The tabletop RPG Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker is popular game in certain subcultures. From seeing people discuss the game online there is a common belief about how you're supposed to play that I think is wrong. In the Apocalypse World framework one of the key elements of the design are “moves” – little chunks of rules that link a fictional trigger and a brief mechanical procedure for how to resolve things. For example, a player might say “I start walking toward the storage shed the guy is guarding with my gun pointed right at him, I start pulling the trigger if he's still there after I take a few steps. That's Going Aggro.” And they'd do the mechanical procedures for the Go Aggro move:

When you go aggro on someone, roll +hard. On a 10+, they have to choose: force your hand and suck it up, or cave and do what you want. On a 7-9, they can instead choose 1:

• get the hell out of your way
• barricade themselves securely in
• give you something they think you want
• back off calmly, hands where you can see
• tell you what you want to know (or what you want to hear)

It's very easy to assume that the ideal way to play the game is to talk purely in terms of what your character does in the fiction, and that this is one way that AW is different from games where you can just “push a button” to have your character do things, like when invoking a power in D&D 4E. There's even a rule in the game that seems like it implies you should do it this way: Make your move, but never speak its name. However, this is a rule for the GM section, not the way to use player-facing moves. In fact, I argue that the main rule for moves urges you not to think this way:

The rule for moves is to do it, do it. In order for it to be a move and for the player to roll dice, the character has to do something that counts as that move; and whenever the character does something that counts as a move, it's the move and player rolls dice.

Usually it's unambiguous. … But there are two ways they sometimes don't line up, and it's your job as MC to deal with them. … First is when a player says only that her character makes a move without having her character actually take any such action. … Second is when a player has her character take action that counts as a move, but doesn't realize it, or doesn't intend it to be a move. … You don't ask in order to give the player a chance to decline to roll, you ask in order to give the player a chance to revise her character's action if she really didn't mean to make the move.

The idea that talking or thinking in terms of the fictional situation must be chronologically or causally first is appealing (perhaps due to the idea that the game is a “fiction first” game) but not consistent with the rules. My favorite go-to counter-example is the Open your brain move:

When you open your brain to the world's psychic maelstrom, roll +weird. On a hit, the MC will tell you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two; answer them. On a 10+, the MC will give you good detail. On a 7-9, the MC will give you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the MC will tell you that.

This is something that generally happens completely internally to a character and people know you're doing it when you “press the button” of saying “I'm opening my brain.” That's not a wrong or substandard way to play. AW wants both the more mechanical move selection and being guided by in-the-moment descriptions of your actions to be valid “starting points” for character action. This works well because the two approaches are more conducive to different situations you might experience during the game. If the GM asks you “what do you do?” and you're not sure, the move sheet functions as a list of suggestions. Or if you're deeply engaged with what's going on in a scene and are reacting instinctively or emotionally you can just describe what you do in purely fictional terms and then realize that it maps to a move (sometimes with help from other people). Being able to approach moves from either “above” or “below” tends to have the effect of propelling you into the other realm, and that process of going back and forth across the “membrane” that separates the fiction from the mechanics has the effect of metaphorically stitching them together and keeping the game running as a functioning machine. (I might even argue that having Open your brain not slot easily into the mistaken view of prioritizing fictional talk over mechanical talk is an element of good game design, by defying a simple pattern it helps keep the moves from collapsing together into a general rule about when you should roll dice).

My personal experience

I fell into the trap of thinking that the ideal way to play AW-inspired games was to talk purely in terms of fictional description when I started playing Dungeon World. Similar to the Open your brain move, DW has Spout Lore where you consult your own memory about whether you know something. In an effort to avoid “leading with the mechanics” I kept trying to give ever more vivid descriptions of my actions that I thought would telegraph to the other players that I was trying to trigger the Spout Lore move, “Hmmm, looking at this I'm reminded of the time I was serving with a mercenary company on the southern continent...”. It's easy to think that this is virtuously prioritizing “the fiction”. But actually what it's doing is subordinating the fiction (i.e. the stuff you're imagining about the virtual world of the game) to “talky stuff”, it's making the fiction a mere means to an end of signaling which mechanical subsystem you are trying to engage. I realized that when I was trying to be clever about my descriptions I was actually disengaging from “the fiction”, not getting more engaged with it – I was trying to use writerly devices to communicate to an audience, not see the world through the lens of my character. It works much butter to just say “I Spout Lore, do I know anything about that?” or “What do I do? Hmmm.... [glances at basic moves sheet] I open my brain!”.

(cover image from RPGGeek)