Help me pick apart a scene from my last session to learn better MCing?

 So I took my players through our second session last night. For me getting specific examples is one of the most helpful ways to learn this game and I just wanted to ask a few questions. I'll run through this scene outside a bar because a lot of rolls happened. Sorry if this is really dense and overly mechanical, I'm trying to really pick apart what happened to see how all the gears fit together.



Gritch the brainer and Duke the gunlugger got in a tussle with some NPCs: smalltime bad boy Dremmer and his lackeys White and Preen.
White and Preen have just dragged Gritch out of a bar and they're holding him by an arm each. He's not struggling and doesn't seem to care at all. Duke's come outside with her whiskey to see what happens. Dremmer gives Gritch one last chance to hand over his violation glove without getting the shit beat out him (they don't know what it does but they were hired to get it). What do you do? Gritch responds by trying to use the glove on Preen. I wasn't totally sure how to handle it, but I called for a Seize by Force, the thing seized being the chance to fuck with Preen's brain. Gritch rolls an 8 and chooses to take definite hold of Preen's face and impress, dismay, or frighten his enemy. He now deep brain scans Preen and asks in what ways Preen's mind and soul are vulnerable. (the old lady Shazza who works at Duke's Kitchen was like a mother to her in years past and it'd be a real shame if something happened to her.) While Preen is on the ground reeling and everybody else is watching, stunned, Gritch puts the glove in front of White's face. Go aggro: he rolls a 7 and White backs off calmly, hands where he can see.

At this point, Dremmer has come to his senses and pulls out his gun and points it at Gritch's face: "What do you do?" Duke's player jumps in and says, "I shoot him." Again I wasn't sure how exactly to handle it, I went with seize by force but I didn't have Dremmer shoot back because he wasn't paying any attention to Duke, he was set on the freaky brainer. Duke nails the roll with a 10 and choose to inflict terrible harm: her shotgun tears the top half off of Dremmer - and impress, dismay, or frighten her enemy: White turns around and books it. Now Preen's coming to her senses and White's on the run, what do you do? Gritch decides to tackle White and kill him with his scalpel: I go with seize by force again. He rolls 9, takes definite hold of White, and saws through his artery with the scalpel.

Duke now wants to shoot Preen in the leg to keep her from getting up and running off. I have no idea what to do with this so I fudge it by letting her seize by force again but only making her deal 1 harm. She and Gritch hogtie Preen and they haven't decided what to do with her yet.




So I feel like I don't really understand the intended purpose of seize by force and I ended up kind of using it to fall back on when I wasn't sure what to do. It never really felt like the right choice because in each case the other person wasn't really fighting back. How would you have handled using the violation glove on Preen? Should I have let him deep brain scan, without a basic move? Likewise with Duke shooting Dremmer while he wasn't paying attention - better done with go aggro because he wasn't fighting back? Or no move at all? It seems like a pretty drastic action to take without making a roll. Same with tackling White who was busy running away, and shooting Preen in the leg while she was trying to get up.

Any thoughts at all would be greatly appreciated, I know it's a lot to drudge through and I hope it's not too presumptuous to give you guys my big ol' mess to sift through. Any little tidbit of advice will make my day :)

Honestly man, you did awesomely for a second run. But two rolls were unnecessary: the one to seize white and saw his artery, and the one to shoot the other NPC in the leg. Even then, perhaps the sawed artery was necessary, idk. And seize by force is something I won't be able to explain, cause I'm not a good explainer. But that whole battle seemed like you handled it right to me.

I'm going to share my thoughts in a completely unhindered fashion, however, I do not have years of experience running AW games and am certainly fallible in these matters.

I am personally wary of directly and immediately seeking to take a player's cool thing. The Violation glove really only aids the Brainer, and it could be questionable as to why another person would have a use for it– since AW is set up to make the playbooks unique. I take this back if he was caught flaunting the glove's mind controlling potential in front of someone powerful and started the snowball that we're seeing in your playback. Of course, its not wrong to try to have people take it, just remember you should always be a fan of the Brainer story. Wary planning to take away his cool things before he's put the cool thing at risk, and always play to help tell his story.

When Gritch is being carried out by White and Preen, arm by arm. I would not have made him use a Seize by Force to attempt to use a brainer move on him. Clearly his hand is damn close to them, if he struggled to throw them off and grab one of their faces, or if he just wants to get a hand on the stronger one of them. Let him try. Have him roll the brainer move deep brain scan to do this. Whether he can or not is already posed in the fiction, does the brain-scan work? If he misses the weird roll you can make any move as hard as you want, and the fiction helps you figure out what that should be. So if he tried to deep brain scan and missed... then he didn't get a hand on them and they see him try, so they'll react hard and fast and thing's will get worse for Gritch real quick. That being said, deep-brain scan doesn't deal harm, so I'm not sure why the guy being read by the move was ruined on the ground grasping his head. At most knowing about that intimate moment in the guys head might be considered leverage if Gritch wanted to lie or manipulate the fucker into letting him go or turning him against his pal.

The Go aggro move afterwards on the second guy sounds about right in terms of use. However, when you asked him what do you do? Did he say "I go aggro on them", did he instead just silently threatening to use the glove like some mind-fuck hard threat? Or did he look over at the other guy and just weirdly direct brain whisper project the fear of god into him? The words they use are super important, for them and for you, like how you decide the frame the moves. The more creative and empowered everyone is, the more the scene comes to life. You'll find it's a lot easier to find ways a move could go wrong when they lay out the details of what their doing in the world. This exchange helps you seamlessly cover misses as well as successes when issuing the results.

An example of this exchange and how it can color the scene might be:

Hey Gritch, those two thugs who've been standing right behind you all-this-time, suddenly and without-a-word, each grab one of your arms and yank you out of the chair. It's clear they intend to haul you right out the door and beyond some-where's for something unpleasant. They're both real strong, and they're holding on tight enough you can feel your hands going numb. What do you do?
Gritch: I let them drag me out the door... but right as that sunlight hits their eyes and they squint, I'm going to twist around to get a hand on one of them, I wanna know what makes him tick. (deep brain scan). Duke: Hell I grab my beer and follow out to watch. This looks like fun. 

Example Two:

Hey Gritch, two thugs bust into the bar and shout out, "HEY YOU!" You turned to see what all the racket was about and it's pretty clear, they're both looking right at you... downright malevolently. Soon as you turned to look, they grin and say. "Goooood. We found you first. You're coming with us. What do you do? Gritch: Hell, I'm going to take this opportunity to get a good read on who else is in this bar, and where my good escape routes might be. Read a sitch. If he fails, while looking around they just walk up and grab ahold of him and yank him off as before... or... Gritch could always go and say... I look right into their eyes and put the fear of god into them: direct brain whisper projection. Or I kick off the chair, run along the counter and jump out the nearest window Act Under Fire... Or I look up at the bar keep and say, you have a shotgun under that counter that'll help me out? I've a treasure here with your name on it if you keep them off me Manipulate with a Barter for an auto 10.

I'm just saying that in these cases, they can do anything they feel like. But how you narrate the action is what gives them the options. If you let them see it coming, then they can open their brain, look around, try to run, try to buy them off, chatter. If the scene starts off with them already on him and yanking him out the door, then he'll start figuring what's what from that point onwards. Make sure you're providing enough cool details that he can see the room he is in, cause that's what will inspire his creativity.

As for Fight Outside: Remember when you ask one of them What do you do? You should, before rolling any dice, ask the others what they do. That way everyone can see what everyone is starting to do, and you can go around as you wish and have each roll for their action.

Dremmer pulls out his gun and points it at Gritch. Gritch says, I stand there and take it, or I start to fuck with his brain, or I look at him and dare him, or I look for the nearest place to run for cover! Or, I run and dive behind Duke. You already know Duke's said, I pull out my gun and blow his head off. So then you have the players roll whatever move is triggered by their fiction. If Gritch is doing anything besides looking for cover, I'd be tempted to say to Duke, "When you rip out your gun and take aim, Duke gets freaked the fuck out. He starts shooting. Either at you (Duke) or Gritch (if Gritch was being threatening still). So when the move calls for you to exchange harm as established, you can throw the right amount of harm around. You can get a feeling at whom the damage would be directed by Gritch's roll and his description.

At this point, Dremmer has come to his senses and pulls out his gun and points it at Gritch's face: "What do you do?" Duke's player jumps in and says, "I shoot him." Again I wasn't sure how exactly to handle it, I went with seize by force but I didn't have Dremmer shoot back because he wasn't paying any attention to Duke, he was set on the freaky brainer.

If there's no one fighting back, then Seize By Force isn't really appropriate; part of the point of that move is that no matter what happens, everyone involved is going to get hurt to some degree or another. Remember, inflicting/exchanging harm as established is always a thing that you can just narrate happening without calling for a roll, if the situation makes it appropriate. If you really want to make Duke roll something to pull it off, I'd probably go with an Act Under Fire, with the fire being that Dremmer's trigger finger is just a fraction of a second quicker than Duke's, and Gritch takes a bullet.

You are right that you should not be using Seize by Force when the other party is not fighting back -- though 'fighting back' does not mean 'armed', people can fight back with their fists, if that's what's going on. And if you do use it, you have to make sure to inflict the harm, and make sure it's clear that there was a serious fight.

So in the first case, when Gritch is trying to 'use the glove' on Preen, the first thing you need to figure out is what that looks like. How does the glove work -- is it subtle? Is it obvious? Are these guys aware that it's dangerous, and therefore avoiding it?

Then you have to find out, based on that, how Gritch is trying to use it. If the glove means even a brief touch is enough, and these guys are already restraining Gritch, then it may not require a roll at all to simply shift their hand and make skin contact. If this is the case but they are hyper-aware of the glove, and Gritch is trying to touch them sneakily or through some deception, then Act Under Fire probably has the best set of results.

If on the other hand Gritch is going to use the glove by violently grabbing them, or subduing them long enough to grab their face, or whatever else involving violence, then you are in the realm of violence and you need to figure out if Seize by Force or Go Aggro are more appropriate. You do this in the same way as above: you ask questions to get a better idea of how Gritch is doing whatever they're doing, and then you look at the available moves and consider which set of results maps best to the situation.

In this case, the question to ask is actually of yourself: how are these guys going to react when Gritch comes at them violently, trying to grab them with 'the glove'? If they are going to fight back and try and restrain Gritch, then Seize by Force might be the best choice; if they are going to focus on just not getting touched by the glove, then Go Aggro is the best choice (and if they are scared of the glove enough, they will always succeed, because they will choose to take the 1-harm (hand) rather than let Gritch touch them.)

The rest of how you handled that part seems good to me -- though in the case of the Go Aggro, you have to consider what it looks like if the NPC decides to suck it up. Does Gritch punch White in the face? Does he do harm in some other way? It's quite likely Gritch was actually manipulating, with the threat of the glove as leverage.

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Duke's player jumping in is a classic example of using Go Aggro to resolve unpredictable situations of violence. There's no threat here -- Duke just wants Dremmer to take the shot -- but if you look at Go Aggro's possible outcomes, you can see that it's perfect for trying to figure out what happens, once you've decided that Dremmer isn't fighting back and once you've decided you need a roll at all. Many MCs, given that situation, would just let Duke deal harm -- it depends heavily on the fictional positioning. If Duke is completely blindsiding Dremmer, then presumably she just shoots him, done. If Dremmer is vaguely aware of Duke, but surprised enough not to fight back, then Go Aggro can help you figure out whether he reacts in time to at least avoid getting shot (by taking cover, presumably.) And the possibility of a miss also opens up the chance of things going completely wrong in some other way.

Given that you went with Seize by Force, this implies that fictionally, Dremmer has reacted in time to shoot back, and there is actually some kind of (very brief) firefight -- Dremmer should inflict harm, etc.

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Seize by Force for the tackling/scalpel-ing seems solid to me, but shooting Preen in the leg is another solid case for Go Aggro.

But either way, and this is actually the only thing in your whole example I would really be worried about, there is no way Duke gets to just arbitrarily not do full harm when shooting somebody with a shotgun. Being able to deal less than the listed harm is actually a move (in the Quarantine's playbook), and if Duke's player is interested in precision shot-gunning then I would encourage them to take the move. Otherwise, that's just not how AW works: if you shoot an NPC, with any gun at all, much less a shotgun, you should probably be ready for them to end up dead. If Duke wants to stop Preen without risking Preen dying, she will have to tackle her or something -- or hope that Preen makes a self-preserving choice after a successful Go Aggro.

Seize by Force is used whenever the battle is coming to blows with both sides looking to waste the other. If words are involved and the situation is tense, but bullets aren't flying, that's when go aggro comes into play. Your first and last two uses of seize by force were unnecessary.

When a seize by force is rolled, both sides suffer harm if harm has been established by their weaponry. If one of them has a sword and the other a gun, the gun's harm is probably dealt first unless the guy with the sword started the seize roll already next to the gunner. If they both have weapons in the same range, then I'd just say both sides drop the blows on the other-side and that's that.

You may want to consider the effects of the option impress, dismay, or frighten. For example: having the shotgun cleave off half the guy is certainly a SIGHT to be seen, yet really a shotgun might be hard pressed to do that. GO with whatever visceral imagery you and your players enjoy.. but there's always that moment when the bullets tear through Dremmer that the other two's faces go white and you show that camera on their Human response to their buddy dying right there on the street. Running might be the option, but so might screaming for mercy, or start blabing out words that might save their life. As well, in that moment when both of them watch their buddy hit the ground, being impressed, dismayed, or frightened, might keep them from reacting fast enough and running off.

White was on the ground, shocked. If Gritch wanted to drop down on top of him, and he was already sold on fleeing this fucking combat. I'd just say when he starts to repeatedily stab the guy with a knife, that's that. Players have the advantage, the main leader's down, the rest is just mop up work. Unless the threat's still active, and you're looking to trade more harm for harm, dont worry about making them roll. If they do it, they do it. If white being on the ground reached for his weapon and screamed, LEAVE ME ALONE! And Gritch still went to jump on top of him, then it's a seize by force moment, cause harm between the knife and White's weapon can be traded again as established.

Same goes for the Gunlugger shooting the guy in the leg. If she is using the same shotgun that blasted the other guy's entire torso off... I'd say at the bare minimum shooting him in the leg deals the FULL HARM. You don't deal less harm then established unless they've taken the Quarantine move called disciplined engagement. She could either switch to a light handgun and give him a quick pow pow, or just run out after him and beat him down with the shotgun's butt dealing s harm and drag his ass back. If she does it, she does it. Shooting someone in the leg tends to kill them a lot of the time however, you've a lot of big arteries down there. Shotguns aren't weapons that deal in less then lethal damage.

If you as an MC don't want to just decide that she catches the fleeing target, make her roll a act under fire roll. She's acting under the risk of him escaping, and he's already running, maybe even ducking and weaving trying to keep under cover? Since he isn't fighting back, and you are still asking for a roll, use the results something on the lines of:

Roll Act Under Fire, +cool (or hard if battle-hardened). On a 10+ You manage to nick him and he drops to the ground. He suffers 1 less harm then normal. On a 7–9, You manage to find a couple opportunities to make the shot, but he's keeping well under cover. You have to make a snap decision, take the shot and risk hitting something vital? Or let him off this time. So if she takes the shot, deal full harm, deal with the result. If she lets him run off, then that's that, he'll be afraid of her for a long while. On a miss, she takes the shots, but shit just keeps getting in the way. He makes an escape and you've lost sight of him. You might notice that he's running in the gang's direction, but he'll get to help before you'll get to him. You're involved now.

Of course, the Gunlugger could have always just aimed her gun at Preen as he starts to run off and said something like. "WOOO There. Where do you think you're going? I didn't give you permission to leave yet." Let the Gunlugger roll Go Aggro on the guy. That would give you lots of options that will give the Gunlugger what she wants on a Hit, a live target that isn't getting away. If she misses the roll, then the guy not only starts running, but he also gets away. Don't follow the failed Go Aggro with a Seize by Force. Make the miss change the narrative, make a move that moves the story forward. Keep in mind that Preen is impressed dismayed, or frightened, always make that response work to the characters benefit, since they choose it as part of their successful move. So if the Gunlugger hits on the Go Aggro, he knows she'll blow him into tiny weeny pieces too, and he doesn't want that. Why would he risk making her mad?


Daniel posted a bunch of this right before I finished it, so we say the same thing a few times. I figure you can read both and see the perspectives, and so I'll leave mine as written.

Wow, thanks so much for the amazing feedback, this is a lot to work with! I forgot to mention that Duke did pull out her handgun to try to kneecap Preen, but it still would have killed her, so I decided to take the loss and fudge it, and figure out later how to do it better... The reason I wanted a roll was that I liked the idea that she might accidentally kill Preen if she missed the roll, or render her unable to speak so they'd have to get her patched up to interrogate her. Perhaps act under fire would have worked nicely?

Either Act Under Fire or Go Aggro seem like they could have worked -- I like the Act Under Fire results breakdown Ebok suggested, for example, and Go Aggro would basically produce a very similar set of results (slightly more favourable to Preen, who could probably choose to get away or at least out of the line of fire, on a 7-9.)

You could also just decide that Duke shoots Preen, and it does harm, but the harm is not yet fatal if they take Preen to a medic, etc. The book does provide for a fair amount of leeway when deciding if NPCs die at 2 harm, which I assume is how much Duke's handgun would have done.

Or you could add a custom move that allows your PCs to reduce the harm they do, if that's something you'd prefer be available in your Apocalypse. Personally I would encourage you to just have people get badly hurt all the time and make the PCs deal with the consequences.

Personally I would encourage you to just have people get badly hurt all the time and make the PCs deal with the consequences.

Agreed.  Violence is (and should be) messy.  Inflicting violence should almost always come with unintended and preferably irrevocable consequences.

I agree with the previous posters.  Once the initiative swung back around to the players I would have just let them go for doing harm, and that would have been when Duke caught Dremmer cold.  Boom, Dremmer's down, Gritch pulls out his scalpel and opens White's throat.  However, if the PCs want to stop Preen from escaping the situation that would be either Go Aggro or Manipulate, depending on whether Duke wants to actually shoot Preen or not.

My reasoning there would be as long as Preen stays in the situation she's now playing by the PCs rules, and they're ruling with violence that she can't match.  She doesn't want to act against them, so they have to do something if they want to make her stay.  That's when we pick the dice back up.  And since the LE playbooks sold out and went mainstream, I'd swerve right away from options not backed by moves to reduce harm.

And since the LE playbooks sold out and went mainstream,

Off topic, but out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?

The LE books used to require you to seek them out; now you can pay money and get them in one go.  For the longest time I viewed the limited edition playbooks as optional extras.  These days it feels like you're missing something fundamental if you don't have at least an understanding of the moves available from the Maestro'D and the Quarantine and so on, in this case Disciplined Engagement to reduce harm inflicted.

Ah, gotcha. I somewhat agree with that, though I think it depends on your group. I'm MCing a game and only placed the core playbooks on the table to choose from. Since none of the other playbooks are in play, my group has no reason to consider their moves and concepts binding.