Intentionally provocative post:

Intentionally provocative post:

Intentionally provocative post:

There are really only 3 GM moves

● Provoke a character to (re)act

● Increase tension

● Establish badness

All other GM moves are specific applications and/or combinations of those 3 moves.

Corollary: If you haven’t done at least one of these 3 things, then you haven’t made a GM move.

Prove me wrong.

51 thoughts on “Intentionally provocative post:”

  4. Brian Griffith Threatening someone with badness (or establishing a little badness and threatening more) is totally a legitimate way to provoke action.

    But so is offering an opportunity, or prompting them to choose between two paths, or presenting riches a price, etc.

  5. The point was that neither tension nor badness are fundamental particles in this case. They’re merely mechanics for producing action.

    If we’re going to reduce everything to fundamentals, at least. GMing is motivating characters to move. Everything else is in service of that, whether you’re getting them to move in a direction you desire, or in a direction you hadn’t anticipated. Badness may provide a risk of loss but as you’ve just said it’s only one piece of a toolbox. Tension provides urgency, and thus makes players think about why their characters aren’t acting. But they’re still in service to your first principle, and don’t matter if they lack a connection to it.

  7. I’m not clear on what you mean by badness. The capacity to threaten, like a bad villain? Bad things happening, like losing gear? Bad context, like entering a drought-ridden area? All of the above?

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past year. The list I’ve boiled it down to is

    ● Show a loss (take their health, abilities, equipment, choices, allies)

    ● Show a threat (a potential loss)

    ● Show an opportunity

    I might also include softer pseudo-moves that don’t move things forward immediately, but help to build, such as

    ● Show context (describe things, announce future badness)

    ● Ask for context (ask questions and use the answers)

    Your list is more abstracted which might be more useful for strategizing as a GM, but it also might be unclear how to provoke a character or to increase tension, or what the divisions between the three are. I might look at “provoke a character to react” and never think of offering an opportunity, since ‘provoke’ seems more adversarial.

  11. Fair enough. “Change the environment” may be close to falling outside this list, but you could argue it’s still categorized under “increase the tension” or one of the others. But if we are going to be reductionist, can I encapsulate all three of your moves into one: “Threaten the characters”?

  16. Will D Doesn’t it? I mean, if we get really technical none of these is the same as the whole list. It’s just a matter of applying categorical labels. While I think that Jeremy Strandberg is basically right, I don’t see it as a useful observation. If anything, the core list could be expanded. 🙂

  18. “threaten the characters” only covers opportunities with a cost, not opportunities without a cost.

    I think reducing to fundamentals is useful from a design point of view, which I’m pretty sure is where Jeremy is coming from .

    But “Moves” are ill defined. Sometimes they are defined like Bangs, as +Aaron Griffin mentions, and sometimes they are supposed to cover every single thing a GM can do when the players look to the GM.

    Take the DW flowchart. Made by Adam Koebel, the only actions the GM can take on there are GM Moves, choosing results from player moves, or describing what happens. No place for asking questions because that’s a principle, not a move, and if we reduced Moves to Bangs, then you’ve got to make that chart more complicated than it already is to incorporate these non-bang GM Moves.

    But if GM moves are expanded to include all of a GM’s options, then we don’t have a concise list for pushing the story forward and maintaining the genre ideals. Describing, providing context, and getting player/character input are all important things for a GM to do, but they don’t move things forward and too much of them can make things unexciting.

    The GM moves system doesn’t help you much with knowing when to do which move, it’s just a grab bag that’s already too long for new GMs.

    Also the term “Moves” is over-used in the game and causes confusion. They should have gone with something distinct.

  22. I truly don’t see why the GM moves have to be codified anyway. They basically are just regular narrative techniques. I love me some PbtA, but I dislike the whole, “But GM’s, is it a legitimate move?” aspect of it.

  23. A list of narrative techniques is useful for communicating how to GM. There has been an annoying amount of orthodoxy in the community, but that seems to be softening. If you have a better way to present regular narrative techniques, I’m all ears. eyeballs. I’m all eyeballs.

  25. Brian Griffith “The point was that neither tension nor badness are fundamental particles in this case. They’re merely mechanics for producing action.”

    Jonathan Beverley “Doesn’t establishing badness increase tension?”

    Nah, you can increase tension or establish badness that doesn’t (or can’t) get acted on, at least not immediately and directly.

    Example #1:

    A young girl just wandered off into the Great Wood by herself. The PCs are investigating. The druid talks to the spirits that dwell by the river, and they say that they saw the girl fishing a weird globule of quicksilver, clearly unnatural and wrong, and then cupped it lovingly and carried it off in a trance. (I’m establishing badness, and in this case very much also provoking action.) The Wizard says “have ever heard tell of this sort of unnatural quicksilver down south?” He Spouts Lore and rolls a miss. So I’m like “Oh, sure… you know all about this horrible quicksilver stuff. Why don’t you tell us about the terrible experience you had with it, and why it still haunts your dreams?” I’m not provoking a character to act, I’m asserting a bad thing about the character’s past.

    After the player answers, they’ll take the initiative and do something themselves (possibly informed by the wizard player’s answer, possibly not), or I’ll make a GM move (likely one that does provoke action). But either way, the badness is established.

    Now, the badness here might very well simultaneous increase tension, so…

    Example #2:

    Bilshi, the PCs’ faithful porter, has found himself in a spot. He’s hanging by his fingertips over a bottomless pit. The Fighter has been trying to fight free from a pack of, oh, let’s say goblins. There are just a mess of them, and the dice haven’t been kind. Previous moves have established badness, ratcheted up the tension, and prompted action, all three, with the Fighter getting dragged down under a goblin dog-pile while Bilshi slips, loses his grip, gets closer to falling.

    The Fighter tries one last heave-ho to get free, Defies Danger with STR and, oh crap, a miss. While the Fighter struggles and gets an arm free, maybe even gets a knee under him, Bilshi’s fingers just… slip. He’s gone. Fighter, what do you do?

    I didn’t increase the tension here, I just released it—by establishing badness. I didn’t even really provoke action; the Fighter is still in the same situation he was already trying to get out of.

    Examples #3+:

    “Okay, the laughing demon doesn’t come back and nothing else happens that night, but none of you get any more sleep. You’re all exhausted the following morning. Everyone mark Weakened. What do you do?” (Not provoking action, but definitely establishing badness and increasing tension.)

    “Attack it? Yeah, no. You can’t even bring yourself to approach that thing. Every muscle in your body is shaking and your spit is all sour and every part of your brain is just screaming RUN HIDE. What do you do?” (Establishing badness. They already tried to act. I’m telling them they can’t, at least not the way they want, hinting that it’ll be Defying Danger if they really want to do it.)

    “A 7-9? Huh. I think that, as you wrestle with him, you knock the candelabra off the table and it goes clattering into the corner. You don’t notice anything, but the camera shows the curtains starting to light on fire. You’ve get him pinned, he’s still struggling and spitting and trying to get away, what do you do?” (raising the tension, in this case by introducing a threat that the players know about but the characters don’t, and therefore can’t act on)

  26. Jacob Ross they’re codified because that’s how you play This Game in This Genre.

    “Bring their gender into it” or “Doubt them and demand discipline” from Night Witches; “Reveal a deal done in their absence” from Urban Shadows; “make honor and shame real” or “change the seasons” from Sagas of the Icelanders; or “Show a remnant of the past used in new ways” from Legacy.

    GM moves are not just generic suggestions, they’re specific and evocative of the specific game being played.

  28. Ray Otus “But if we are going to be reductionist, can I encapsulate all three of your moves into one: “Threaten the characters”?”

    “A 10+? Okay, sure… you advance on him and knock his sword aside and he staggers back, hand up like so and this dumbfound look on his face. He’s totally at your mercy, what do you do?”

    “So, Brynmor, like two days into the harvest festival, Sesta, the town blacksmith… she finds you as you’re leaving the pavillion. She’s clearly had a few drinks, and is all smiling, and she starts talking you up, and she’s like standing really close, putting her hand on your arm, making lots of eye contact. What do you do?”

    “Caradoc, you see Rhianna just do that… cut it’s head off, yell like a madwoman, and hurl the head into the woods at the goblins. And when the goblins scattered, she just went back to giving orders like nothing happened, even though she’s covered in blood. How do you react to that?”

    Etc. etc. ad naseum.

    Plenty of ways to provoke actions that don’t threaten the PCs.

  30. As for “Change Their Environment,” I think that one’s legitimately slippery.

    Mostly, I’d argue it’s contextual: if you change the environment, and doing so provokes action, increases tension, or establishes badness, then it’s a move.

    If you’re just like “Okay, you get to the inn. The public room is medium-crowded, looks like a bunch of locals. Kind of dark, rather raucous, … drinking songs and the like. Smells like sweat and cheap ale. What do you do?” then lacking other context, you probably haven’t made a move. You’ve described a situation. But there’s no move there, right?

    Deal damage is pretty much always either increasing tension (because you’re that much closer to Death’s Door) or establishing badness (because of the fictional effects of that damage) or both. Sometimes it’s also provoking action (“oh man, you re are bleeding a lot”).

  32. Aaron Griffin You quoted “Bangs are those moments when the PCs realize they have a moment right now and better get moving to deal with it.”

    That doesn’t encompass lots and lots of things that provoke action, increase tension, or establish badness. And many (most, all) of those things are more than “just talking.”

  33. Establishing badness provokes action – I mean that’s the very definition of “badness” in a heroic game, right? Something contrary to the PCs! Shouldn’t they want to act on it?

    Similarly, you can only “increase tension” if there is implied action. Nothing is tense unless it is a barrier to action. If I told you “the room gets darker” as you were leaving, no one really cares. But if you say the same thing as the characters are ENTERING then yeah, tension!

    Check out the bang examples: the second one is a voice on the phone. How is that not either increasing tension or establishing badness? I’d say it’s both!

    “Just talking” covers all the GM moves that are effectively color narration.

  34. Will D I like these!

    ● Show a loss (take their health, abilities, equipment, choices, allies)

    ● Show a threat (a potential loss)

    ● Show an opportunity

    But! I like “provoke a character to (re)act” better than just “show a threat” and “show an opportunity” because provocation doesn’t have to necessarily involve either. You can provoke action by presenting or hinting at a mystery, by doing something unexpected (like having the town blacksmith hit on you), by pointing out another character’s (questionable, provocative) action and asking what they do, and probably other ways that aren’t occurring to me right now.

    Similarly, I think “establish badness” and “increase tension” are better than “show a loss,” because it allows for stuff that isn’t strictly a loss. I’m thinking particularly of misses on Spout Lore or sometimes Discern Realities. When I reveal an unwelcome truth that you’ve had a bad, bad experience with this quicksilver stuff, I’m establishing badness (and then maybe asking you to establish more), but it’s not really a loss, right? It’s not directly costing you anything here and now, it’s just adding backstory and context that is bad. If I’m any good at this, I’m going to call back to it later when they encounter the quicksilver (or one of its victims), and/or weave those grim details into the structure of the emerging story.

    Of course, you’re right… you could cover that quicksilver move by including these…

    ● Show context (describe things, announce future badness)

    ● Ask for context (ask questions and use the answers)

    The thing I don’t really like about these last two, though, is that (like you suggest) they include all sorts of stuff that doesn’t actually drive the game forward. You describe the tavern in excruciating detail, and then what? Ask them “what do you do?” Well, now we’re just talking, right?

    Where is you describe the tavern in such a way that provokes the characters to act, increases tension, and/or establishes badness, then you’re pushing things along, right? Even if the badness or tension doesn’t directly provoke action, it foreshadows it, sets it up, adds weight to it when it does show up. That makes it different, I think, from “just” describing.

    Anyhow… you definitely have me thinking with these.

  35. Aaron Griffin

    Are these, in your opinion, GM moves?

    “”A 10+? Okay, sure… you advance on him and knock his sword aside and he staggers back, hand up like so and this dumbfound look on his face. He’s totally at your mercy, what do you do?”

    “So, Brynmor, like two days into the harvest festival, Sesta, the town blacksmith… she finds you as you’re leaving the pavillion. She’s clearly had a few drinks, and is all smiling, and she starts talking you up, and she’s like standing really close, putting her hand on your arm, making lots of eye contact. What do you do?”

    “Caradoc, you see Rhianna just do that… cut it’s head off, yell like a madwoman, and hurl the head into the woods at the goblins. And when the goblins scattered, she just went back to giving orders like nothing happened, even though she’s covered in blood. How do you react to that?”

    “Oof, yeah, Fighter, you’re struggling to get free and save Bilshi, but there’s just too many goblins. You get, like, an arm free, start crawling out, but Bilshi like locks eyes with you, pleading, then… he’s gone. He fell. There’s no way he survived. Bard, while this is happening…”

  36. Sure. The first two are very clearly “provoking action” – or more clearly, begging a response from the character, inaction included.

    The third comes across as color narration, but depending on the fictional context it could be (and likely is) begging for a response.

    The final one is more like the first – it begs for a response: save your ally or forget about them. Show us how you are heroic or cold hearted.

  37. Ray Otus “While I think that +Jeremy Strandberg is basically right, I don’t see it as a useful observation. If anything, the core list could be expanded. 🙂 “

    And that’s the crux, right? What’s the point or value in boiling them down?

    If you think about when and where we’re instructed to make GM moves, and/or you’re trying to explain that to a new GM, it’s easier (I think) to say this:

    “When everyone looks at you to find out what happens, do something that provokes the characters to act or react, or that raises the tension, or that establishes something bad. Here’s a list of specific ways you can do that:

    X

    Y

    Z

    See also your danger, location, and monster moves, too!

    It’s okay if you do something that doesn’t directly map to one of those things on that list, or something that maps to more than one. If you’ve provoked a (re)action, increased the tension, or established something bad as true, then you’ve made a GM move. Ask what they do.”

    I think that would be way easier for a new GM to grock than an ever-expanding list of things that you should always try to stick to.

  38. Aaron Griffin for the 3rd one, assume the context is nothing more than “back in town from their first adventure, and we’ve established that Brynmor is a pretty young man but inexperienced.” We know nothing more than that.

    Still a GM move?

    In the 4th one, we’ve previously established that it’s a bottomless pit that Bilshi fell into. He’s gone. And the Fighter is still pinned down by goblins. Even if he wanted to run to the edge and make a futile attempt to save Bilshi, he couldn’t. He’d need to deal with these gobbos first.

    Is Bilshi falling still a GM move?

    If “Yes” and “Yes…” are all 4 of these bangs?

  39. If we’re considering “action” to involve roleplaying, acting on beliefs and the like, and these things (seeing Rhianna behead a thing, watching Bilshi fall to his death) are compelling emotional reactions from the characters, then sure. I could see an argument that’s not “action” but then I wouldn’t be saying things like this if I didn’t think it was interesting.

    Of course if no one gives a shit about Rhianna, and aren’t invested in her, and she cuts off the head of a goblin, then that’s Just Talking. Or if Bilshi was a throwaway character that no one cares about, it’s more Just Talking.

    I guess if the GM tried to make that a move and it missed and fell flat, that’s another thing. That’s just a missed mark for the GM and a learning experience.

    So yeah, if in the fiction, you say a thing that the characters should be reacting to – maybe they stop and cry over Bilshi, or go out of their way to avenge him – then that’s a bang. If you don’t expect reaction (“the tapestries on the wall are green today”) then it’s just talking.

  40. Provoking a reaction can be done by

    1) threatening the possibility of PC achieving a goal

    2) offering an opportunity for the PC to achieve a goal

    But it is up to the player whether they feel provoked to react. A GM can incorrectly assess a player’s goals, pose threats and offer goals and a player can then proceed to not care.

    Tension is increased by making it seem like a PC will not achieve their goals

    Badness can be

    1) A PC failing to achieve their goals, i.e. a threat realized.

    2) threatening the possibility of PC achieving a goal

    From my perspective it boils down to goals, and threats and opportunities. (Which align, BTW with dangers and discoveries.) The trio that you propose seem to overlap unnecessarily and in not-obvious ways.

    Goals seem to be the most under-represented. You’ve got inherent goals of not losing what you already have, like your limbs and gear. These are great, but it seems like it’s the active goals, like getting that Maltese falcon, which are the really powerful ones.

    I’m just learning that these can be teased out with questions, but I started out only asking questions at the beginning of the first session. It seems to me these need to be upgraded to proper GM moves. The kind that doesn’t move the action forward, but help to build.

    P.S. I just rewrote this whole thing cus G+ mobile erased what I was typing cus I checked the notifications tab midway.

  41. “If you’ve provoked a (re)action, increased the tension, or established something bad as true, then you’ve made a GM move.”

    Actually, when you state it that way, it’s a great checklist.

  43. I am not sure what the goal of this exercise is, but if you boil it down to the core, the GM does only two things:

    – Resolve actions

    – Provide challenges

    Player moves mostly serve the first bit, while GM moves mostly serve the second bit. Pretty much everything in the rules serves to provide some structure and consistency to this. The three things you listed are all subsets of providing challenges, some in a more broader sense than others.

    Similarly, all the GM moves in DW are subsets of this. That doesn’t mean they are useless, as they provide the earlier mentioned structure as well as inspiration on how to do these two jobs.

    If you resolved all actions and there’s no challenge left, you’re not doing your job as a GM as the game just grinded to an halt.

  44. TL;DR – I believe there’s primary and secondary (and tertiary) functions of a move, and the primary function sometimes differs.

    Aren’t some moves just to fulfill principles? (Though they probably do tick off a (re)action, Increase tension or maybe Establish badness in a secondary or primary function.)

    GM: “You stand there in awe to look at the mighty dragon asleep on it’s treasure pile. Suddenly it scoops a pile of gold under it’s head and barks forth ‘Verminthrax accepts you’re tribute! ti-hi-hi…’, and yes, you can actually kind how hear it laugh in it’s sleep. The treasures seem to be of different ages. What do you do?”

    Now my primary concern is to Give Every Monster Life, but I am guessing the questions “what should I be on the lookout for?, what here is useful or valuable? and what is about to happen will be asked pretty soon.

    But a Sleeping Dragon is a situation were the tension will rise for every breath. What about an inn?

    The Party can only afford the common room and the soup and to watered down beer to share, and will have to sleep in the barn. The GM then says: “You overhear the innkeeper complain to presumably his daughter that there’s no entertainment.”

    Now this is an oppourtunity for the bard to ply her trade. Maybe there’s a roll, but in any case they will get a round of beers and maybe sleep indoors. Sure there’ sa little tension.

    —

    GM: “The Knight who’s coming towards you has his armour, lance and shield, but he’s riding a giant bird! You must have crossed into Aviana, the neighbour kingdom.”

    So here I’m trying to show them the world is a fantastic plance, but they will probably ask for directions. I will probably let the bird answer. wink

  45. I look at the GM moves not so much as “what the GM can do move the characters and story forward” as a good GM should be able to accomplish this without the list. Rather I look at them as guidelines of how to present the genre and setting. I believe a lot of pbta games could be improved if if this was kept in mind during the design.

  46. First and foremost: this thread is solid gold.

    So here’s my two cents:

    All GM moves work towards the same objective:

    Avoid fictional stagnation

    Also

    A move is not made in a single uninterrupted sentence:

    You can have a conversation about the move you made a second ago. (in other words, you don’t have to make a move every time you open your mouth)

    On the first point:

    GM moves to me are a way to codify the ages old Inciting Incident technique for use at the table. Consider this: for a story to begin, an event has to upset the existing balance.

    Balance means the fiction stays unchanged. You can write, or narrate, the state of fiction that is in balance and then go home confident that things will stay the way you left them.

    If you want things to happen, namely if you want the PCs to act, you have to provide an element that upsets the Balance.

    Corallary #1: wether an event is a move or not depends on what the balance was before that event

    Examples:

    #1

    Balance: ordinary farmer’s life

    Event: a light rain shower starts

    Verdict: Not a move. It’s a totally ordinary event.

    #1.b

    Event: a meteor shower starts

    Verdict: The balance is disrupted with fiery destruction. That’s a move.

    #1.c

    Balance: ordinary fire elemental’s life

    Event: fire and sulfur rains from heaven

    Verdict: Not a move. Balance is not upset for the fire elemental.

    Corallary #2: an event that wouldn’t be a move in normal circumstances can be a move in a state of upset balance if it has the potential to either re-establish balance or to upset it even further

    #2

    Balance: friends walk in the woods

    Event: they see a wild bee-hive, dripping honey

    Verdict: Pretty normal stuff. Not a move.

    #2.b

    Upset balance: friends are lost and starving in the woods

    Event: they see a wild bee-hive, dripping honey

    Verdict: Protagonists will move towards restoring balance. That’s a move.

    #2.c

    Event: sting-wasps have taken over the hive and are now chasing them

    Verdict: The balance has been upset in even more ways. That’s a move.

    On the second point:

    A big portion of the conversation at the table is about filling in for the senses the players can’t use to experience the fiction. As a GM you have to tell them what they see, what they smell, what they hear etc etc. You also have to fill in for their character’s memories most of the times.

    This is necessary, but it isn’t about moves, rather this is needed to establish what the Balance is in the fiction in a certain moment in order to then upset it. “You ran out rations” is not a move unless you also etablish that acquiring more rations will be difficult in the current situation. That is why the manual explicitly mentions dungeons in the description of the Consume their resources move.

    Conclusion

    Many of you already stated something similar. Here is my version:

    There are two GM moves:

    Upset the balance

    Provide means to restore balance

    or

    There is one GM move:

    Change the momentum, directly or indirectly

  48. I just noticed this detail which might explain the discrepancy between the GM-moves-are-just-bangs camp, and the what-about-the-other-things-a-GM-needs-to-do camp

    DW describes GM moves as

    “Whenever everyone looks to you to see what happens choose one of these.”

    Whereas Apocalypse World says

    “Whenever there’s a pause in the conversation and everyone looks to you to say something, choose one of these things and say it.”

    AW’s version implies the GM moves are for when there is a lull, which makes sense for the interpretation that GM moves are when you challenge PCs, increase the tension, raise the stakes, etc. DW’s omission of that phrase seems to say that GM moves happen more often, whether there is a pause or not, in which case, everything a GM needs to do seems like it needs to be a “Move”.

    There is some design space there that could clarify things. Maybe the three areas of what a GM does are like the list Aaron Griffin made:

    ● Question

    ● Describe

    ● Provoke

    Provoke is the best match to GM Moves as they stand. Questions are vital for collaborative world-building as well as interrogating PCs goals (if your players are like mine and don’t offer up much in that regard). Describe is often dismissed as the other thing, but important stuff happens there, such as providing context for the Provoking moves.

    A couple other thoughts on specific DW moves…

    Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost.. All the examples of this in both DW and AW include a cost. Should this have been “Offer a dangerous opportunity”? How often do you offer an opportunity without a cost?

    Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask. This move is different than all the others in that you don’t make it when they look to see what happens, you do it when they say they take action. This is also where you adjust difficulty in DW, which makes it special.

  49. Jeremy Strandberg

    ● Show context (describe things, announce future badness)

    ● Ask for context (ask questions and use the answers)

    The way you can make these always drive the game forward is by ensuring that the context is always relevant to the players goals. Describing in too much detail isn’t good because it’s irrelevant.

    Provocation is a good measure of success, but, as you mentioned, calling back to these non-immediate badnesses is crucial. Context is Chekov’s gun. Show context and use it later. Ask for context and use it later.

    I sent a work-in-progress PDF to you 6 weeks ago via private message, which I haven’t shared publicly because it is very not-ready-for-primetime. It goes into more detail on these admittedly incomplete ideas.

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