You meant Angel instead of Battlebabe up top I think. I'll admit that not everyone can fuck their way to better marksmanship, only 3 of the classes.
I did indeed. Thanks for the correction!
Thanks yeah, concrete examples are usually better than anything else.
One of the things I find specifically interesting about
Apocalypse World is that it provides a very specific
game structure for the GM in a way that most RPGs haven't for the past 30 years.
I've seen a couple people GM it: The first guy just ran it like any other RPG and it was OK; looked like any other session ran by that guy. The other guy actually did what the rulebook told him to do and it was amazing.
Apocalypse World gives the GM three things: Agendas, Principles, and Moves.
The agendas basically say, "Follow the principles, obey the rules, and be honest to yourself and to your prep." The principles are a good collection of generic and/or specific GM advice. It's good shit, but nothing special.
But then there are the moves. And what
Apocalypse World says is: These are the thing you can do as a GM. You can't do anything else. "Whenever there's a pause in the conversation and everyone looks to you to say something, choose one of these things and say it."
My first reaction as a GM was to say, "What the fuck? I AM THE GOD OF THIS TABLE AND ALL SHALL KNEEL BEFORE ME!" Or something like that. But what I'm telling you is that if you lay that attitude aside and just do what the game tells you, the combination of moves and the threats that you've prepped will create a unique game. It's not the One True Way of gamemastering, but it might be the One True Way of playing
Apocalypse World.
For example: The driver says, "Fuck, I really need to patch up my axle before it snaps completely. Can I find any tools in this hell hole?" My common instincts as a GM would probably lead me to say something like, "Sure. Poking around the garage in his hardhold yields a rusty toolkit."
But hang on a sec: Check your move list. Does it say anything about "give the PCs what they want". Nope. I'm going to have to
make them buy ("you ask around and they point you at Bobby 'n Steve; they run the hardhold's garage and might be willing to let you borrow their tools, but they're going to want something in return; Bobby spots your dead wife's locket hanging around your neck, 'That's purty.''"). Or may I'll
put someone in a spot ("you scrounge up some tools, but when you come back you find a bunch of sheet metal rat-kids clambering all over your ride; they're scraping the paint job up something fierce").
And, just like that, the game's structure has forced me into reinforcing the bleak, post-apocalyptic despair of the implied setting.
The analogy I draw is the guy who wants to run a "hexcrawl", but doesn't want to deal with daily movement rates; doesn't want to have the PCs explore; and doesn't want to roll for random encounters. And then he wonders why the hexcrawl doesn't work for him.