having to do this, myself. It's almost the Czege Principle. If I'm creating the problems for my character and then also trying to fix them, they don't have the same emotional response for me. It's not as fun. It's like playing 52 card pickup by yourself.

I'd rather the fuckery be something that never occurred to me. I play my character as smart as my character is. I don't like to have him make bad decisions for meta reasons.

I think this gets confused with being a proactive player, rather than a fuckery generating one. My player has an agenda, which in AW gets him into trouble on it's own. If the MC is doing his job, I don't need to worry about problems.

That's the beauty of AW.

It wasn't the guiding principle until afterwards. (Thanks John!) It's really my only explanation I have for the players that really got into AW (and had fun) at the tables I was at and those that didn't. I know that's wildly simplistic, so don't take my advice as anything but that what it is - I think that the way to have the most fun in AW is to be aggressive with the fiction. Your Mileage May Vary.

As for the Czege Principle, I don't really mean being your own fuckery. I mean being everyone else's fuckery, NPCs and PCs.

Yes, being the fuckery = being an active player. It's a play on Gandhi's 'be the change you want to see in the world.' The statement needs to be taken holistically: as a player, you should be the nastiness that you'd like to see but is currently absent.

Yes, the MCs job is to provide fuckery for your character but I like I said, there are lots of players and the MC has other shit besides dishing out fuckery and rewards. So maybe you help him out by being the fuckery for another player, or for an NPC. You don't say "I've got the Angel's fuckery covered, Big Guy.' You go and steal her supplies or try to sleep with them or convert her to the cult or something.

You don't say "I've got the Angel's fuckery covered, Big Guy.' You go and steal her supplies or try to sleep with them or convert her to the cult or something.

--
So, you mean, you misdirect as a player? I'm starting to wonder how many MC moves can or should apply to players, too?

This was the guiding principle I used with my first AW character, Damson. She was batshit insane and it worked really well. Whenever she thought about a problem, her solution was always the thing that would cause the most trouble:

- There's a slaver on our northern border? Clearly you should sell me into slavery so that I can lead a slave uprising and overthrow him.

- We sure have been getting into a lot of problems lately, because everyone wants our Brainer. So let's get rid of said Brainer! You think she's too useful? We'll see about that..

- We're surrounded on all fronts by Foster's gang? No problem, let's just lead some of our men out to infiltrate and win them over to our side.

You get the idea.

What I liked about Damson was that Elisabeth was playing her hard, not holding back at all. What made my hardholder Allison crazy was that she was a total loose cannon. The fuckery worked because of the character.