When someone manipulates/seduces you, they are trying to get you to do something. If you aren't doing that thing, then you must be doing something else instead. It's that thing -- that thing you are doing instead of giving them what they want -- that you are doing under fire. So the consequences depend on whatever that action happens to be.
This is exactly it. It's the context of whatever the player is trying to do
instead of acquiescing that's important, and what the GM needs to keep in mind when narrating the outcome of the resulting
act under fire roll.
A perfect example of this happened in a game a friend of mine ran, an AW reskin set in post-Roman Britain. We'd scouted the position of a group of marauding Saxons and were preparing to ambush them. The Hocus (who was a holy-man of Taranis, the Celtic god of thunder) tried to convince the Smith/Savvyhead (who was a proto-Christian) to pray with him for luck before a battle. The proto-Christian had absolutely no desire to kneel and pay homage to an idolatrous power and said, "No, thanks." But the holy-man wouldn't take no for an answer, and it came down to a
manipulate roll. The end result was that the Hocus aced the roll and the Smith was faced with a choice: kneel and pray with the creepy holy man or
act under fire. Naturally, the Smith chose the latter. In the context of the move vis-a-vis the Smith, his intent was to simply remove himself from the situation, i.e. to get away. He described his actions, "I get on my horse and ride the fuck off." Sweet, but you're
acting under fire, so roll+Cool.
So, from the perspective of fictional positioning, all the player has to do is describe their actions or intents and let the dice fall where they may. The MC then simply interprets the result of the attempt to
act under fire in the usual way: 10+, awesome, you do what you intended. 7-9: the MC gives you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. 6-: you flub, and the MC gets to make as hard and direct a move as he likes. All that is required of the MC is that he stay faithful to the fiction when describing the outcome and making his own moves.
So for example:
On a 10+: Great! The player accomplishes what he set out ot do (ride away). "Your horse hesitates just long enough to drop a steaming pile of road apples at their feet before you canter off, the sound of their cursing rapidly fading as you ride away."
On a 7-9: Still a hit, and the player still rides away, but the MC can complicate things. A worse outcome? You get away but not cleanly. "Sure, you ride away from the holy-man, but a few of his cult run after you, shouting obscenities and railing that this slight to their god will not be forgotten. You outdistance them easily, but there's bound to be trouble with these jokers in the future." A hard bargain? "You get away, but the whole situation leaves you wondering. You thought you had sort of a handle on this holy-man, but the vehemence of his attack on your faith throws you for a loop. Take -1 Hx with the Hocus." An ugly choice? "One of the cult members grabs your reins. He has his hand on his cudgel and the look on his face brooks zero compromise. You can get away cleanly if you're willing to strike him down where he stands. If you choose to inflict harm on him, you're gone." And of course, "What do you do?"
On a 6-: The world is the MC's oyster. Hard and direct, baby! But keep in mind that this is in the context of the player's attempted actions, as this is where they are fictionally. So in this context, they are trying to ride off and fail. One of the most obvious MC moves in this context is to
capture someone: "You get on your horse all right, and you're just in the process of setting your boot to your horse's rump when one of the cult members latches onto you and hauls you down out of the saddle. He and one of his buddies grab you and heave you up to half-standing, at which point somebody kicks the back of your leg and forces you down onto one knee. Someone hisses in your ear, 'kneel, cur!' What do you do?"
And if the answer isn't, "Sock one of these pushy motherfuckers in the nuts," well, I guess your faith isn't that important to you, is it? And if it
is worth it to you to sock someone, then your failure to
act under fire has snowballed into
go aggro or
seize by force, and we're off to the races!
But all of this derives from the player's actions and fictional positioning. The player is simply saying, "I ride away," which sets the fictional circumstance that is either successful (all or in part) or not. The MC respects that and uses the fiction to describe how it succeeds or fails, and/or how the situation changes based on the result of the character's attempt to
act under fire.
The key issue here is one of player agency. Even if the Hocus rolled very well on his manipulation roll and the Smith rolled very badly to act under fire, at no time does he actually end up kneeling. The character's actions (kneel and pray or don't) are always in the player's hands, and at no time are his actions forced by the dice. Instead he is presented with possible consequences and given a choice. Even if the Smith completely fails the roll, gets hauled out of the saddle and forced to kneel by the cultists, at no point has agency of decision been removed from the player. Sure's he's in a worse spot than he was before, and maybe the situation has escalated, but the player is still in control of what actions or decisions his character makes.
This aspect of the AW rules is subtle and devious and brilliant. What's especially neat about it is that it also gives you the opportunity to go along with what the other character wants and often gives you a mechanical benefit for doing so (i.e. if you do what they want you get experience). This choice of consequences means that deciding how important an aspect of the character is falls entirely upon the player, up to and including character death.
"I will never violate my vow. You'll have to kill me first."
"So be it."
I think this makes for really great dramatic potential and yet still avoids the issue of a roll causing a loss of player agency. I think that this notion is extremely powerful, and I love the way it plays out in the mechanics of the Apocalypse World rules.