Player Priorities in Apocalypse World

AW encourages a tactic called "fishing" too (though it doesn't refer to it by name) that I first saw in the Mountain Witch - you set up a situation for a PC and then let them fill it in.

"So, this brute of a chick, Dremmer, she comes up to you in the bar and she's sobbing her eyes out.  Everybody's freaked.  What's Dremmer so upset about and why'd she come to you about it?"

I very much like this tactic. It's like a little "bang" that allows the player to mold it to her liking.

I really like this answer:

I think the moves are those things where you say, "Hey this is what I want to do." If you want to boss around a gang and put down mutiny, take a character with Pack Alpha. If you want to take on groups of people and shoot them up, take a character with Not to Be Fucked With. If you want to be the one who gives advice, take Oftener Right.

I think Moves are the next step for trad game skills and abilities like you find in Shadowrun or GURPS, and transmute them into something in line with what Luke is describing.

and this one:

AW is all about letting the players direct. The MC's job and the MC mechanics are all about making flags unnecessary: why use semaphores when you've got a cell phone?

In my original post I wasn't assuming that Apocalypse World needed some written or mechanical player priorities that it doesn't have; I just wanted to hash out what player priorities look like in AW, because I sure as shit can see that there's no lack of player-driven activity in the game.

In that regard these thoughts from Bret and eggdropsoap (dude, what is your name?) are great, and get me to this point in my thinking: any move the character makes is a player priority in Apocalypse World, because the game is all about them. Because there's no plot.*

Bonus realization: I asked a long time ago why the MC is called the MC, and I never got an answer, but after MCing and thinking about it and reading this thread, I get it. It's just a flag to get you, MC, to understand that it's not your game, it's our game, and you're just the Master of Ceremonies and accordingly should have the attitude and role of any MC at any gathering: Facilitate, smooth over rough spots, and contribute to this party while letting others contribute.

*btw, I haven't played a lot of Burning Wheel, but to me in that game the GM doesn't bring a plot that's suited to the player's Beliefs, but rather puts obstacles/interesting things in the way of those Beliefs, and what the players do and what GM does creates a story. Much like in AW. In this regard I disagree with eggdrop's earlier post. But this is a tangent!

I also think that the moves are not just about "what I want to do" but what complications I want. If I play a hocus, I know when I roll low on my fortunes roll I'm going to be dealing with hungry, desperate and judgmental people. Right?

So, is that the kind of fiction I want? Or, do I not want to have to deal with people? In that case, I might wanna play a Battlebabe.

The MC doesn't have to "throw those obstacles" in front of you because they naturally evolve from the moves themselves.

My moves tell me, "what I can do" and "what sort of complications I'm dealing with" both at the same time.

Yeah! "Master of Ceremonies." That's a big clue that was just staring me in the face… Introduce PCs, put them on stage, and then give up the spotlight and make sure the backstage stuff goes smoothly meanwhile.

(Sorry about the handle. I'm cagey about mixing RL and online identities too much. But I should put my blog identity in there… so added. And "Scott" works for me.)

Yes to all that has been said! And also this: AW is a world of scarcity. Just staying alive is a player priority. The player that doesn't pick any priorities and pursue them quickly ends up hungry, cold, along, broke, and vulnerable.

eeeeeh... I agree with most of everything here, but I'm a little uncomfortable with some of the tone.  I'm sure this wasn't the intended thought, but here goes:

I think it's important to remember that the MC is still part of the game, is in fact a player just with a very different mode of play than the others.  As such, the game is very much the MC's game as well.  So Fleece is totally legit, because it's player input.  The difference is that it isn't solely the MC's game.

If I'm running a game, my intention is to have fun doing so as well.  As such, my role is not just to facilitate others, but to do so in a way that still satisfies my desires for the game and setting.  I'm just not turning up with a preplanned agenda of what MUST and CANNOT, and I'm not expecting to be the sole creative force/authority of fiction at the table.

Like I said, I'm guessing most of the posting here was taking that in to consideration, but the tone was heading to an extreme I just don't see in the game (That the MC needs to leave all or at least most story generation to the PC's).

If I'm running a game, my intention is to have fun doing so as well.  As such, my role is not just to facilitate others, but to do so in a way that still satisfies my desires for the game and setting.  I'm just not turning up with a preplanned agenda of what MUST and CANNOT, and I'm not expecting to be the sole creative force/authority of fiction at the table.

Yeah, definitely! For my part, anyway, I said that part of the MC's job is to "contribute to this party while letting others contribute."  Our game; not my game, not your game.

Like I said, I'm guessing most of the posting here was taking that in to consideration, but the tone was heading to an extreme I just don't see in the game (That the MC needs to leave all or at least most story generation to the PC's).

I agree with Motipha here.  The MC creates Fronts and threats, and has a degree of control over these threats in terms of what moves they make.  I think that story generation is very much a collaborative effort between all the players at the table (which includes the MC).  

The MC is given moves to drive forward all sorts of events, inciting all kinds of stuff that puts the characters into a crisis.  Then the characters use their moves to endure the crisis.  As a flip side, the players may be proactive, going out and causing situations, but the MC still decides on the consequences of these actions with his list of moves in response.  

This back and forth prevents any pre-plot creation, making the story happen at the table.  But all bodies at the table have a hand in forging that story.

Yeah I don't think anyone would say otherwise.

Yeah, complete agreement with Motipha.

That's another reason I think "ask questions" is so genius: The MC gets to inject all kinds of interesting things just by asking loaded questions, but it's not fully formed until the players answer. The locus of story creation is almost perfectly centred between the player answering and the MC asking. Everyone owns the inputs to that process, but the output is entirely co-owned.

I'm asking a buttload of questions right now during the setup for an online AW game and it's really fun.  It's actually very helpful to get me thinking about the characters and the setting.  I asked one of the players, whose character was specificied to have just arrived in town, what her character said when the Hardholder asked her to be his second wife. This is pretty exciting because I have no idea what the player is going to say or how I'm going to respond to it. 

This is about a million miles from how I was playing 10 years ago, writing up detailed backstories on my Vampire characters that never came up in play once it started.  I'm very happy with it so far.