Here’s something I found in the drafts folder that I should’ve posted eons ago. Over on Story Games, I once clarified a bit of foggy thinking that I’d wandered into last year, surrounding the roleplaying game, Apocalypse World (about which I have taken much shit):
I felt, for a little while, like [Apocalypse World author] Vincent [Baker] was getting credit for something that lots of GMs do and have done, as if that was somehow taking something away and giving it to him. That was crazy talk, on my part. As if there’s a limited amount of expertise to go around.
That’s an example not of bitterness but of baffled jealousy attached to admiration. Jealousy, unchecked, is ugly. But a certain amount of jealousy is sometimes part of the creative existence—the prickly sprue that juts off the plastic toy. Jealousy, properly shunted into some harmless channel, can inspire right action.
I still get emails asking me what I think about Apocalypse World now. The short version? I’m guess I’m surprised (hence the aforementioned bafflement) that so many people were so enthusiastic to have restrictions put on the role of the GM, but if that makes the process of GMing easier to grab with both hands, or more fun to talk about, then obviously who the hell am I to look sideways at it? That Vincent Baker knew how people would respond to that and I did not is just another thing that makes him Vincent Baker and me some other dude. So it goes. Apocalypse World is helping a lot of GMs understand how they do what they do, and I applaud the hell out of that.
Plus, it’s brought the world wonderful AW hacks like Dungeon World and The Regiment, which I am really excited about. So cheers to that.
Funny. From when I was first introduced to it, I’ve seen productive restrictions on the GM as one of the great design-threads of the ‘indie’ movement.
Creative restraints are a big part of game design, for sure. Just because it’s commonplace or even definitive of the milieu doesn’t mean I won’t be wrong about it sometimes. 🙂
My surprise isn’t so much that an indie RPG puts restrictions on the GM but the enthusiasm with which those restrictions were met. I’d been thinking that more tools for GMs and players — and more education of how to use those tools — was the way to go. AW and I agree on the education part of it, but I did not predict the affection people would have for demarcating strict rules for GMing. So it goes.
It makes sense. Fewer tools means a more manageable job. (I’m avoiding a metaphor here involving an Allen wrench because I fear that’ll be seen as pejorative.) That AW is built so GMs can check their choices against the instructions that came with the kit is sound and solid design — it helps GMs determine if they’re doing it “right,” I guess.
And another thing: Apocalypse World‘s player-facing moves are very much in the vein of actions from the SAGA System games, back when, and the success reports from the new World of Darkness games (showing what happens at various levels of failure or success). The difference is that AW’s player moves are both wonderfully specific and terrifically embracing of complications over failure. As has been said elsewhere, they say “yes, but” in a great way, give concrete results, and feed back into the gameplay and the fiction in wonderful ways. This is an area that’s not just great design but, often, great game writing.
So cheers to that, too.