When the Hocus doesn't believe

Yes, but it still has to be recognizeable to whoever you are preaching to.  If you start spouting off about how the lizard people are not being honest with us and are about to betray us all so they can implant their brood pouches in our eye sockets, people are going to be really puzzled if they haven't seen any lizard people.  The madness has to make some sort of sense to then, a description of something they are already familiar with.

I dunno, hypotheticals always screw with my head, but I was interpreting "the truth" to be like Sincerity dice in My Life With Master -- if you don't feel it, it's not happening. 

I don't know if that's holding the Hocus to a higher standard than every other character type, though. 

I dunno, hypotheticals always screw with my head, but I was interpreting "the truth" to be like Sincerity dice in My Life With Master -- if you don't feel it, it's not happening. 

I don't know if that's holding the Hocus to a higher standard than every other character type, though. 

I think this robs the Hocus of his ability to be weirdo snake-oil salesman.  To be the false prophet. 

I have a bias towards including fake-religious-hypocrites in my games, though.

I think we can just say it should be SOMEBODY'S truth, and the MC can say no if it makes Apocalypse World seem unreal, right?

We've had some pretty cool moments in our game with speaking truth, like when the rock messiah hocus announced that she was a miserable hollow shell of a person who desperately needs the adulation of the crowd to make her feel alive. The crowd loved it!

I haven't run for a Hocus yet (the Hardholder switched to Savvyhead instead) but I was thinking I'd leave the question of what's "speaking truth" to the player, the same way I trust their judgement when reading a charged situation. "You're saying this situation is charged? I guess it is, then. Cool." I don't see it as my job as MC to pass judgement on the Hocus' player, just to be a fan of the Hocus and make the world feel real and so forth. But I'll come back and reread this after I have firsthand experience.

I don't know, I definitely pass judgment on the player's actions. That's part of making Apocalypse World feel real, not outside of it.

"You're trying to manipulate... uhh, you don't really have any leverage in this situation. Try to bring some into play, and then you can roll manipulate."

I haven't had this happen, but I'd probably be like, "Speak the truth? Doesn't sound like it to me. I mean, you either gotta say something truthy, or convince me otherwise."

I'm not a bossy jerk MC, but it has to make sense to me.

When I think of riled up mobs, I don't think about actual truth. I think about the relative truth that the mobs want to hear. "Yeah! Scapegoat! Rahh frenzy fuck kill!"

It cAn be a tricky line.  Our hocus has used frenzy a couple times since then to beautiful effect.  We got over our difference in opinion pretty well.  Sometimes she's just said things that were true to her, sometimes things that were true to her audience.

That said, if you look at the extended description of the move in the back of the book it doze say that what the truth is is up to the mc, page 228: MC, you're the judge whether the hocus is speaking truth to a mob.

Maybe the Hocus doesn't know it's the truth, but it is. He says this shit, it just comes to him, but fuck, that's all a load of bullshit. Right? Right.

But these shmucks, they eat it up! He can tell them whatever he wants, and they fuckin' do whatever he says. Grown-ass men give mim their partners, their stuff, their children. Fuckin' A.

But he's been having these dreams, right? Fuckin' weird dreams. Feels like somethin' is lookin' for him. Like he's being hunted. But it all goes away when he wake up. Nightmares can be a bitch, but they're just nightmares. This shit doesn't follow him into real life.

Maelstrom. Psh. What the fuck ever. Hey, did you hear that?