Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing

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Re: Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing
« Reply #15 on: September 05, 2016, 06:47:56 AM »
Otherwise you're always acting on second-hand intel, and you have to trust that your scouts noticed all the important things, and that what they thought was important was the same stuff you'd find important, and that their report was 100% accurate.

Well that's why you roll, right?

The fictional resources you are bringing to bear on a Read a Situation are relevant to the sort of answers you get -- but a gang is a pretty obvious resource that a PC might make use of when describing HOW they read a situation, much in the same way they might describe their character keeping their ear to the ground at the local watering hole, or drawing on their knowledge of the local political scene. Whether these resources are sufficient to Read the Sitch or not is up to the MC, the scope of the current action, and the situation in question. But 'I am literally in a specific physical place' is only at issue for a particular subset of situations -- this isn't Read a Person, where the Person has to be right there in front of you.



Re: Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing
« Reply #16 on: September 05, 2016, 07:39:06 AM »
My first few years with AW, I used to read the moves as requiring direct action on the player character's part. Sure, I read that you can go aggro or seize by force using your gang as a weapon, but I took it as a requirement that the character was physically present anyway, where the gang-as-weapon mainly affected harm inflicted and other consequences of the move.

When I realized that you could read a situation by, as Daniel Wood puts it, keeping your ear to the ground or drawing on your knowledge of the political landscape, that made the play immediately more fun. The PCs' moves are what drives play, after all, and running everything that is out of the PCs' immediate sight by MC fiat is, to me, a wasted opportunity.

If being physically present is required generally when you make your moves, what's the difference between a hardholder and a gunlugger and how they play, apart from one inflicting damage by gang and one by machine gun? I mean, apart from obvious stuff like the fictional circumstances around them and such. Since the playbooks aren't just about stat numbers and fictional resources, but primarily how they interact with the world around them, of course a hardholder, a gunlugger and a savvyhead would actually read situations in different ways, sometimes by keeping their ears to the ground, sometimes by taking a quick look out of cover in a firefight.

Take the glorious Maestro D' in Deadwood, Al Swearengen, for example. He constantly reads situations, and does all kinds of moves, by sending people out to do his bidding then watching their return with the results from his balcony, with a cup of coffee in his hand. That's cool!

Re: Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing
« Reply #17 on: September 05, 2016, 02:04:45 PM »
I just wrote and deleted a pretty long post where I started out disagreeing, then talked myself around in a circle to a point where I pretty much agree with you. Of course you can Read A Sitch by aggregating various scouting reports with your own tactical understanding, and so of course you can say "I send out some Scouts, then use their reports to figure out what's really going on" and trigger RAS.

I think the important thing is that this does require direct, but not necessarily physical action by the PC. Sending out scouts and listening to their reports is not enough to trigger the move--the important thing is combining it with your own knowledge, intuition, and experience.

EDIT: So, to bring it back to the original example that spawned this discussion, sending people out, having them check out the situation, and then running in and poisoning the water when they see an opportunity would not trigger RAS, since the PC doesn't enter into it at any point. Sending people out, having them check it out, then report back to you would trigger RAS as you used the new info to reformulate your plans.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2016, 02:10:03 PM by JustusGS »

Re: Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing
« Reply #18 on: September 05, 2016, 04:25:42 PM »
That's cool! I also agree completely about the character using her knowledge, intuition and experience to actually grasp the situation. It is her making the move, after all! Only with scouts taking the function of her own eyes and ears in different situations.

Re: Question's about +1 Forward and +1 Ongoing
« Reply #19 on: September 12, 2016, 08:07:59 PM »
Vincent's intention was that all the modifiers are cumulative.