Lessons From A Return to Apocalypse World

Apocalypse World cracked my brain open when I first read it many years ago. The text seemed to not only understand what I wanted out of tabletop RPGs, but provide actionable advice to produce it. Now, in preparation for an upcoming game, I’m reading Apocalypse World again and finding it still has clarity to offer me. Perhaps a mere crack in my brain was not enough to truly absorb everything this game expresses; with over a decade of running games under my belt, I feel better equipped to share what I still stand to learn from the original Power of the Apocalypse.

The MC Actually Gets to Be A Player

Apocalypse World’s game master section, “The Master of Ceremonies,” begins thus:

“There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these as rules. The whole rest of the game is built on this.”

It is so refreshing to see a game actually treat the Game Master as a player: a participant in the game who is bound by rules, and is afforded the agency to take specific actions. In a world of “rule zero,” “the rule of cool,” and “the GM is god,” giving the facilitator rules instead of guidelines is like water in the desert. This game is not a toy—it is a machine. If you operate it correctly, it will produce a type of play that would be impossible without it. 

The scope of the MC’s agency is still tremendous, but not unlimited. They are bound by the agenda and a set of principles, and limited to a set of moves which are versatile but not omnipotent. These are not mere suggestions; they are concrete rules. The entire game flows forth from the MC’s adherence to their structure. This means that the MC of Apocalypse World actually gets to play a game.

The MC isn’t given infinite power and told to go wild. They aren’t told they can change whatever they want for any reason without consulting the rest of the players. They’re actually given an interface of purposeful tools and told “this is what you get to play with.” The same way players get to make choices and moves with their characters, the MC does too. And although they are asymmetric the choices on each side mesh precisely with the choices on the other. I believe this is known in some circles as “good game design.” As the book itself says, “play the game with the players, not against them.” 

And even if you do enjoy changing the rules to the game, not only does every rule include an explanation for why it exists, there is an entire chapter dedicated to explaining how to change rules in a way that keeps the game from breaking down. Apocalypse World is a machine, and that means if you know what you’re doing, you can actually get under the hood far more effectively.

A Magnificently Subtle Approach to Incentive

I didn’t understand highlighting stats when I first read this game. For those unfamiliar, highlighting stats is a process by which the MC and another player at the table each choose one of your five stats to “highlight.” Whenever you roll with those stats, you’ll receive an experience point, or XP, five of which allow your character to advance and improve. It seemed like such an odd way to earn experience—until I understood its greater context.

There are a few other ways to earn XP in Apocalypse World; when your history, or “Hx”, which represents how well you know another given player character, would increase beyond a certain threshold, you instead reset it and gain experience. Additionally, when a PC successfully manipulates another PC, they can offer them an experience point if they do what they’re asking.

Hx changes in play at the end of each session, where players each choose another PC they think knows their character better now. It also changes when another PC does harm to yours—you know people better after they hurt you; and when you heal another PC—you know people better when they are vulnerable and in your care.

XP in Apocalypse World comes from your relationship to society, such as it is in the post-apocalypse. Highlighting stats puts external pressure on characters to act a certain way, just like societal pressure. A character with their Hard and Weird stats highlighted might feel drawn to acting Hard and Weird because that’s what society expects them to be. The XP incentive exists to suggest to the player that this character exists in a context, and get them to make choices for their character which may not be rational or “optimal” in a game context, but are in line with what this character understands the world to expect of them. After all, people are not perfectly rational actors, and they do sometimes do things emerging from external pressures on them rather than perfectly logical decision making processes.

Some players dislike having their character thus incentivized, but the game doesn’t force you to roll highlighted stats; it merely exerts pressure on the player in a way that approximates the pressure the character feels to conform to the way the world sees them. If a given player wanted to play a character who rejected that, they could! They just won’t advance as fast. Society does often fail to reward those who don’t match its expectations, after all.

In the same way, offering an experience point for acceding to manipulation represents the fact that the character has desires that we as players do not share. Real life human beings often act in ways that might not be in their best interests. We can be manipulated. We aren’t pawns puppeteered by disconnected observers who perceive our circumstances objectively; we are agents of a lived experience. So the XP serves again as a surrogate for the player of the pressure the character feels; the desire they have to accept the version of reality someone else is offering them. Of course, you could play a character who never succumbs to such tactics, but at the very least, you would be aware that there does exist a reason why you might. Perhaps it might cause such a player to consider what hope or promise their character sees in the manipulation even as they reject it; to understand what they wish were true.

And of course, Hx represents the human drive for community, for trust, for belonging, the desire to know and be known by other people. Like societal pressure and manipulation, receiving XP for knowing and involving yourself in the lives of the people around you allows the player and character to, although for different reasons, mutually feel the desire for closeness even if it might be rationally undesirable.

There are other ways to gain XP scattered throughout the book as well, but I haven’t found one that strays from this paradigm. In fact, I had this epiphany after reading an example from the book of a consequence of a player character opening their brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom and becoming connected to another character. The MC created a new move that would give that PC XP every time he genuinely put that character’s well-being above his own. I thought it was ingenious to represent an external psychic pressure to care deeply about someone in this way—and then I realized that’s what XP was doing everywhere. 

Everyone Who Complains About Sex Moves and the Authorial Voice is a Big Fucking Baby

This brings me to sex moves, which are actually very good, despite the innumerable criticisms I’ve read over the years that they are somehow immature, lewd, or pornographic. Honestly, most of these criticisms can be instantly dismissed, as the actual text of the sex moves and the rules for their application are incredibly tame and thoughtful. I think people are literally just scared of the word “sex,” as they are of the text of Apocalypse World occasionally using the word “fuck.”

Sex moves are special moves unique to each playbook that trigger when a player character has sex with another player character. Some, but not all, also trigger when the character has sex with an NPC. Sex moves do not require (nor forbid) players to narrate or play out any part of the characters’ sexual encounter, and they cannot happen without both players’ consent.

Sex moves, and their prominent display near the middle of the character sheet, also serve as a reminder to the player that their character experiences physical desire. Their sexuality is a part of them worth considering. Even in the apocalypse, people will desire physical intimacy, and this game, as established, is deeply concerned with relationships between people. It is cool to have a game mechanic to express that sex can and will change a dynamic between two people, and that different characters have different relationships to sex.

Much like all the sources of XP, sex moves affect the player in a way that simulates their effect on the character. Even if the player has no desire to have their character have sex, the ever-present sex move can remind them that their character might! And it might demonstrate the way that character regards their desire for physical intimacy: as a tool, as an obligation, as a service, as just another thing to do.

And if you really don’t like them, or you want to play an ace character, you can ignore them. You can cross them out. You can replace the word “sex” with “absolute vulnerability” or whatever. But in my opinion, you’re missing out.

Conclusion

This post ended up longer than I initially planned, because I also wanted to talk about the versatility of the basic moves and their varied levels of threat, the fact that this game can absolutely be played tactically, even though it’s often written off as a “storygame,” and how I feel the distance between PbtA and OSR is often a lot smaller than both camps think. But all that for another time, perhaps.

Apocalypse World is tightly designed to produce interesting systems of relationship and conflict between player characters and NPCs. It operates on its players as well as its characters in a way that models the pressures and operations of societies. It invites players to consider external forces beyond their own puppeteering hand on their precious characters, and gives the GM clear, concrete, and actionable tools to play those forces. 

It is a game that acknowledges and loves humanity explicitly for its messiness, and yet itself is a well-oiled machine that produces interesting messes. If you haven’t read it, you owe it to yourself.