tweaks for character-POV immersion?

Thanks!

Alright, I think I have a plan.

Reading people/situations:

I'll ask the players to look over the Read questions before play, and to then roleplay toward the question(s) they want answered before rolling.  "I chat and flirt with him for a bit.  Okay.  Roll.  11.  Now, how can I get him to betray his family?" will be off the table.  You've got to bring up his family in the roleplayed interaction.  

Second, if my MC answer is, "To get him to betray them, you'd have to mind-control him," then they'll have to accept it.

Seduction/manipulation:

I'll mandate that "tell them what you want" be roleplayed, so I have some way to judge the process and whether it's even possible.  If there's insufficient leverage employed toward the desired end, I'll tell them to drop the damn dice.  The Battlebabe can't seduce a stranger in the middle of a fight; she's gonna have to spend a previous scene making the NPC want her to even put that on the table.


I guess much of this boils down to applying "to do it, do it" in ways that I didn't know were kosher.  My players may resent the constraint on their badass mechanics use, but we'll see.

Reading people/situations:

I'll ask the players to look over the Read questions before play, and to then roleplay toward the question(s) they want answered before rolling.  "I chat and flirt with him for a bit.  Okay.  Roll.  11.  Now, how can I get him to betray his family?" will be off the table.  You've got to bring up his family in the roleplayed interaction.  

Second, if my MC answer is, "To get him to betray them, you'd have to mind-control him," then they'll have to accept it.

Second part is dead on, but hold up on the first part there. The player can of course ask that! How? I size this guy, up and think to myself "Now, how can I get him to betray his family?"

BUT, your answer as MC also has to fit the fiction. So the PC is sizing this guy up and thinking how he might betray his family, so.. what do you say?

"Well, he look's like somebody who would break if you tortured him."

"This guy has multiple polaroids of his family. Know anybody else with polaroid pictures? No, of course not. Because there was only one polaroid camera, and this guy used it to take pictures of his family. He's the kind of guy who'd rather die than betray what he holds dear."

"The way he's eyefucking you every time you speak? He wouldn't piss in your mouth if your throat was on fire. Betray his family for you? Don't make me laugh."

All three answers based on what the PC did to do it. And they're all statements about what the PC sees, not what he thinks.

If the PC was looking through this NPC's papers and reads him, then you'd probably give a totally different answer, although the second one (polaroids) wouls also be appropriate. But if they find the NPC's secret accounts ledger, maybe threatening to reveal it would get him to betray his family? But you wouldn't give that answer to the guy reading by looking.

Rolling a 7+ lets you get to ask the question, and you get an honest answer. Doesn't mean you get an answer you like!

With Johnstone.

For reading a person, the roll comes at the beginning of the conversation, don't change that, but it's legit for you to expect the player to roleplaying to the questions she asks. "How can I get him to betray his family?" "Well, good question. How are you going to find out?" "I'll start by telling him a made-up story about my no-good brother, who I betrayed, who deserved it. How does he react? Whose side does he seem to take?"

The player is entitled to an honest answer; never make them think that they won't get one. You aren't setting up a hurdle for them to jump. You're just asking them what their character does so that you can tell them how yours responds. 

Crap.  Now I'm confused again.  I thought we were agreeing that there's uncertainty about whether you get to roll, and that you have to "do it" in character first to earn/justify/explain the roll.  Which allows the player to think in-character for much of the total process.

Was I wrong?  Or is that right for Seduce/Manipulate, but wrong for Read a Person?

I'm not sure how to work with rolling before roleplaying on a Read.  Say the roll is a total success.  "Given that this dude will reveal himself, how ought that play out?" is a very different experience than "How might I get this dude to reveal himself?"  Character POV is gone, even if I don't know the content of the upcoming revelation.

I mean, unless I start nullifying successful rolls when the subsequent roleplay seems weak to me.  Then the post-roll uncertainty is in synch between player and character.  But that sounds disastrous!

David, confirm for me that you've read pages 201-203, And maybe go reread them? I don't get the sense that you know quite how reading a person works. Pay special attention to the mistake-and-correction example.

I'm happy to answer your questions of course, but that text ought to solidly underlie this conversation.

If I've misread you, let me know! 

Well, after playing 12 sessions, I have a pretty good idea of how Reading can be done.  :)  But yeah, after re-reading p201-203, it appears we've been doing it wrong at least some of the time.

We've never held onto our Holds.  We've been spending them instantly.  That's something I'm planning to try to change in general; maybe Reads will be a good place to start.

As for when to roll, p201 says "at any point during the conversation".  From that, I would recommend to players that if they want to think in-character, they should wait as long as possible to roll.  Do you think that's bad advice?  

I'm kinda tempted to mandate it for a bit, to break some habits we've formed.  But I certainly don't want to mandate something contrary to the game's intent.  We do our best to honor rules-as-written, honest!

Ah! Sorry David, my fault there.

I thought the part I quoted was you saying the player had to say what the character is doing after the roll but before asking the question. Like if you don't say how you're asking the question, you don't get to ask it. (So, apologies if I'm totally off-base here and pulling you around in circles.)

What I'm saying is that it's easy to read somebody, and if the player says "I read him," you can assume it's just by looking at the guy. But when they spend their hold and ask questions, you as MC produce answers that are a) honest, but b) also derived from the fiction, from the action the character took in order to read the NPC. If the player elaborates during the conversation, you can change the substance of your answers to reflect that, sure.

So, players can get better answers from you by doing specific things (in-fiction), but as long as they have some way to read a guy they can roll, and if they can roll, they can ask any of the questions. If they roll high, that doesn't automatically guarantee a "useful" result though. The result is dictated by the move, as written. How useful the outcome is to the character (or player) depends on what they intend to do with it.

Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure it addresses the issue I'm grappling with.  Man, I hate the internet.  If the three of us were in a room chatting, this would take 5 minutes.

Y'all have definitely given me some great ways to get more color and understanding of what's happening into the fiction!  But my quandary about the "Given that this dude will reveal himself, ..." headspace still stands.  

Hmm.  Maybe an early roll could be understood as positive momentum.  As MC, I could respond, "You get him to relax a little and now you're picking up on some patterns.  Keep steering the conversation where you want to go and it seems like you'll eventually get there."  And then I can still make them earn the questions, and abort the whole thing if they do something wildly inappropriate.  Which risks invalidating the successful roll, but the risk is reasonably small...

I still wouldn't want the player to roll before the character's in line for some feedback, though (like, y'know, doing something to get the NPC to relax, so I can respond to that).

The roll can be that flash instant when you size somebody up, when you say to yourself ah, I've got this guy's number or dang it, I can't get anything off this guy. It can be a matter of study and interaction, but you shouldn't insist that it be. Don't make a big deal of the result of the roll at all; as MC, you don't even really have to acknowledge that the player made it. Save all the roleplaying for after the roll, for asking and answering the questions

 The roll itself is between the player and the character. You aren't even involved until the player asks questions.

Thinking differently about the basic elements of moves might help you. As a basic move says in order to do it, you have to do it.

But with Read a Person and Read a Situation, you have to do it when spending the hold, not really when rolling. Rolling just states that I pay close attention to this guy, with the actual questions coming later, with solid fictional roots. The player always says what the character does and after that he can spend the hold.

Just one more thing to add to Vincent's advice. As a GM, you might also want to keep the MISS around, same way as the player keeps his holds during the conversation. This might be contrary to the RAW, but as the fiction happens only AFTER the roll, it makes a lot more sense to make your hard move only later. You can deliver your move as a strong punch line whenever it looks appropriate.

That's not contrary to the rules at all! I endorse it.

Well, when I'm playing, and trying to immerse, I sure as hell won't roll to Read a Person until something's been narrated into the fiction that could plausibly serve as the basis for that read.  Deciding (via dice or otherwise) "I've got this guy's number!" (as a fact rather than an opinion) out of the blue feels more author-y than being-there-y to me.

But, as MC, I guess I'll just communicate my opinion, my "momentum" example, your "got his number" example, and then just tell the players the rules and let them judge what works best for them.

I still worry that ease and habit will win out over an approach that might have been more rewarding, but I'm sure that ain't gonna make or break our game.  If I were being a more responsible MC right now, I'd probably be reading up on Fronts.

Anyway, thanks for all the advice!  And for the procedural clarifications; I suspect some of those will go a long way.

Interesting conversation!

Vincent and others: It doesn't sound to me like anything we're discussing is actually a change to the rules in any way. Is that correct? If not, could you point out any place in this discussion (custom moves aside) where an actual change to the rules is being suggested?

Dave,

This might be off-topic, I don't know. But let me try it. Especially since you've (probably) played since you first posted this, and may have further thoughts.

This bit struck me:

Deciding (via dice or otherwise) "I've got this guy's number!" (as a fact rather than an opinion) out of the blue feels more author-y than being-there-y to me.

So, rolling the dice and then knowing "I have a good read on this guy" feels author-y?

How is it different from, say, rolling to lift a heavy rock and discovering, "Hey, yeah, I am totally strong enough to lift this"?

Where is that line between the "being there" and "making stuff up" for you? Is there a distinction between these two, and why?

(This is a great thread for anyone trying to get a better idea about Reading moves and how to handle them in play, by the way.)

Paul, didja read the whole thread?  I think I've answered your question, at least in general terms, as well as I can already.  "Rolling dice then knowing I have a read feels authory" leaves out 100% of the relevant context.  "Out of the blue" is much more the point.  If you'd care to describe a specific moment (real or hypothetical) of playing Apocalypse World, I'd be happy to weigh in with how I'd take it!

Update on my group's game: in my two sessions as MC, I've used a lot of "to do it, do it" and (from when I run Delve) "can you show me what that looks like?"  One player was initially annoyed ("I dunno exactly how my narrated action would count as Help; do you really want me to work to justify it?"), one player loved it, and I think the group as a whole is slightly positive on it.

Dave,

No, I didn't get your answer from the thread, so I think we're miscommunicating a bit. It's a little off-topic from general AW-stuff, though, so let's take it to private communication.