Durrrp, let me check the MC Moves

I feel like, at least a few times a game, I get hung up and have to sit and stare at the MC moves and Threat moves for a bit to figure out what I can do/what's permitted for me to do. A lot of times I fall back on "announce future badness" though that can leave things kind of limp if you go too long without someone getting gut-shot.

Thank God for Mr. Harper's MC cheatsheets. It means I don't have to keep the book bookmarked on those pages. Still, it slows things down sometimes.

When I MC'ed, one thing I found helpful was to think beforehand about some of my Fronts and just settle on what a tick of the countdown clocks might mean...

So that if ever there were a moment of downtime at the lake, I could go to that situation where Millions has a gun pointed at Dog Head. If ever there was a moment of downtime in the woods, the bike gang might show up with another offer.

Looking at MC moves would have led me to doing the same things, probably, but sometimes it's just nice to figure out "okay, if nobody addresses X, then Y can happen whenever there's a lagging pause."

I've played... I dunno, maybe 50 sessions of AW? I don't look at the MC moves list anymore, really.

Then I ran a game at GenCon in which the PCs missed something like 10 rolls in a row. It was a spiral of fail. I looked at Vincent kind of helplessly (he was in the game). "I've run out of mean things to say." He looked at me with compassion and said, "Just look at your moves."

Oh yeah! Whew.

I actually enjoyed getting a set of index-cards cut in half, writing each of the moves down, and then every now and then drawing a few and seeing if any spoke to me. It definitely helped get out of my habit of just using my favorite move or two over and over.

I should do that for those hojillion new front moves, too, now that I think about it.

I don't find myself looking at the moves very much either. When I do, it tends to be when someone's blown a roll, and I get to steeple my fingers, chuckle, and then survey my list for something appropriately terrible.

Most of the time that's just thinking about what the immediately invloved NPCs want, and giving them one of those things, like, they want to drag Must off behind the petrol tanker and murder him, so "One of them's got you by the ankles and is dragging you off, face down through the dust, you're kicking and yelling, but no one hears." (Seperate them)

Sometimes it's thinking about what an offsceen NPC wants, and giving them that. The Black King wants to subjugate everything he sees, so... (but that would be giving things away to my players, and they have to wait until next session).

Sometimes it's thinking about what an offsceen NPC wants, and giving them that. The Black King wants to subjugate everything he sees, so...

...he sends us tribute? ...attacks some other people a long way away?

Just some helpful suggestions for my MC.

I actually enjoyed getting a set of index-cards cut in half, writing each of the moves down, and then every now and then drawing a few and seeing if any spoke to me. It definitely helped get out of my habit of just using my favorite move or two over and over.

I should do that for those hojillion new front moves, too, now that I think about it.

Dude. Great idea. I have a hard time actually taking a moment during play to look at the MC sheet; I feel like people are waiting for me to talk. This is a good way to get me to actually consider the moves.