Alternative Hack for AW2 Seize by Force

Ok, pretty interesting. That's a good explanation!

It's awkward to consider, for me, because I think that's the way I play already. All those examples just sound like normal AW play at my table.

(Unless you mean that you *make up* stuff like bullets flying around, even when the fiction wouldn't normally require that - but I'd be very surprised if you did.)

I suppose I find it a little strange to consider a version of AW where failure is never (or rarely) an option. For instance, taking the tense car chase in the canyon, I'd like to occasionally have the PCs, you know, lose the race, or end up behind the other vehicle.

It's true that this can be achieved by using other moves, but I have a fairly "naturalistic" view of AW, and I wouldn't want to be choosing moves based on dramatic interests (for instance, choosing one move over another because it seems interesting to me to have a chance of failure present in the stakes of the scene; I much prefer to let the fiction and the players' choices dictate which moves get called into play).

Unless I'm missing something, when we get into a battle move situation, the unpleasant fictional outcomes at stake in a given scene will only take place if the players choose to have them happen, or if the PCs run down their harm clocks and/or fail harm move rolls and we choose appropriately for them.

You're missing something.

Ok, cool! What is it?

I suppose I find it a little strange to consider a version of AW where failure is never (or rarely) an option. For instance, taking the tense car chase in the canyon, I'd like to occasionally have the PCs, you know, lose the race, or end up behind the other vehicle.

Failing is an always an option. You're still allowed to do everything you could in AW1, including making something horrible happen to them when they miss as they definitely seize their target, such as blowing out a tire, denting something important, sucking up a bunch of rocks into the engine, having the guys behind them take out a gun and blow holes into their car as they force their way through. Just cause they get what they want, does not mean they'll enjoy the position it puts them in. When they choose to seize something by force, damage is a foregone conclusion, not something they get to avoid. This applies to the mechanic harm they suffer, but it also applies to the stakes of the fictional battle. There is no base option to come out unscathed.

btw, Harm can absolutely cost you your option. Munin and I disagree here a bit. I wouldn't counter their choice casually, but the harm move has every right to take whatever they got away from them. If the harm move renders them unconscious, for example, you are certainly not going to give them what they seized, (but they did get it, before said KO) and them seizing something does not provide immunity of the results of the harm roll. The seize by force happens, and the harm is yet another roll with its own seperate consequences.

It's true that this can be achieved by using other moves, but I have a fairly "naturalistic" view of AW, and I wouldn't want to be choosing moves based on dramatic interests (for instance, choosing one move over another because it seems interesting to me to have a chance of failure present in the stakes of the scene; I much prefer to let the fiction and the players' choices dictate which moves get called into play).

Again, you're missing something. I was never suggesting picking a different move because of dramatic interests. I was saying, pick the correct move base on what's actually at stake to begin with. If it's a race, even one where people might be making contact with their cars, act under fire is more appropriate them seize by force. If you're trying to kill each other with your cars, or you guns and your cars at the same time, then act under fire is not the best option. This is very naturalistic to me. If you're going to steal a suitcase, and the only thing at stake is whether you get out with it or not, then seize by force (which is predicated on you going to war over said item) is probably not good option, let alone the most natural.

Going to Battle for something vs Doing something dangerous.

Unless I'm missing something, when we get into a battle move situation, the unpleasant fictional outcomes at stake in a given scene will only take place if the players choose to have them happen, or if the PCs run down their harm clocks and/or fail harm move rolls and we choose appropriately for them.

You could not be more wrong. When going into battle, the the unpleasant fictional outcomes are all but guaranteed. They will only avoid coming into play with concerted effort from multiple characters acting together. (using moves to prevent enemies from acting, removing a threat as it acts, safe guarding an allies dangerous action, etc)

Ebok,

I can definitely get on board with a re-imagining of AW combat where dangers are ubiquitous, and making moves is what we do to avoid them. In this paradigm, bad stuff happens, essentially, when *other* moves are failed. Seize by Force, instead, becomes a sort of "automatic success", at the cost of injury, lives lost, and so forth. In other words, when the PCs commit to violence, they are almost sure to get what they want, but they have to weigh the costs.

This could work particularly well with a game where something like my harm hack is in play, or a more battle-heavy, cinematic approach is used, so taking harm really matters. Your hack of the SBF move would also make outcomes a lot more variable in play, which I like. Your more aggressive approach to the harm move can be used to balance this, as well - if getting hurt could knock you out or otherwise cost you your success, again, this become less predictable.

All very interesting to ponder, in any case.

The one thing I'm not really seeing here is what changed for you when Vincent posted in the other thread about making moves in combat/battle. That seemed to make a big difference for you, and I'm not entirely sure I see why. Now that we've been through this whole discussion, might it be easier to illustrate that difference?

I'd love to see an example of an MC move you'd make in battle that you *wouldn't have* made under 1ed AW, and how that ties into all this. Any chance I could talk you into a (quick) example of that?

Oh, that's easy - inflict harm as established. It's not that I wouldn't have made it, it's just the circumstances I'd have made it were different. Because AW1's Peripheral Battle Moves included a harm-per-tick mechanism, I was much more careful about setting up the fictional position before inflicting harm, because the harm was already built into the mechanics. Now I'm much more aggressive about doling out that harm because that mechanism no longer exists.

We actually just had a pitched battle in the most recent session of our game. Major Tom (The Show) was barred entry to a settlement because he has a contagion. As a result, he decided to whip up the other contagious folks and poor rabble into a mob, that then made an attack on the gates of the settlement. Fifi (The Gunlugger) counted among her friends in this settlement the head of the local constabulary, and she came to the settlement's aid in fighting off the rabble. I bring this up because it saw examples of two things discussed in this thread.

First, it included a harm move following a seize by force roll that resulted in the Gunlugger being trapped/panicked/KO'd - at one point the Gunlugger was atop one of the gatehouse towers firing her shotgun down at the rabble (who'd tried unsuccessfully to crash a bus through the gates), keeping them from slipping through the small gap now opened by the bus. She hit the roll, blasted a whole bunch of dudes, and scared the crap out of the rabble, but totally flubbed the harm move. In this case, I had one of the attackers atop the bus (a guy she'd just shot) grab hold of her, pulling her off the rampart with him as he fell. So yes, she stopped the rabble from slipping through, but now she was outside the walls, stuck under a dead body of her own making. The rabble turned on her immediately. This was a "trapped" result on a harm roll, but it didn't invalidate her success (at least not in the moment) because she'd kept them from slipping through.

Shortly thereafter, Ace (The Driver) let loose with the MG on his war-buggy at the rabble at the gates (not knowing that Fifi was now among them). When the result of his roll to act under fire was a partial success, I chose a "worse outcome," and immediately applied 2-harm to Fifi. So yes, he shot some of the rabble, further damaging them, but caught Fifi as well in the process. I had no problem inflicting harm on a partial success because Fifi was "in battle." I'm not sure I'd have made this particular move under AW1, especially if I was using the Peripheral Battle Moves and battle-clock.

Finally, Fifi failed another harm move after a single combat roll (because, having extricated herself from the body and having survived Ace's machinegun fire, she was trying to kill as many fuckers as she could), so I KO'd her with a brick upside the head. I had no problem doing this because there was no "success" to negate - she wasn't seizing anything and had already exchanged the harm.

There was a point right after Fifi fell where her player indicated a desire to read a sitch, and I offered that it would be totally cool for her to take some time to get her bearings, but that the rabble would be curb-stomping her while she did it. I felt that in this case the "set-up" for damage to simply be inflicted upon her had already been well established. She wisely chose action over analysis, foregoing suffering further one-sided harm.

Great examples, Munin!

My sense is that the harm move and harm exchange is playing a large part in this new style of play - basically, the characters can be really effective, like action heroes, until their clocks start running out or they fail a harm move.

I'm not sure how well this would translate to a more "down to earth" playstyle; I'll have to think on it.

I like your guidelines for applying harm move results freely, but still with an eye on "being a fan of the PCs" by being aware of trying not to negate their successes.

Actually, the entire point was that we are more aggressive about giving out harm during battle. Them making a harm move is a result of us delivering that harm.

^^^ This.

Interesting! That's something to ponder.

Overall, I'd say that, from the examples so far, your "more aggressive" approach sounds like the way I play the game already, so I'm not sure how to bring it to a game I'd play now.

I think that, for such moves not to feel "cheap", we need complex, hectic situations with multiple threats. Those are certainly fun, but the takeaway I'd bring from this would be to *create more such situations in the fiction*.

That's where I see the game becoming much more "action movie" in style. Not necessarily a bad thing, but - for us, at least - it would be a dramatic shift in tone.

(Consider something like my Apocalypse: Emergence - http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=5248.15 - for context.)

My games tend to see a lot of situations like a simple staredown between two men with knives, and a gun on the table between them. In such a situation, I'm not sure how "always choose 1 on a miss" serves us very well.

The typical response which comes to mind might be, "You rolled a miss? Ok, you grab the gun, just as the other guy slams the knife into your arm." Problem is, I can't meaningfully distinguish how that's different from "Choose 1 and expect the worst".

Ebok's hack here handles that kind of thing quite a bit better, I think.

(By the way, this discussion has inspired me to experiment with some other alternatives. I should post one of them sometime; one thing they do well is to really distinguish the three tiers of results, which I took away from our discussions here.)

Sounds like we're on the same page.

I've always had trouble conceptualizing seize definite hold a weapon with seize by force. The harm is already established before the roll takes place, meaning both sides are already inflicting harm with their knives. If they take definite hold of the gun and fire it, that's bumping them +1harm too. I tend to think that the take definite hold happens /after/ harm is exchanged anyway. Sure the guns there for what happens /next/, but the violence was already happening.

Now in the case where a PC is facing a NPC over a gun on the table... If they weren't armed, or if the PC was the only one unarmed, I'd say act under fire prior any exchange of harm clearly establishes the fictional harm. If you're going for the gun, then you're not stabbing them in the face. If the other guy intends to stab you in the face, then his attention on the gun is inherently a side-effect of that (even if it's a fictional priority).

In the case where they are both armed, why get a gun? Inflict more harm with the knife and bury it into your opponents head. If you missed, then he got and fired the gun. If not, then he just stabbed you deep. But if you're rolling seize by force, this is a battle, so. In either case, his buddy just walked into the bar and his eyes widen in shock and fury at the scene. Also the bar tender is pulling up a pretty big shotgun, he looks furious what with all the blood staining his shit.

...

The distinction between 2e and choose 1 but expect the worst is NOT within what happens when you miss. But instead, what happens when you hit. As the buddy walking into the bar, or the bar tenders reaction should occur either way in response to the battle. The harm the player suffered here is already determined for the immediate exchange. Even if the player got the gun and shot the dude in the head, and suddenly had enemies popping up in the room blasting rounds at him... well. :) Battle.

You're right about the action movie part. Battle is an action movie.

If you don't think it's actually battle, solve this with you other tools. For example, two guys going for a gun. Act Under Fire, 10+ You get it and hold it at their head, but you see the bar tender's growl. Choose, go aggro over something, shoot them dead, or something else! 7-9, you got the gun, but you flipped the table and struggled over it first, in the fight you'll take a few knife wounds to get it, do you? On a miss, well shit, he's got the gun. Let the fiction snowball.

I mean, I guess you could seize the gun by force, but if I were MCing that situation, I'd say you exchanged harm (i.e. stabbed/cut each other) and now you have the gun, but you've not yet used it. Want to use it now? Great, that sounds like snowballing into single combat to me.

And that's something that's worth pointing out: Under AW1, any time you were engaged in mutual violence, you were rolling to seize. But AW2 has a whole different move for "I just wanna fuck those guys up," and what's interesting about that is that its miss clause is pretty much exactly a flipped move.

Interesting thoughts! I agree in full, except for the bit I quote below.

I also find it interesting that a miss on a "single combat" roll seems so much more punishing than a miss on a "seize by force". Not sure whether that makes sense in any way, but maybe it does.

This is the part I disagree with, at least as far as my gaming interests are concerned:

The distinction between 2e and choose 1 but expect the worst is NOT within what happens when you miss. But instead, what happens when you hit. As the buddy walking into the bar, or the bar tenders reaction should occur either way in response to the battle. [...] Even if the player got the gun and shot the dude in the head, and suddenly had enemies popping up in the room blasting rounds at him... well. :) Battle.

I don't really see the use of either constraining a useful move to more complex/involved situations, or constraining the fiction so as to create those situations just because the move seemed applicable. Neither of those would jive well with the way I play the game, instead just complicating the process of play unnecessarily.

Because that's basically what you're suggesting, right? "If you rolled 'seize by force', then go ahead and throw in more action until it's a big mess."

That's not a bad thing to do sometimes, but I wouldn't want it to be the default option, or, worse, a required option.

I'm just telling you that seize by force isn't a basic move anymore for a reason. It is designed for battles, which have their own set of fictional expectations. If you aren't in a battle, then seize by force is probably not the most appropriate move choice anymore. Maybe that means you need to think about the situations differently then you're in the habit of doing, maybe you don't.

That makes sense.

However, in that case, aren't we starting to try to "split the atom"?

After all, there is no strict definition of "battle" we can all agree on.

When you play, do you "shift mindsets", saying, "Ok, now this is a *battle*. I'm going to MC the game differently until it's played out"?

That's an acceptable way to play, but discards some of the organic nature of AW.

The way we play it, though, there are many, many situations which might have some of the chaos of battle (e.g. complex social scenes, action sequences, when disaster strikes, etc) but certainly aren't "battles". Conversely, we'll have situations which include combat and fighting but aren't chaotic in the same way a "battle" would be.

And if we don't use "seize by force" for two opposing characters or forces fighting over a desired objective... then what is the move *for*?

In groups I've played with, the most functional use of SBF I've seen was a pretty strict, "Someone wants something and they have to fight a determined foe for it." Unless they caught them off-guard, unprepared, or unwilling, in which case it was go aggro.

That's a pretty big gap to fill with other moves; particularly when this one works so well.