(whatever)-World: Finally read it, here's my veredict

[fectin]

A side not on Oberoni - I assert that a game having a sufficiently robust core system that you easily can patch it is actually still a good game.
People used to love AMD because it was easy to overclock; they weren't crazy just because it didn't come overclocked out of the box. Likewise, d20 is robust enough that it will probably tolerate all sorts of tweaks and fixes, unlike, say, a sidereal Exalted game.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

A side not on Oberoni - I assert that a game having a sufficiently robust core system that you easily can patch it is actually still a good game.
People used to love AMD because it was easy to overclock; they weren't crazy just because it didn't come overclocked out of the box. Likewise, d20 is robust enough that it will probably tolerate all sorts of tweaks and fixes, unlike, say, a sidereal Exalted game.

With Apocalypse World, a playbook that can control what happens on a 7-9 result, or possibly even a 6-, would be the only playbook worth using. So yeah, user-created playbooks are a case of the latter. "Ugly choices" are something Vincent LOVES. It's not an accident that his example of a "partial success" is murdering a child. He's very, very obsessed with depicting a descent into barbarism that flies directly into the face of the player's intentions.

This is the same man who ran another game of his, Poison'D, which resulted in one of his players orally sodimizing an underage cabin boy. Instead of immediately banning the player from all his games, Vincent proudly posted the actual play of this session for everyone to enjoy, an example of the game "generating the fiction" he intended it to.

[Cyberzombie]

This is the same man who ran another game of his, Poison'D, which resulted in one of his players orally sodimizing a cabin boy. Instead of immediately banning the player from all his games, Vincent proudly posted the actual play of this session for everyone to enjoy, an example of the game "generating the fiction" he intended it to.

Damn... do you have a link to that? That's some twisted shit if he's actively posting that stuff publicly. Wow. I can't imagine what would possess him to think that was a good idea. Ever.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

This is the same man who ran another game of his, Poison'D, which resulted in one of his players orally sodimizing a cabin boy. Instead of immediately banning the player from all his games, Vincent proudly posted the actual play of this session for everyone to enjoy, an example of the game "generating the fiction" he intended it to.

Damn... do you have a link to that? That's some twisted shit if he's actively posting that stuff publicly. Wow. I can't imagine what would possess him to think that was a good idea. Ever.

I was mistaken, Vincent didn't run it, but he does link, without shame, to where the event was described http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?350 ... ost7710536

Here he is, under the name "lumpley", providing the link http://story-games.com/forums/discussio ... ent_223735

[Cyberzombie]

I was mistaken, Vincent didn't run it, but he does link, without shame, to where the event was described http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?350 ... ost7710536

Here he is, under the name "lumpley", providing the link http://story-games.com/forums/discussio ... ent_223735

Wow that is some crazy shit. I mean we all have heard horror stories about games like that, but to actively promote that sort of thing... damn. And apparently he sodomized the boy to "make himself a tougher pirate." So the game system is rewarding him for doing that.

Hearing shit like that makes you forget about all the flaws with the XP advancement system. Hell, I'd rather go back to AD&D's separate XP tables for each class.

[Chamomile]

You announced you have evidence the DM is supposed to have the goddamn Water Temple Guards in ambush ahead of time, as opposed to deciding there are there when the players roll a successful perception check, and produced a quote telling DMs that when describing the result of a perception check, they might decide it makes sense for the Water Temple Guards to have set up an ambush.

No.

MCs make more than one move. In fact, they typically make a move about once every five minutes (at least). And if you look at the entire quote and not just the bit that you cut out of context, AW MCs are being asked to consider first if the bad guys have done anything offscreen that now becomes evident, because if they have, the MC should obviously reveal it. But if they haven't, the next question asked is whether or not they're doing something offscreen that has not yet become evident, but which may become evident later. Like setting up ambushes. On the very first move the MC makes, the answer to the first question will always be "no" because the answer to that question is supplied by answers to the second.

This is not made explicitly clear in the text quoted, however the quoted text doesn't especially support your interpretation either. Taking only the paragraph quoted, it's ambiguous, but it's made more clear how the game works elsewhere in the book:

Generally, limit yourself to a move that’ll (a) set you up for a
future harder move, and (b) give the players’ characters some
opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its
conclusion.

However, when a player’s character hands you the perfect opportunity
on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you
like. It’s not the meaner the better, although mean is often good.
Best is: make it irrevocable.

When a player’s character makes a move and the player misses
the roll, that’s the cleanest and clearest example there is of an
opportunity on a plate. When you’ve been setting something up
and it comes together without interference, that counts as an
opportunity on a plate too.

The emphasis is mine.

People keep saying that the MC is supposed to make it up as he goes along and never plan ahead at all. That isn't how Apocalypse World rolls, and the book makes that clear over and over and over again. What the book does do its best to drill into the MC is that you should not plan out specific scenes in advance. There should not be particular set pieces you're driving the players towards. Because that's a railroad, and a very common pitfall of starting MCs, and it is seriously to the book's credit that it repeatedly instructs the MC not to do that kind of thing. But your NPCs should have plans, and those plans should advance, and if the players don't do anything about them those plans will come to fruition. The fronts chapter is basically entirely about this, and it is a 100% reasonable way to run a game.

Honestly, now, if you're going to argue against Apocalypse World, go pirate an actual copy of the book and read the whole thing cover to cover, because it has godawful organization and what the Hell the author is getting at is only really clear if you've read basically the entire thing (some stuff isn't necessary; you don't really need to know how individual splat's moves work to get the gist of the game itself, but that stuff isn't shuffled off to an appendix or anything, it's all mixed in with the game philosophy). AW is 70,000 words long and if your response was just that you didn't have time for that I would not argue with you, but it does mean that you are going to say lots of very stupid things on the subject because this book is not easily referenced at all.

[Username17]

Chamomile: you keep quoting things and pretending they say things they don't say. You've own-goaled yourself repeatedly with horse-mouth quotes that you yourself cherry picked. Now you claim that the reason that no one seems to agree with your interpretation of your chosen quotes is that we just haven't read deeply enough into the rambling and contradictory original work.

I submit that you have Stockholm syndrome. You've read too damn far into a shitty book full of shitty ideas, and you've been patching up so many cracks and holes with mind caulk that you've forgotten that the actual rules really are just a pile of offensive shit.

The smooth contours of your personal pile of mind caulk do not in any way resemble the jagged pile of rusty razor blades and used condoms that is the actual book. This is not our problem. It's yours.

-Username17

[silva]

Oh sure, so all these guys below that praise Apocalypse World actually have Stockholm syndrome too. Oooooookay.

The Alexandrian review

Critical Hits review

Gnome Stew AW review

Gnome Stew DW review

DnDorks review

Flames Rising review

Play Unplugged review

[schpeelah]

And if you look at the entire quote and not just the bit that you cut out of context

I stop you right there, you fucking liar. It was not I who cut anything out of context, because I used the quote from your post in its entirety. I don't need anything other than your posts when talking about how your own quotes contradict you. Try to stop hitting yourself.

[Kaelik]

Oh sure, so all these guys below that praise Apocalypse World actually have Stockholm syndrome too. Oooooookay.

No child. When someone says X is true of person Y, they do not mean it is true of all people ever. Cham is making the express argument that the rules don't mean what they say the mean because if you read the whole context of the entire book and combine several vague statements from unrelated sections of the rules as if they are relevant to the rule you are reading that the end result is something completely different than what is stated. That is an argument from mind caulk.

Now, Alexandrian could perfectly understand Apocalypse World and still like it, because he is demonstratively a shitty person who likes shitty rules and fucking players in the ass, so he doesn't necessarily have stockholm syndrome, because he might be the guy torturing people in his basement.

[fbmf]

Oh sure, so all these guys below that praise Apocalypse World actually have Stockholm syndrome too. Oooooookay.

The Alexandrian review

Critical Hits review

Gnome Stew AW review

Gnome Stew DW review

DnDorks review

Flames Rising review

Play Unplugged review

Are you seriously go with an "all of these famous people can't possibly be wrong" argument as if it meant anything?

Game On,
fbmf

[Chamomile]

Schpeelah: Yes, you technically did quote the whole thing. But you bolded significantly less than the whole thing and you ignored everything else.

Frank: You can't just declare yourself to be correct. You've got to provide actual evidence. I've yet to see any evidence that Apocalypse World is any of the things you say it is. You keep providing snippets of text that could mean something terrible, and then I post quotes from a completely different section of the book that make it clear that the terrible interpretation is not in line with the game's intent. And I concede that this means the book has terrible, terrible organization problems, because it does.

That said: At no point has anyone provided compelling evidence that the MC should actually turn a success into a failure. The argument that AW recommends quantum ambushes has always hinged on the assumption that in the example of play, the ambush did not exist until the move was made, and that assumption in turn has relied upon the assumption that Apocalpyse World MCs are not supposed to keep track of what's going on elsewhere in the gameworld. And that is false. It's not that AW recommends against keeping track of the game world outside the current scene in one section and then in another recommends you do. It's that AW spills a lot of ink trying to persuade the MC not to run a railroad, and then also regularly tells you to keep track of your what your NPCs are up to, and that is not a contradiction and both of them are good advice.

Also: Upon re-examining the detection example, the kid is actually not explicitly a lookout or even inside the enemy's camp at all, because even after the player in question shanks him, she's still not inside. There's no indication that the kid is affiliated with them at all beyond the implication that he might make some noise if he doesn't die immediately. EDIT: A parenthetical I had skimmed over strongly implies the kid actually is a sentry, but the rest of the paragraph is a separate point and still holds. It never explicitly says what the PC in question is trying to do, but the closest thing is this: "If they hear her, she’s fucked," a reference to the men in the camp she's sneaking into. Which rather implies that she's more concerned with concealing herself from the people who will be doing the fucking than from the twelve-year old. Which is what everyone who was arguing in good faith grokked the second they read the example.

EDIT: And I would like to reiterate my request that we make it a general policy to append "silva stay out" to all AW threads. I am getting very tired of seeing him copy/pasting arguments I've made in places where they don't apply, or copying them with key elements missing so they make no sense, and all the other idiocy he is constantly doing. Seriously, silva, if you actually want AW to gain any traction on this forum the very best thing you can do is shut up and never talk about it ever again. The main reason so many people have such a terrible reaction towards it is not because they have even read the book themselves, but because you are such a nuisance about it that they are predisposed to believe its opponents.

[Leress]

Oh sure, so all these guys below that praise Apocalypse World actually have Stockholm syndrome too. Oooooookay.

The Alexandrian review

Critical Hits review

Gnome Stew AW review

Gnome Stew DW review

DnDorks review

Flames Rising review

Play Unplugged review

Argumentum ad populum

[Cyberzombie]

Chamomile: you keep quoting things and pretending they say things they don't say.

At least he's quoting stuff, I haven't seen a single citation that supports your side in the bodyguards topic. I will say that due to bad writing on the AW author's part, Chamo's citations aren't as clear as they could be, but I've yet to see anything at all which supports that the unbeatable bodyguards spawned because of "bears" and not because they happened to have been there the entire time. All I'm really seeing is people assuming that the GM could have been a dick and spontaneously created the guards, therefore he must have, because everyone here hates Apocalypse World and popular opinion can't possibly be wrong.

I don't even like AW, but I think you're being unfair here and making unsubstantiated assumptions.

Where is the citation that shows spontaneous generation is happening? I've yet to see it. As far as I can tell it's just been about saying how the author tells you not to prepare, but as Chamo pointed out, the author just says not to have preplanned scenes, but to still have NPCs and keep in mind their motivations. And that's your basic standard anti-railroading speech. Since anyone with a preplanned scene they're trying to force PCs into is just being an author and not a GM. So that's actually decent advice.

[silva]

Argumentum ad populum

...which Frank used when stating that was me against everyone. Why didnt you see a problem when was he using it ?

At least he's quoting stuff, I haven't seen a single citation that supports your side in the bodyguards topic. I will say that due to bad writing on the AW author's part, Chamo's citations aren't as clear as they could be, but I've yet to see anything at all which supports that the unbeatable bodyguards spawned because of "bears" and not because they happened to have been there the entire time. All I'm really seeing is people assuming that the GM could have been a dick and spontaneously created the guards, therefore he must have, because everyone here hates Apocalypse World and popular opinion can't possibly be wrong.

This. Close the thread.

[DSMatticus]

It's also not the first time you haven't provided any quoted text to back up that assertion.

This is also completely false, because the last time I brought this up it came with a whole battery of relevant quotes, with the extremely explicit "think about what's going on offscreen" one coming in at the end: link.

This thread is moving fast, and I'm late to the show, but I can't let that slide.

Prep circumstances, pressures, developing NPC actions, not (and again, I’m not fucking around here) NOT future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.

This is you quoting a portion that explicitly and enthusiastically tells the MC not to prep scenes. If you prep scenes in Apocalypse World, you're not doing what the rules tell you to do. Anytime anything happens in any scene anywhere, it was introduced in the middle of that scene. Every detail of every scene exists in a quantum state that gets collapsed into a "yes" or "no" sometime during that scene. This is how the rules say you you should play the game

The book includes an example in which the MC (by any sane, impartial reading) collapsed the waveform of a quantum bear attack to "bears eat your face, what do you do?" in response to a successful move by one of the players. It is technically possible that the MC collapsed the waveform off camera sometime during that scene, and then waited until the players took an appropriate action to tell them. In the first case, a PC succeeds at a move and the MC arbitrarily and unilaterally turns the scene into a clusterfuck. In the second case, the MC arbitrarily and unilaterally turns the scene into a clusterfuck for no reason. There is no third case in which the scene begins as a clusterfuck and the PC's walk into it, because that is explicitly against the rules set out for MCing Apocalypse World.

You are focusing on the "developing NPC actions" part... and what, just not reading the rest, because it's uncomfortable for your argument? The developing NPC actions is almost certainly an attempt to say "move the plot along," but it very clearly does not give you permission to prep scenes, because the very next string of words is do not ever fucking prep scenes.

Think offscreen too. When it’s time for you to make a move, imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that now becomes evident? Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quiet notice?

I want you to read that very carefully. You are using this quote as evidence that the MC can prepare things in advance, but the actual quote tells you to wait until it's time to make a move then decide retroactively what your NPC's have already done. It tells you to decide on the spot when making a move whether or not an ambush was prepared sometime in the past that gets sprung now - quantum bear attack.

Apocalypse World is almost as improv as it is possible to be. It is very literally a bunch of people sitting around a table making shit up as they go. It is not an improv game you should ever want to play, because the distribution of authority over the improvised story is completely one-sided, with the PC's having a limited set of moves with arbitrary, MC-decided consequences (including the ability to declare success failure) and on top of that the ability of the MC to do any arbitrary thing he wants. Tools which he is encouraged to use in actual book examples. It's a bad improv game.

At least he's quoting stuff, I haven't seen a single citation that supports your side in the bodyguards topic.

How about you just go read any of the threads we've had on Apocalypse World (at least one of which was already linked here) and then come back? Or how about instead of jumping into the middle of an ongoing conversation spread out over multiple threads with several dozen pages between them and accusing someone of not providing evidence because he refuses to provide evidence that has already been provided multiple times to multiple people in multiple threads, you just admit you don't want to have to read through all of the Apocalypse World threads yourself and politely ask someone to drop you some links?

It is not acceptable to jump into the middle of an argument and antagonize someone until they repeat everything you've missed. That makes you a dick. Stop being a dick. There's nothing wrong with joining an argument in progress. There's nothing wrong with asking people to help you catch up. But pretending that because you aren't caught up you get to accuse other people of failing their evidentiary burdens is just fucking stupid. (Edit: And pretending that it's the burden of other people to catch you up is also really fucking stupid.)

[ACOS]

Also, he apparently enjoys the idea of playing PedoWorld. Seriously - WTF?! I mean, I think I see what they were going for with that playbook; but it's so wrong and deeply disturbing, I don't even know how to begin.

I've spent way too much time now thinking about that and I'm in some combination of pretty sure and want-to-believe that it's "If two characters are having sex, they're obviously both adults" which got further modified to avoid paladin-style "lose all your abilities" while also trying to avoid weird "make a kid and immediately fuck someone for levelup!" incentives.

I'm pretty sure it came out terrible. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be there at all. But I hope that's basically where it came from.

The intent (I hope) was so that the player could try to live out the story of "lost innocence" and "forced to grow up"; because that's an actual thing in post-apocalypse stories.
What that particular playbook is, however, is something that NAMBLA would be proud of.

@silva
Nobody cares about some internet guys who happen to have their own blog; because, while they might have some interesting things to say from time to time, they all give the 2-thumbs-up to all kinds of stupid stuff. I mean, the guy at the Alexandrian has a 6-part fap to GammaWorld, for Christ's sake. And everyone on that list faps to Ron Edwards - that should tell you something.
That's not to say that AW is completely without merit; but a complete, coherent, playable game it is not. If you notice, the only consistent praise that AW gets is its MC advise - and I will give it that. The other praise that it seems to get a lot is simply from a stylistic standpoint - "wow, look at how edgy it is". It's the same appeal that WoD has been trying to beat to death for the last 20 years - I'm unimpressed.


@Chamomile
Yes, the sneak+murder example is flawed; but do you really understand why? It isn't just a matter of "there could be better examples". It's completely inconsistent with the fiction it's supposed to be describing. Further, because of the particular scenario, it is equating infanticide with losing your backpack or turning an ankle. If that doesn't cause you the biggest "WTF" moment ever, then I don't know what else to tell you.
When rolling an 11 turns you in to Marybeth Tinning, then something is seriously wrong.

I'm trying to imagine WTF was in the author's mind when he wrote that; and all I can come up with is that scene in MASH where the mother on the bus suffocated her baby to avoid enemy detection.
But that's not even an analogous situation; so I guess that's out, too.


@Cyberzombie
Actual text has been quoted several times. Are you proposing a standard by which everyone who comments on the subject must also paste the same quotes over-and-over every time? How many times does something need to be quoted before we can stop quoting it?
Also, these aren't simply blind assumptions; these are basic logical conclusions based on the book. And the book is 200 pages of "look how cool and edgy I am". Yes, his MC advice is pretty decent. Yes, how he has written his procedures is fairly tight. End of list.

Either the ambush is pre-seeded, or it's spontaneous - it can't be both, and there is not much room for middle ground. "Keeping in mind NPC motivations" is a far cry from readying an ambush. And prepping an ambush is prepping plot.
Okay, so MC preps his books. Since we're not prepping plot, MC books really are a list of random quantum lolcocks that get randomly and arbitrarily thrown around. Because reasons.

[...You Lost Me]

Argumentum ad populum

...which Frank used when stating that was me against everyone. Why didnt you see a problem when was he using it ?

Eek, you don't know what that means, do you?

[silva]

Either the ambush is pre-seeded, or it's spontaneous - it can't be both, and there is not much room for middle ground. "Keeping in mind NPC motivations" is a far cry from readying an ambush. And prepping an ambush is prepping plot.

It depends. If you read the book, you know the GM may have prepped the enemy territory Front in advance including custom moves where ambushes occur if intruders enter the territory. Or the GM may have created the ambush on the spot as a logical event for the situation.

And about the author fixation for gore, I agree its innapropriated. I wouldnt like to have that in our tables. YMMV and all that.

[Kaelik]

Argumentum ad populum

...which Frank used when stating that was me against everyone. Why didnt you see a problem when was he using it ?

Eek, you don't know what that means, do you?

He is literally incapable of distinguishing someone making two points in the same post. So anything of the variety of X and you are wrong, is automatically merged into a fallacy in his head.

And anything that makes two distinct points about how something is stupid confuses him too, because he can't tell them apart, so he blends them into one complaint that doesn't make sense because it incorporates elements from two different complaints.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

"Don't prep scenes" and "act on a golden opportunity" are somewhat conflicting procedures. People will imagine cool scenes in their heads. It's human nature. In a different game, you might sublimate the urge by taking your "cool scene" and deconstructing into environments, (surmountable) NPC stat blocks, and an index of the motivations and behaviors that led to such a scene occurring, but player agency determines what's done with the building blocks. But, if a GM thinks, "wouldn't it be AWESOME if a bear attack took this smart-ass skill monkey down a peg," he's probably going to get the chance if the wandering monster check is based into the skill check. If he thinks a bodyguard being invincible will make other envisioned events difficult to prevent, well, blank stat blocks will help make it happen. It doesn't matter if the GM advice says "don't do it," GMs are still human beings who read stories and watch movies.

[silva]

Thats a thing you must train while running Apocalypse World, Sakuya. If you use your logic, there is no point in playing the game, because the GM will be fighting against the player moves to impose his own events/scenes/plots and the game wont run as intended.

[Cyberzombie]

How about you just go read any of the threads we've had on Apocalypse World (at least one of which was already linked here) and then come back? Or how about instead of jumping into the middle of an ongoing conversation spread out over multiple threads with several dozen pages between them and accusing someone of not providing evidence because he refuses to provide evidence that has already been provided multiple times to multiple people in multiple threads, you just admit you don't want to have to read through all of the Apocalypse World threads yourself and politely ask someone to drop you some links?

Yeah, I don't want to read through every prior thread about Apocalypse World. Frankly, I don't care enough to read through god knows how many posts of *World hate. I realize the epic crusade against Apocalypse World has spanned multiple threads. I have asked for citations before on this thread, and nobody has posted them, so I assumed that the other side frankly doesn't have any. Chamomile and Silva are the only people posting links and citations. The only citations I saw for the opposition were the ones Frank posted which didn't prove the fact that the enemies were generated spontaneously.

As for doing things politely, when Frank can go a few threads without calling me an idiot or similar insults, I'll consider being polite. I'm more than happy to be civil to anyone who is willing to be civil to me. Respect me, and I'll respect you, it's really that simple.

[Ice9]

You know what? I played Apocalypse World, just the other day, and it was a lot of fun. And I've played it a few times before, and it's been fun. There was no cabin boy rape or quantum bears either.

Specific traits that I enjoyed about it:
* Efficient use of rules. That is, it had a surprising number of widgets and combinations for how rules light it was.
* Combat actually runs at a speed that doesn't cause players to fall asleep or die of boredom. This may be my own preferences changing - I can no longer really stomach HERO or Shadowrun combat, and even D&D can push over the threshold of suck sometimes.
* The rules usually product shit actually happening, not "you fail/they fail/no change" results.
* Gives the illusion of more apocalyptic flavor and depth than MC actually prepared. Given how some systems do the opposite, I'll call this a significant plus.

Now maybe AW is just trying to take credit for existing stuff, and there are other better games that have all these things. If so - tell me what those games are, I want to see them.

Otherwise - who gives a shit that a hypothetical game could be better in every way? Or that AW can be shit if things go wrong? Until a better game actually comes along, I'll be using AW for the things it does well.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, I don't want to read through every prior thread about Apocalypse World.

No shit. But here's a revolutionary idea: maybe if you have no idea whether or not someone is full of shit because you haven't actually read 99% of the conversation, you should not jump into it and accuse people of being full of shit. It's fucking stupid to assume that somewhere in those dozens of pages the evidence you're asking for doesn't exist because you're too lazy to look for it. And it's annoying as fuck to just go ahead and do that and say "well, you refused to do all that hard work for me, so I just assumed."

I realize the epic crusade against Apocalypse World has spanned multiple threads.

Funny story: we have a bajillion different Apocalypse World threads because when silva first started posting here he did nothing but wander into threads and start talking about Apocalypse World. It was like having a Jehova's fucking Witness, here to hand out pamphlets about the holy book known as 'Apocalypse World.' Silva went to great lengths to make every conversation he could about Apocalypse World, and the end result is we had a bunch of conversations about Apocalypse World. And you are calling that an epic crusade against it?

This is why "make shit up and say it" is not an acceptable solution to the problem of "having no fucking idea what happened."