Sex moves => vulnerability moves

Sweet!  I'm like 1 for 10!  :)

But now I'm thinking on it, and I can't help looking through all the sex moves...

Now, I'm currently MCing the game I'm in, but if I was a player, I can see trying to maneuver my character into sex just for the sex move in maybe . . . 4 of the 11 standard playbooks.  The Angel, the Brainer, the Savvyhead, and the Skinner all have potent enough sex moves that if I was playing one I might try to get sex just for the move.  Maybe.  Depending on other factors.

Good question. My gut says that a specific, concrete act is what's called for, but I have a hard time figuring out why.

My instinct says that it's for parallelism with the other moves, which are all about specific concrete action for some reason (I assume) though I don't know what. "If you do it, do it," and all that.

/begin 14 year old humor/
Snerk. "Do it."
/end 14 year old humor/

Re: Vincent -- okay thanks! I'll give it a try and post about how it goes.

Re: Fnord -- hmm. I must admit, for various reasons I've been doing a lot of reading about Apocalypse World and no actual playing of it. I've sort of been fascinated and frightened at the same time. One of the factors scaring me were some AP reports some people were posting about where people wrote about the various sexual encounters characters undertook in the game mainly because it was advantageous to do so within the game mechanics -- but it kind of made me glad I wasn't there in that session because I wouldn't have enjoyed the sort of roleplay they described. Also, one poster was like, "AW is best when your PCs are doing each other like rabbits LOL!" and I got the impression that I'd have to change the game somehow if I didn't want players to drift in that direction.

But now I can see how with most groups it still wouldn't come up that much, nor necessarily be a significant barrier to my enjoyment. I guess I can talk with my players openly about it and see which way they want to go. I can present leaving it the way it is or making this small "romantic" change as a choice for us all to make together and see which we're more comfortable with.

Re: Shreyas -- Hmm... It seems to me that most of the basic moves are quite general. "act under fire," could mean different kinds of pressure for example, and "read a sitch," could mean any situation as long as it's "charged," which is pretty general, no? What do you think?

Re: Jeff -- Oh, yes. Middle school. How well I remember.

Oh, and by the way... Vincent's use of the phrase "the effects of having sex" got me thinking... I don't know if this is something people want to talk about here or in another thread, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Number of times each word occurs in the pdf of the book I have:
"sex": about 88 times, if I counted right, on at least 47 pages.
"kiss": 9 times.
"baby": 3 times.
"pregnant": 2 times.
"womb": 1 time.
"romance": 1 time.
"marriage, marry, spouse, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend": all 0 times.
"relationship" (in a specifically romantic sense): also 0 times (7 otherwise).

Any comments? Does this mean anything?

I'm pretty sure it will work well with 'getting romantic' as the trigger. Getting into a sitch where there's some drinking and talking one-on-one a late night, and it could be quite natural to round it off with a "And I guess you get romantic? Well, the next morning..."

Any comments? Does this mean anything?

Yeah I'm not surprised. I guess it would look the same if you compared "friend" and "happy" and "agreement" to "shot", "stabbed", "gun" and "violent". The game has a harsh take on humanity, and both sex and conflict are right there at the core of being human.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's significant!

Yeah, Simon, that's the sort of thing I was thinking of saying in my group. I was also thinking of using it in situations where a character might not quite make it to "home base" (as we used to say in middle school), but still acts romantically with someone, such as falling in love and actually getting up the courage to tell the beloved how he or she feels.

Regarding the number of words thing, that was my first thought too, but then I thought of the "Fruitful Void" (http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=119) and it made me think of word choice in the book possibly being part of that design philosophy as well.

One of the factors scaring me were some AP reports some people were posting about where people wrote about the various sexual encounters characters undertook in the game mainly because it was advantageous to do so within the game mechanics -- but it kind of made me glad I wasn't there in that session because I wouldn't have enjoyed the sort of roleplay they described. Also, one poster was like, "AW is best when your PCs are doing each other like rabbits LOL!" and I got the impression that I'd have to change the game somehow if I didn't want players to drift in that direction.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is how the game is played by some people and some groups.  When we were talking about the sex moves while making characters in my group, I pointed out to the guy playing the Gunlugger that his character would be at her best if she had sex on a regular basis, or right before an anticipated fight, or whatever.  This is true, mechanically speaking, but Crille has only tried to get someone into bed once so far, and she failed.  And he wasn't doing it for the mechanical bonus anyway.  Maybe if he was playing a Skinner it would be different, I don't know.

But I just think it has more to do with the attitudes of the group and the players.  If they tend to want to have a lot of sex in their stories for whatever reason, they'll probably go for sex a lot here.  Or, if they're players who aim for the most mechanical benefit, regardless of what it necessitates in the story, they'll go for sex to fire off their beneficial sex moves.

But while I think the sex moves are part of what makes Apocalypse World what it is, most players can probably safely ignore them without crippling their character.  This isn't Bliss Stage: the mechanics don't require every character to have sex in order to be highly effective.

Nah, screw home base if it doesn't do it for you! But I don't think you would benefit from having it be about 'showing your vulnerabilities' or something more fuzzy like that. I mean, getting romantic or getting intimate is pretty clearly about the stuff you do after the dialogue ends and the action starts, whatever that action is, smooching, sexing, whatever.

The other stuff, the sharing of secrets, trust and so on, that's gold, that's food for drama, but I don't think you'll need a variant of the sex moves for that.

Fnord: I think part of my issue is my own attitude toward sex, namely that it's not something to take lightly. It has a lot of meaning and importance, and if people treat it like just another drug or buzz, all that depth is lost. Maybe AW is all about that loss, but you know sometimes one form of loss or another just cuts too deep or gets too personal and you don't want it in your game in that form anymore.

Simon: that's a good point I hadn't thought of before. If we're roleplaying at the level of language, then we can introduce our characters' words directly into the fiction, and see what meaning it has right away because it's all just language, but when it comes to physical actions like kissing, obviously we're not doing that at the game table, just as we're not actually acting under fire or seizing by force at the table either. So we need a move mechanic to help us decide what the fictional effect of these things should be, because whatever's actually happening there can't just be demonstrated in an obvious way that everyone can immediately agree upon at the table.

Vincent, maybe that's why your gut says the act should be specific and concrete. It's about modeling something we can't actually see or do.

Incidentally, that's an essential purpose of conflict resolution systems, too -- to help us model conflicts between characters that don't actually exist between players. If characters agree, we all know what to do, because the players agree too, but when the characters disagree, we can use a system to help us work it out.

Fnord: I think part of my issue is my own attitude toward sex, namely that it's not something to take lightly. It has a lot of meaning and importance, and if people treat it like just another drug or buzz, all that depth is lost.

That's interesting, I see Sex Moves as doing exactly that - giving it meaning and importance. Making it the same as kissing seems to make it trivial to me.

Interesting indeed. I suspect we're finding different sorts of meaning and importance in it. I'll be sure to report how this change works when I get the chance to try it out, whether it's more trivial or meaningful.

Interesting indeed. I suspect we're finding different sorts of meaning and importance in it. I'll be sure to report how this change works when I get the chance to try it out, whether it's more trivial or meaningful.

Looking forward to it!

Just to say: I don't think you need to change anything. We've played 7 sessions so far, and only ONE of the PC's has had sex, and NO PC has had sex with another PC. As MC, I wish more fucking was happening (because I think it makes things interesting), but it's not like our game is bad or not fun for not having it.