When you reset Hx, learn a secret [custom move]

Usually when we handed out Hx bonuses at the end of the game we would justify them somehow, like "your character knows mine better because we did [such and such] together during the session." So I think there's already a spark of inspiration there. If you reset your Hx, it prompts you to keep talking about that situation.

That's just an observation of my group's behaviour--I've only played AW with about 5 different people. Maybe other groups don't do that?

And if your Hx resets in play, it's because of some move or because of dishing out harm, so there's something there in the fiction already.

That said, I don't see why we couldn't brainstorm a little list of examples to start and maybe add stuff when people use this move in play:

When someone else resets their Hx with you, choose 1:
* Tell them a secret about yourself.
* Tell them about some habit you have, annoying, endearing, or otherwise.
* Tell them how you are vulnerable.
* Tell them what you really think about something they care about.

I really like this. Fortunately, I've only run the intro session for my group and no one has had the opportunity to reset history yet, so this is definitely going on the table.

This is exceedingly awesome, and I submitted this thread to my current Apocalypse World groups. The MCs are digging it, I'm digging it, the other players are digging it, and it's probably getting used in at least one of the games I'm in, quite possibly both.

I feel like this needs something mechanical attached to it as well, if only fleeting. It's already friggin' awesome for color and narrative, but it's a move, right? I feel like it should do something.

Here's the move as it is (so you don't have to look back)

When someone else resets their Hx with you, choose 1:
* Tell them a secret about yourself.
* Tell them about some habit you have, annoying, endearing, or otherwise.
* Tell them how you are vulnerable.
* Tell them what you really think about something they care about.

Here's three mechanical things I thought of that might work well. Do we like any of them?
1. When that person acts on that information, they mark experience.
2. When that person acts on that information, mark Hx+1 with that person.
3. That person gets +1 forward on their next roll to help or hinder you

#3 is an excellent addition to Hx rollover, with or without the rest of this move. I plan to use it from now on. Nice one!

Revisiting this idea, yeah, #3 totally works best. It fits in more with the character of the move.

Nah, I don't like it. Here's why:

1. The whole point of getting a secret in the first place is to re-connect a mechanical thing with the fiction. Adding more mechanical things to that fiction seems a bit much, like it runs counter to the point, or it's just too ornate. I feel like if you need more mechanical incentives, you're probably not making the fiction compelling enough in the first place.

2. Too many +1s all over the place. I mean, yeah, I use them in custom moves sometimes, but they really do clutter up the game. What's the point in having stats if you don't just use them as they are? Hx resets to +1, use it at +1, that's still pretty good odds. The xp for reincorporation is better, but there's really only a good/bad dichotomy here: if the other player says something cool it doesn't really need to be incentivized, but if they say something lame then you're possibly incentivizing the reincorporation of something lame. And trying to keep track of what bonuses you have to upcoming rolls can get in the way of keeping track of what's going on in the fiction.

Maybe it works for you, I dunno, but those are my thoughts.

The Brainer resets Hx with my Hoarder, Burns.  Burns is, as you might expect, an old dude.  So I whisper to the Brainer that Burns has a pacemaker.  Not two shakes later, the Gunlugger hits me with a tazer.  Good times.

In our game: When you reset from -4 to -1, reveal something you think you know about them.

Why not reverse the direction of the secret for negative Hx?  When you go from +3 to +1, they tell you a secret.  When you go from -3 to -1, you tell them a secret.

The Seeker in our Nobilis hack has kind of the same deal. Here is how I wrote that:

Seeker special
When you make love to someone, you may change one of your moves to another move reflecting their nature. Any move is legit if your HG thinks so. If you make love to a PC, you may together decide to exchange moves.

Why not reverse the direction of the secret for negative Hx?  When you go from +3 to +1, they tell you a secret.  When you go from -3 to -1, you tell them a secret.

And why not:

When you go from -3 to -1, you invent a false but believable secret about him/her and you play on it as if it is the whole truth.

Quote from: mease19 on September 29, 2011, 03:14:42 PM

Why not reverse the direction of the secret for negative Hx?  When you go from +3 to +1, they tell you a secret.  When you go from -3 to -1, you tell them a secret.

And why not:

When you go from -3 to -1, you invent a false but believable secret about him/her and you play on it as if it is the whole truth.

Because both of these encourage them to give you a -1 at the end of the session, instead of giving a +1. And then nobody's helping each other because you've always got negative Hx with each other. I think making it harder for another character to fuck with you is reason enough to give a -1 instead of a +1.

If you HAVE to give somebody a +1 at session end, and giving somebody else a -1 is an additional, optional, thing, then maybe.

Sure. Giving a fellow PC a -1 Hx should be very uncommon... Yes, most of the time, we tend to know better those whom we associate. In fact, I've never seen giving a Hx -1 to someone even if the rules provided for it. I could only imagine that in the case of a really hard roleplay of lies and manipulations...

So hey, as much as I've tended to shoot down a lot of the ideas people have had for taking this thing further, I'd still like to hear about people using some version of it in actual play. So if you've tried any of this stuff out, please do chime in.

After playing this both with and without the +1 to help or hinder, I greatly prefer the latter. The comment that there's already a lot of mechanics going on is sort of valid, but it's mechanical stuff that is very transient. People tend to mark their experience and then just jump right back into the story.

The "telling them a secret" thing makes the story matter more, and that's great, but I've found that unless the secret is really good or the information is used immediately, it kind of becomes lost in the moves snowball. The +1 to help or hinder not only adds to the fiction, but it goes from "now I know a secret about you" to "now I know a secret and this is information I can wield." Plus, that little +1 helps people remember what the hell the secret was and, once they use that knowledge to help/hinder, that's a fact about the character that sticks. It becomes a tangible part of the fiction instead of this tiny bit of color. Just my two cents.