Fiction First | Mechanics First: Fluff and Crunch Make Friends at the End of the World

Welcome, you've stumbled into a deeply idiosyncratic diatribe about Crunch Vs. Fluff in TTRPGs and how the dichotomy doesn't have to be real. Things will be rambling and it may not make sense at times. Enjoy?

For the last sixish months I’ve been running Apocalypse World Second Edition, a TTRPG by Meguey and Vincent D. Baker. It should be noted that I am not exceptionally attracted to apocalypse fiction nor are my players. Despite this, everyone is engaged with the genre and are carving out their own emergent stories. The Juice has been very much worth the Squeeze, and what the Baker’s have built in Apocalypse World is a very elegant juicer.

So, what is Apocalypse World? Some kind of OSR game set at some end time? Well it is solidly post-apocalyptic in genre. The game absolutely cannot be used to run in another genre, and that is by design. Beyond that, a lot of people with a passing familiarity with the game would call it a “Story” or “Fiction First '' game. I find this description automatically attracts people who come to TTRPGs for the roleplay and or to be shown a fictional world like it's some kind of rollercoaster. In other words, people who really love the Fluff. People who are very mechanically focused on the other hand can be instantly turned off by the “storygame” descriptor. Crunch focused types might flinch at the implication of roleplay being more than filler between cleverly solving encounters. Fortunately, this description as “Fiction First '' belies the DNA deep mechanical push and pull present in the game. An attempt to describe it fully would constitute copying and pasting massive sections of the rulebook then providing examples of how these things work. This would still ultimately fail to capture the essence of actually experiencing it. Anyway, here's the short version.

To do something, you do it. Your characters perform fictional actions. Talk to people, go for a drive, scrounge through garbage, deal drugs, take drugs, start a fight, break into your girlfriend’s brother's hovel to steal his revolver he keeps talking about. You know, day to day humdrum bullshit. Throughout this process the GM (called MC in the rulebook and going forward in this post) is asking questions, answering questions, posing potential problems and describing the general sensory experience. The process is fundamentally a conversation about an imaginary world. Throughout this process the MC is looking for places where players trigger the game's central mechanic “Moves”. When a move is triggered the player rolls 2d6+relevant stat. A result of 6 or less is an abject failure, a 7-9 is a mixed success, and 10+ is a full success. Each “Move” gives the MC instructions as to how to proceed fictionally given each result. None of these results are ever some variant of “you miss, nothing happens”. In fact the worst thing a player can hear when rolling a 6 or less is “you unequivocally succeed”, as the next words out of the MC’s mouth are bound to be some out frying pan and into the fire bullshit. 

So you're definitely sitting there going “so yeah a roleplaying game. Do stuff, roll dice, check outcomes and loop back around”. This is true, but the magic is what triggers roll. There is no “going into combat” or initiative. The MC never rolls dice. Verbally redirecting a drug addled speed freak functions essentially the same as tackling that same drug addled speed freak. The difference is potential outcomes of those actions. Either way the mechanics never lead to every player's least favorite “You failed your roll, nothing happens” moment. What you do, success or failure either further ratchets narrative tension or releases it like a bomb going off. 

Rather than lecture you on the basic loop of TTRPGs in abstract, here's a simplified and semi-fictionalized (in the interest of clarity and brevity) example from one of the first sessions we played. My friend is playing Cass, a drug addicted psychic weirdo (called a Brainer in game terms) who “comes to” at the start of the session from some substance abuse induced amnestic fugue.

It is the dead of night and they are in the stairwell of a broken highrise, rain pours down the cement staircase they are standing on like a river, moss and fungal overgrowth are everywhere. I tell them they hear running footsteps. I ask…

“Are they running toward or away from you?” 

They tell me “toward”.

“Ok. It feels like you're being chased?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Well the sound is getting closer, what do you do?”

“I run down the stairs and leave the building”

“Those steps are slick with moss and the rain is running down them like a river; you're going to need to Act Under Fire” 

Act Under Fire is a move triggered when a player needs to do something under duress. They roll + their Cool Stat the result is a 7. A mixed success, the move tells me (the MC) they “flinch, hesitate or stall and that I can offer them a worse outcome or hard bargain. This is all public knowledge. The player’s are always aware of the abstract consequences of their actions. 

I tell them “You run down the slick stairs, hit a patch of moss and fall on your ass. You catch a shadow descending in the light of bioluminescent fungi and know your pursuer is gaining ground. You see an open doorway to your left with door after door of what must be moldering apartments. The hallway terminates so far away there is only darkness at the end. You hear the crack of thunder, what do you do?”

“Fuck these stairs, I run down the hallway. Do I see anything? A place to hide? I look around. Should I Read a Situation? ”

The player recognizes and purposely fictionally positioned themselves to trigger this move. The game, ultimately being a conversation, allows and encourages anyone at the table to break in if they think a move has been triggered. 

I say “Yeah definitely. Roll to Read a Situation” 

Read a Sitch is a move triggered when a player wants to take stock of a charged situation. Depending on the roll they can ask between 1-3 questions from a list and get +1 to future rolls which have to do with the answers. They roll + their Sharp stat, it’s a 9, another mixed success they get to ask a single question from a list.

“What’s my best escape route?”

“These apartments don't feel like an option, their doors swollen into their frames from moisture, they seem to pulsate, maybe it's the drugs coursing through your system? Maybe not though.. As you move forward you see that the hallway doesn't terminate though, it hangs a left. You think maybe you can find a window with a fire escape”

“I want to run and hide around that corner, what do I have to roll?”

“You don’t have to roll, you can competently run down a hallway and duck behind the wall, but that's not an escape. What do you do?”

“I wait to see whoever is chasing me and I shoot him with my Tranq Gun”.

“Oh excellent, you see a figure wrapped head to toe in patchwork run through the dim bioluminescence which lights this place. You need to Go Aggro on Somebody, what do you want from this person?”

“I want him to pass out when I shoot him.”

Go Aggro on Somebody is a Move used when you use the threat of violence to get what you want, or alternatively just to start some shit. The player rolls + their Hard stat and rolls a six, a failure. The rules state to the player only Be Prepared For The Worst. 

They say “Shit, I guess I miss.”

“Oh no you hit him good, he goes down hard.”

“What? Oh no.”

“Yeah he falls to the ground in a heap. Then without hesitation Two figures dressed exactly the same clamber over the limp figure and give chase. Your tranq gun is empty, and you know you don't have time to reload once, let alone twice before they're on you. What do you do?”

As I said earlier. Out of the frying pan and into the fire bullshit. 

And so it goes on like this until the tension is wrung out of the scenario. Moves just snowballing into one another. For the curious this exchange terminates with one of the pursuers atop the player character. The two choke one another on the wet floor. A mixed success on some roll or another leads to the attacker’s face being revealed to be the same as the Player Character’s. The POV flashes wildly back and forth with each strangling the other until one dies and the player is left in the POV of the victor, unsure of which person they are anymore. 

The idea that systematizing fiction in such a way nearly forces competent storytelling onto the MC and players was astounding to me until I first used it in practice.  I learned rather quickly that as long as the rules are actually being used, the system itself functions to serve story beats at a pace that can range from slow and serious prestige television to melodramatic soap opera. Where your game falls on that spectrum is all set rather naturally by the disposition of the players, and settles over time to match tone that becomes communally established through multiple play sessions together. 

The Moves of course don’t exist in a vacuum. There are a number of tools in the rulebook to aid the MC in using player success and failure as a means to push threats and world build on the fly. Trying to explain this in its entirety is an impossible task in this format. Instead, I urge anyone interested in running any kind of TTRPG to buy and read Apocalypse World 2ed, and try to work in some of the MC principles into their current game. Alternatively feel free to contact me on Instagram @the_vvizard (or on discord if you know how to find me on there). I’m always down to talk about game design and RPG’s in general.